Rest and Recovery to Build Resilience: Embedding Flexible Semesters and Remodelling Assessments to Support Transitioning to Higher Education

Conference: The European Conference on Education (ECE2022)
Title: Rest and Recovery to Build Resilience: Embedding Flexible Semesters and Remodelling Assessments to Support Transitioning to Higher Education
Stream: Higher Education
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
Authors:
Laura Roberts, Swansea University, United Kingdom
Joanne Berry, Swansea University, United Kingdom

Abstract:

Students transitioning to HE need to rapidly adapt to new learning, teaching and assessment, while negotiating leaving home, galvanising new social bonds and developing basic life-skills. Recently, transitioning students have sustained prolonged learning and skills development losses, disrupting the foundation that underpins constructivism and proximal development. Students have also endured social isolation, reducing opportunities to learn how to thrive in new learning community ecosystems. The first year of HE is intense and fast-paced. Students sink or swim as assessments rapidly accumulate, fragmented daily patterns prevent reflection and high-stakes summative assessments compromise opportunities for quality feedback. In anticipation of a cohort with critical academic gaps and high proportions of challenges with adaptation to new social settings, we undertook a university-wide intervention to support new students. Within the intervention, subjects across the university were invited remodel assessments to incorporate more regular, low-stakes, bite-sized assessment and given flexibility to alter the academic term and introduce study weeks. Autonomy was provided regarding when and what the study week entailed. Subjects that piloted these interventions included engineering, biosciences, chemistry, management and accountancy, arts and social sciences. Over 300 students surveyed revealed the dynamic study weeks, and smaller assessments, allowed better time management, relieved stress, promoted catch up on learning and social engagement. Students were overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining mid-term study weeks. Though the pandemic rocked the very foundations of HE, interventions such as this will undoubtedly enhance and support students more effectively through their educational journey.



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