First year college students are challenged both socially and academically in their transition to college life. The literature suggests that social and emotional competence skills can help with this transition. This article describes the course content for a University freshman seminar that teaches skills in social and emotional competence in order…

First-year experience courses, although common on university campuses, are conducted in a variety of formats. This article outlines strategies and activities used at a large urban commuter campus in a first-year experience sequence run by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics for the College of Science. The course, designed for freshmen…

First year students, like all students at a university, comprise a diverse mixture of personal traits, backgrounds, experiences, and assorted learning styles. Each of these unique student characteristics can either enhance or inhibit successful integration to the campus community. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of various…

This longitudinal, qualitative study explores developmental English students' experience of remediation in the context of a first-semester learning community (LC). Conducted at an urban community college in the Northeast, data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted over a 3-year period with a cohort of 15 students who were…

Political science faculty have access to a wealth of innovative pedagogies thanks to a comprehensive literature on teaching and learning in the discipline and related fields. Yet, from among the hundreds of documented possibilities, how does one go about deciding which to incorporate into a given course? Few articles have much to say in response…

This article focuses on the development of an engaging library orientation module for UC San Diego First Year Experience (FYE) courses. The library module included a brief in-class presentation about research concepts and library services, an online interactive library scavenger hunt given as an in-class activity, and a homework assignment where…

This research explores the attainment of learning outcomes of first year seminar participants through institutional assessment and programmatic assessments methods. This research compared the lived experiences of first year seminar participants to their perceptions of leaning gains captured by the National Survey of Student Engagement. The study…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between first-year undergraduates' (n = 1,701) participation in learning communities and their development of leadership and multicultural competence. The sample included first-year students who were enrolled at six large, public research universities in 2012 and completed the Student…

Retention and graduation rates of an entire cohort of 1,913 first-time full-time college students are analyzed. The effects of participation in a first year experience (FYE) course and of entry level academic preparation (ELAP) on retention and graduation are examined, both descriptively and with discrete-time survival analyses. Although…

This paper discusses a novel structure for providing a high-impact, first year experience for science students. ASTER (Access to Science Through Experience in Research) is an extracurricular certification program designed to introduce our students to the research culture via seminar attendance, journal clubs, book clubs, and lab visits.…

The authors describe an assignment in which first-year university students develop a sense of community by discussing personally relevant topics via the shared experience enabled by the social media tools Twitter and Paper.li. A list of references and suggested readings is included.

Using an innovation adaptation of the gap analysis approach of Richard Clark and Fred Estes, the collegiate First-Year Experience (FYE) consisting of comprehensive and intentional curricular and co-curricular initiatives was examined. Conceptualization and operationalization of the goal for a FYE program was based on 3 student development theories…

ePortfolios have been looked to as a tool for the direct assessment of student learning. Because the evidence used for assessment is actual student work, ePortfolios provide a view of learning that is not available through traditional methodologies such as student surveys and exams. This research examined 47 student ePortfolios completed as part…

Research has shown consistently that first-generation college students are less prepared academically for college, have a higher risk for dropping out, and are less likely to obtain a degree. This study investigated the effect of first-generation students' participation in a first-year seminar (FYS) on academic achievement and persistence to the…

This article describes the Community Grant Writing Project (CGWP), a flexible service-learning framework designed for use in writing-intensive courses. The CGWP incorporates best-practice recommendations from the service-learning literature and addresses recent challenges identified for successful service-learning partnerships. In the CGWP,…