The First-Year Experience
- Koinonia - Summer 2011 Issue
- Apr 26, 2011
According to Hunter and Murray (2007), “[o]ver the past twenty-five years, increased attention has been devoted to the challenges students face as they transition into higher education. Student success and retention hang in the balance based on that transition” (p. 25). This flies in the face of the previous status quo, when faculty feelings towards students who could not cut it in college were unsympathetic. Jamelske (2009) points out that because more jobs than ever require a college degree, more students are pursuing degrees – which means that many students who might not have gone to college in decades past are now at universities, but many of them need some type of assistance adjusting to college. The fact that students need help adjusting, coupled with the fact that colleges have less robust budgets than in the past, means that retaining students and seeing them on through graduation have received greater emphasis recently than in years past. According to Jamelske (2009) and Goodman and Pascarella (2006), around 95% of American 4-year colleges and universities have a first-year experience program of some variety, and though such programs' details vary by university, according to Goodman and Pascarella (2006), “[t]he common goal of first-year seminars is to increase academic performance and persistence through academic and social integration. The long-term goal is increased degree attainment” (p. 26). Efforts to help students transition into higher education are called first-year programs or the first-year experience. The purpose of such programs goes beyond simply aiding in the transition to college and is aimed at increasing retention and grade point average (Jamelske, 2009), nurturing learning and cognitive development (Reason, Terenzini, & Domingo, 2006), and emphasizing on-campus involvement and faculty contact (Barton & Donahue, 2009). This article will attempt to explore the various goals, methods, and outcomes of the trend of first-year experience programs by examining a variety of studies.
Schrader and Brown (2008) cite several different studies stating that about one out of every four college freshmen at four-year universities does not return to school for their sophomore year, and that number approximately doubles when dealing with community college students. While retention is just one goal of first-year programs (Jamelske, 2009; Schrader & Brown, 2008) the others, as mentioned above, cannot happen on a college's watch unless retention is successful.
In an attempt to understand the effectiveness of the first-year experience program at a sizable university in the Northeast where the program has existed “for more than 10 years and is designed to facilitate the acquisition of traditional academic and social skills”, Schrader and Brown (2008, p. 312) examined “participants' cognitive, affective, and behavioral constructs as they pertain to an intervention” (Schrader & Brown, p. 316). This approach is called the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior methodology, or KAB. Schrader and Brown (2008) also point out that most first-year experience programs treat all students the same, not really accounting for differences in gender. Works by Hutt and Caplan & Caplan as cited in Schrader and Brown (2008) indicate that “males and females have been shown to differ on many cognitive tasks” (p. 316). For example, females tend to outperform males in a variety of subjects during maturation (Dwyer & Johnson; American Association of University Women, both as cited in Schrader & Brown, 2008, p. 316), and stress coping mechanisms also differ by gender (Lawrence, Ashford, & Dent, as cited in Schrader & Brown, 2008, pp. 316-317). Therefore, Schrader and Brown (2008) not only examined how students in a first-year experience (FYE) program performed by their KAB criteria in comparison to a control group that did not participate in the FYE program, they also examined how males and females differed in response to the KAB criteria – or if they differed at all. The FYE program for the students that Schrader and Brown (2008) studied began with three days of acclimating the students to campus, their peers, and the university's faculty, and was followed by a one credit hour course specific to a student's major.
In the end, despite some small statistically significant findings, Schrader and Brown (2008) did not conclude that the FYE program they studied was meeting its goals. Barton and Donahue (2009) point out that the results from many FYE studies do not have statistical significance, yet remain important findings. Similarly, the work of Schrader and Brown (2008) had interesting information beyond just whether or not the FYE program they studied was meeting its goals. The data suggested that being in the FYE program and learning are linked, but selection bias might have been at play, as the FYE program group and the control group were not the result of random sampling: students chose whether or not to participate in the FYE program. In all but one area measured by the KAB criteria, females rated themselves more highly than males, and they were more likely overall to voluntarily enroll in the FYE program examined by Schrader and Brown (2008).
Pascarella & Terenzini, as cited in Goodman and Pascarella (2006), attempted to remove the selection bias from the process of analyzing a FYE program, and through two separate studies at the same institution, found an advantage in favor of students who participated in the FYE program: such students were between 5 and 15 percent more likely to persist to re-enrollment their second year, and were also more likely to graduate in four years or fewer. It is also of note that Goodman & Pascarella (2006) say that there is evidence that students of all types benefit from FYE programs, and that beyond improving retention and graduation rates, FYE program participants “experience more frequent and meaningful interactions with faculty and with other students” (Goodman & Pascarella, 2006, p. 27), are more involved in co-curricular activities, enjoy their university experience to a greater extent, receive higher marks while in college, and “have more positive perceptions of themselves as learners” (p. 27).
