Scholars maintain that when race and racism are addressed as factors that continue to shape inequality in the classroom, white students often deny the validity of these claims, while Students of Color tend to feel empowered by them. However, drawing on open-ended interviews, focus group discussions, and survey data, we argue that some Students of…

This case study reports on the process for creating a self-paced non-credit information literacy (IL) course delivered via a university's course management system. The four online modules are designed to contextualize information literacy competencies within the curriculum taught in First Year Seminar (FYS) courses. The meta-course approach…

The authors conducted a rubric assessment of information literacy (IL) skills in research papers across five undergraduate first-year seminar programs to explore the question "What impact does librarian intervention in first-year courses have on IL performance in student work?" Statistical results indicate that students in courses with…

We describe a unique co-curricular honor and integrity program at a large, research university's business school. We discuss the evolution of the program as well as the array of stakeholders who were involved in its early development and sustenance. We use an ethical culture template to highlight the formal and informal systems, and we discuss…

This study was a quantitative point-biserial correlation analysis on students' motivation to go to college using the AMS-C28 survey instrument. The study implemented Self Determination Theory to explain the characteristics and traits of traditional and non traditional students' motivation to succeed in college after completing the freshmen…

Universities throughout Australia are increasingly investing significant amounts of time and money in efforts to improve the quality of first year students' experiences and, by extension, increase retention, performance and student satisfaction. This paper reports upon a pilot research project conducted at a Queensland university that investigates…

As access to higher education has continuously risen throughout the second half of the twentieth century, community college student success has not kept pace. Within this climate, institutions look to cost-effective initiatives and programs to encourage student success in order to produce more certificate and degree earners. While many first-year…

Fostering students' intellectual curiosity is a common goal of first-year seminar programs--especially in liberal arts settings. The authors propose an alternative method to assess this ambiguous, value-laden concept. Relying on data gathered from pre- and posttest in-depth interviews of 34 students enrolled in first-year seminars, they construct…

This article reports on two cycles of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study on student experiences of the process of establishing social learning spaces in a Johannesburg university student residence. We draw on Wenger's (2009) notion of "social learning spaces" to explore the manner in which students mediate their social and…

This study looked to situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in order to explore students' participation in the social practices of first-year learning communities. Wenger's (1998) elaboration on "communities of practice" provides insight into how such participation transforms learners. These perspectives frame learning as a…

We describe the structure of a writing-intensive, chemistry first year seminar designed to support a three week, research focused summer bridge program. Writing assignments in the seminar helped students understand their research activities, learn to conduct themselves as scientists, and reflect upon their lab work. The writing intensive seminar…

The purpose of this case study research aims to bridge gaps in the current research by exploring how both veteran and nonveteran adult and higher education (AHE) learners make sense of their educational journey and identity, in and out of the classroom, during their first-year experience (FYE) course at a community college (CC) in the Southwest…

The author created and has been teaching a first-year seminar (FYS) called "Food for Thought: Rhetoric of the Edible" for the past three years. Sustainability and ethics in the production and consumption of food have been tangential topics that have arisen in the course. While her academic background is composition and rhetoric, food has…

The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public Carnegie Foundation Research institution with 14 schools and colleges that enrolls more than 18,000 undergraduate students at the main campus in Storrs, CT. Beginning in 1999, First-Year Experience (FYE) seminars were offered to entering freshman students. Since that time, the size of the program…

Mass incarceration in America is a moral, economic, and societal crisis with serious implications for many men of color and high school non-completers who are incarcerated at proportionally higher rates than Whites or college graduates. For the formerly incarcerated, engagement in adult learning, whether high school equivalency (HSE) or college,…