For our students to experience a successful transition to study at the University of Southampton they need to engage with their learning, something they are more likely to do if they engage with their community. This will help with their sense of belonging their personal motivation to study, their ability to form friendships and their commitment to the course.

Every new student brings with them a different range of experiences and approaches to learning. Their expectations of what life will be like at the University and the reality of what it is like to study and live in the new environment will make the process of transition a challenging one for most, if not all, new students.

So what can we do to help? The following principles have been developed by Colin Bryson (Newcastle University).

• Foster students' willingness and readiness to engage by enhancing their self-belief.
• Embrace the diverse backgrounds, expectations, orientations and aspirations that students bring and to welcome, respect and accommodate all of these in an inclusive way.
• Enable and facilitate trust relationships between staff and students and between students and students, to develop a discourse and show solidarity.
• Create opportunities for learning communities, so students can develop a sense of competence and belonging.
• Teach in ways to make learning participatory, dialogic, collaborative, authentic, active and critical.
• Foster autonomy and creativity and offer choice and opportunities for growth and enriching experience (in a low risk, safe setting).
• Accommodate non-institutional influences.
• Design and implement assessment for learning to enable students to evaluate critically the quality and impact of their own work.
• Negotiate and reach a mutual consensus with students on managing workload, challenge, curriculum and assessment for their educational enrichment through a partnership model.
• Enable students to become active citizens and develop their social, cultural capital.

We are developing a set of case studies that will provide examples of what you can do to encourage student engagement. We are looking to cover the following topic areas:

• Peer support
• Cross module learning communities
• Common intellectual experiences
• Collaboarative projects
• UG research
• Diversity learning
• Internships

If you have developed activities around this area we would love to hear from you and make your case study available on this website.  Click here to contact the Transition Project team.

Equally, if you would like to get similar initiatives set up in your area, get in touch with the Transition Project team to access support and funds to help.

RAISE (Researching and Advancing Student Engagement) is a network of academics, practitioners, advisors and student representatives drawn from the Higher Education Sector who are working and/or interested in researching and promoting student engagement.