Publication Details
Hoyne, G., & McNaught, K. (2016). Changing practices to better support first-year Health Science students. STARS.
Abstract
Entrance to university in Australia, in a post-Bradley era, is diversified and massified, with targets and programs to increase the participation of equity groups that were previously not represented. The changed cohorts have major implications for universities, in meeting the students’ needs, and as a moral and ethical response to enrolment. At the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) Fremantle campus, the 2011 cohort entering Health Sciences, experienced a high rate of failure and withdrawal from university. They entered university at a time when UNDA had begun to implement first year experience (FYE) pedagogical approaches but these had not been entirely implemented in all the Schools across campus. This research has tracked the performance of first year Health Science students from 2011 -2015.This paper discusses the School and Institutional-wide response that was initiated to address the issue of student attrition and how this led to a significant changes to the FYE transition approaches within the School to support students better at the start of their courses and student success with a reduction in failure rate and withdrawal rate of First Year students.
Keywords
university education, first-year students, Health Science students, student attrition, transition approaches, University of Notre Dame Fremantle