Jamelske (2009) attempted to discern whether an FYE program affected retention or grade point average (GPA). This study was conducted at a Midwestern liberal arts university, but the FYE program at this school took a different approach than the one credit hour course described earlier. Instead, according to Jamelske (2009), “[t]he intended design of this program was to infuse core courses with added curricular and extracurricular activities to integrate students into the university community” (p. 378). Thus, 100 and 200 level classes across disciplines had the FYE program integrated into their curriculum, and this integration occurred more naturally in some courses than in others.
When taking all of the courses in the FYE program into account, Jamelske (2009) found no positive impact came out of enrollment in an FYE class. However, in courses in which the FYE program goals were effectively integrated into the course, as based on student surveys, the FYE program did positively impact students. The study showed that if a student took a course that was truly infused with the goals of the FYE, that chance of retaining that student increased by 6 percent. It also showed that the FYE program had a positive impact on student GPA; as might be expected, this effect was magnified somewhat by FYE courses that effectively integrated the program's goals. Positive effects of being involved in the FYE program were magnified among below average female students, and minimized for above average students. In summary, the work of Jamelske (2009) shows that integrating an FYE program into existing courses can be effective if the integration occurs more than nominally.
Realizing this sort of differentiation between the FYE program classes that were effective and those that were not would obviously be critical in moving forward for this program. As Dolinsky, Matthews, Greenfield, Curtis-Tweed, and Evenbeck (2007) state, aligning program goals with institutional goals is a critical role of assessment, and “[b]ringing together persons from across the campus is a critical means of developing and implementing programs for entering students” (Dolinsky, et al., 2007, p. 9). In other words, according to Dolinsky, et al. (2007) the method of the FYE program described in the study by Jamelske (2009) is a good alternative to a one credit hour standalone FYE course, but it is critical in such cases that FYE program goals – which ideally align with institutional goals – are sufficiently integrated into course objectives.
Another study at the University of Maine at Farmington compared two existing one-credit hour FYE courses with new, four-credit hour FYE seminars that “were taught on a wide range of topics by faculty from across the university” (Barton & Donahue, 2009, p. 263). Unlike Goodman and Pascarella (2006), Barton and Donahue (2009) did not find a statistically significant link between FYE programs and retention. The same study found that students in the four-credit hour course had scored significantly higher than those in the one-credit hour course on their SAT and at the end of the school year had a statistically significant higher GPA. However, pre- and post-testing in September and December, respectively, on the Perry intellectual development test did not show a statistically significant increase in scores for either group of students, which surprised the researchers. The students in the four-credit hour course “scored statistically significantly higher on the Perry test than other students for the two test periods combined...and for September...but not for December” (Barton & Donahue, 2009, p. 270).
Conveying the importance of the first year of college to the faculty of the university is important in making a FYE program effective. As Reason et al. (2006) write, “Few college experiences are more strongly linked to student learning and persistence than students’ interactions with faculty members” (p. 151). Anderson, Briggs, and Scarpati (2002) agree, saying that belief in the value of the FYE program from both students and faculty is foundational for the program's success. One of the most important things that a FYE program can do is encourage “the formation of social networks and peer groups” (Peat, Dalziel, & Grant, 2001, p. 213). Students who formed peer groups had a more enjoyable university experience, which lines up with the findings of Wilcox, Winn, and Fyvie-Gauld (2005), which indicated that social support of friends at the university was critical to retention. However, Wilcox et al. (2005) said that being friendly with those with whom students shared living areas was most important, outpacing somewhat the importance of friendships with students outside their residence halls and relationships with academic staff. In the work of Wilcox et al. (2005), students who had good relationships with those who lived close to them were more likely to stay at the university. The work of Peat et al. (2001) seems to indicate that beginning to form peer groups in the context of a one-day FYE seminar is a good step toward supportive peer groups. In either case, it seems that a critical focus of FYE programs is facilitating student peer groups in the hope that it might increase retention and the university experience of a student.
