IMAC Education

School to University transition.

See also Transition from School to University

A general introduction to the topic of school to university transition can be found in an article written for the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education: What do we mean by "Transition" and what is the problem?

Current research at being conducted through the Centre for LATTES has two main foci:

Data gathering.

Maintaining an awareness of the particular problems being faced by students coming to Swinburne for the first time, and their relative intensities, is an ongoing part of many projects. Where possible this data is collected in structured ways that can be formally reported, but often it is anecdotal, indirect, or an unstructured component of data collection in other areas (such as in the Teaching Community meetings, where student problems are reported). The latter data can be used to build a picture of need that can be more formally tested in specific projects.

Designing and trialling programs to deal with known problems.

When problems are known to exist specific projects have been developed to deal with them. Based on internationally reported studies, the emphasis at Swinburne has been on supporting the development of Learning Communities in first year subjects. Teaching and assessment structures that help initiate and support Learning Communities are promoted in the small group teaching workshop, and through the Teaching Communities.

Specifically targetted programs are being developed to address student needs more directly. A pilot project with international post graduate students in 2001 is being expanded for use with the Bachelor of Software Engineering intake cohort in 2002.

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