First-year seminars (FYS) comprise one of 11 researched interventions in postsecondary education known as High-Impact Practices, but few rigorous studies report significantly high impacts. This study examined a FYS employing propensity score matching to link cases and controls in a quasi-experimental design. One semester later cumulative grade…

Starting university is challenging. Students require resilience to face the inevitable challenges of university life, yet many may not be equipped with the strategies they need. In this research, we explored changes in resilience following the delivery of a resilience building module within a core first-year university course. Psychology students…

Sustainability is an important issue that we all face, including higher education students. We assert that the transition into the contemporary higher education context needs educators to plan transition pedagogy that engages students with the world during their studies, instead of solely using curriculum as preparation for the future world of…

The purpose of this article is to describe a doctoral residency seminar course that is part of a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction degree program. Courses such as these provide new doctoral students with the necessary experiences to help them succeed in the program. This course is a venue for students to discuss the degree program, including…

Nearly half of all students in the United States are placed into at least one developmental course in college. Many of these students fail to complete developmental course sequences and persist to degree completion. First-Year Seminars are one of several high-impact practices associated with increased persistence, retention, and graduation rates…

Milner (2012) defines opportunity gaps as the uncontrollable factors such as race, language, or economic status that can impact students' success in schools. Rather than placing focus on students' achievement, examinations of opportunity gaps emphasize the systems and structures that may contribute to disparities in student outcomes. The…

This article reports on data collected from a study of 101 students taking a first-year experience course. Using a mapping methodology in an effort to understand what resources students could identify and what relationships they saw between resources, the study showed that resources associated with a specific location or connected with people were…

We report the short- and longer-term impacts of offering a 1-credit introductory seminar to first-year chemical engineering students. Students who completed the seminar demonstrated a better awareness of the major, career opportunities, and academic success strategies than students who did not enroll in the seminar. A longer-term comparison showed…

Higher education has seen an increase in first-year students who arrive with significant early college credit. There is a gap in research about how first-year seminars meet the transition needs of students with college-level experience obtained during high school. This qualitative study, guided by Schlossberg's (1989) transition theory, explored…

College students have a variety of temptations that can keep them from making the most of their learning in and out of the classroom. Moreover, students' habits and behaviors related to mobile device use can hinder their learning and can stymie faculty's effective teaching practices. To explore these issues, we conducted a phenomenological study…

Climate change denial is often treated as a binary opinion. However, an individual can express acceptance of climate change, while still denying other aspects of the field such as its causation by humans, impacts, or our ability to mitigate these impacts. Here, we conduct a semester long survey and discourse analysis of a class of first-year…

Winston-Salem State University incorporates critical thinking and oral communication into general education learning outcomes and assessment. To teach these critical skills, the authors used active learning techniques in a first-year seminar on animal behavior. Students performed simulation experiments and orally presented their findings. Their…

The massification of higher education in Argentina has created a central dilemma for public universities: how to uphold open access while ensuring that traditional literacy standards do not exclude the most disadvantaged students. This qualitative study examines how writing instructors and program administrators at three public universities in the…

Research in higher education confirms the importance of self-efficacy in student persistence and success in college. The current study examined the role of self-efficacy in supporting academic and psychosocial adjustment in the critical first college year and the context of an academically-oriented first-year seminar (FYS). Students completed…

Despite the demands for innovation, adaptability, and creative problem-solving as seen in the fourth Industrial Revolution, many institutions of higher education struggle to center creativity in the learning experience. This qualitative, grounded theory study examines how first-year courses using design thinking approaches can introduce creativity…