Encouragingly, it seems that the goals of maximizing student performance in the classroom and raising retention rates (Goodman & Pascarella, 2006) are possible. Jamelske (2009), Barton and Donahue (2009), and Goodman and Pascarella (2006) all saw students involved in effective FYE programs attain higher GPAs. Goodman and Pascarella (2006) found a statistically significant link between the FYE program they studied and retention. Not all programs are the same, but university-wide programs with faculty support form a critical base on which to build FYE programs, according to Anderson et al. (2002) and Pitkethly and Prosser (2001). Some successful programs integrated FYE goals into the curriculum of preexisting courses, such as the one studied by Jamelske (2009), whereas more commonly, FYE programs took place in standalone, one-credit hour classes (Goodman & Pascarella, 2006; Barton & Donahue, 2009). Barton and Donahue (2009) even detailed a four-credit hour course at the University of Maine at Farmington, and while the four-credit hour course did not significantly impact retention in comparison to the one-credit hour course, students who took the four-credit hour course “reported that they worked harder, were more engaged in campus activities, and discussed grades more often with faculty” (p. 271). The study by Jamelske (2009) might be instructive here: it found that simply having an FYE program was not enough to increase retention, but when the goals of the FYE program were truly carried out, retention increased.
As mentioned earlier, Goodman and Pascarella (2006) and Jamelske (2009) inform us that about 95% of four-year higher educational institutions have an FYE program of some form. Belief from students and faculty that the FYE program is excellent and necessary is important groundwork for a successful program (Anderson et al. 2002). It is a decidedly good trend that higher educational institutions have embraced FYE programs in such high numbers over the past three decades, as detailed by Hunter and Murphy (2007). As such programs have the potential to significantly increase the chances that students graduate, and do so quickly (Goodman & Pascarella, 2006). This is also beneficial for colleges, who benefit financially from retention (Jamelske, 2009), and because increased retention leads to increased graduation rates.
Now that so many schools have FYE programs, the critical next steps are the aforementioned faculty support (Anderson et al. 2002) and the effective implementation of the goals of the FYE program (Jamelske, 2009). Through these initiatives, higher educational institutions will be helping more students stay at their university and graduate. There is still work to be done in determining the best way to deliver an FYE program to each student, as Schrader and Brown (2008) indicated that gender might be a critical determinant of response to such programs. That is a matter of improving these relatively new programs that are already paying dividends at many schools, and presents the exciting opportunity that FYE programs might have still more to add to the college experience.
Dauthan Keener is the Graduate Assistant Resident Director for Samuel Morris Hall at Taylor University, located in Upland, Indiana.
References
Anderson, R., Briggs, S., & Scarpati, A. (2002). Uncommon values in a common course: Difficulties in sustaining an interdisciplinary first-year experience. Peer Review 4(4), 13-16.
Barton, A. & Donahue, C. (2009). Multiple assessments of a first-year seminar pilot. JGE: The Journal of General Education, 58(4), 259-278.
Dolinksy, B., Matthews, R. S., Greenfield, G. M., Curtis-Tweed, P., Evenbeck, S. E. (2007). Assessment is essential for implementing successful first-year experience programs. Assessment Update, 19(6), 9-11.
Hunter, M. S., & Murray, K. A. (2007). New frontiers for student affairs professionals: teaching and the first-year experience. New Directions for Student Services, 2007(117), 25-34.
Goodman, K. & Pascarella, E. T. (2006). First-year seminars increase persistence and retention: A summary of the evidence from “How College Affects Students.” Peer Review, 8(3), 26-28.
Jamelske, E. (2009). Measuring the impact of a university first-year experience program on student GPA and retention. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 57(3), 373-391.
Peat, M., Dalziel, J., & Grant, A. M. (2001). Enhancing the first year student experience by facilitating the development of peer networks through a one-day workshop. Higher Education Research & Development, 20(2), 199-215.
Pitkethly, A. & Prosser, M. (2001). The first-year experience project: a model for university-wide change. Higher Education Research & Development, 20(2), 185-198.
Reason, R. D., Terenzini, P. T., & Domingo, R. J. (2006). First things first: developing academic competence in the first year of college. Research in Higher Education, 47(2), 149-175.
Schrader, P. G. & Brown, S. W. (2008). Evaluating the first year experience: students' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(2), 310-343.
Wilcox, P., Winn, S., & Fyvie-Gauld, M. (2005). 'It was nothing to do with the university, it was just the people': the role of social support in the first-year experience of higher education. Studies
in Higher Education, 30(6), 707-722.
Comments(0)
Comments
Login to post comments