Introduction
The START Handbook is one of the four results of the Erasmus+ project START, which aims to support teachers who help students transition from high school to higher education. START gathers a group of university teachers, faculty developers and professionals of education from six partner institutions: University of Groningen (the Netherlands), University College Dublin (Ireland), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), Université de Poitiers (France), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Education for an Interdependent World European youth NGO (Belgium).
The goal of the handbook you are reading is to provide those who teach first-year undergraduate students with strategies and resources to facilitate their students’ transition to higher education. For that purpose, two complementing analyses were performed. On the one hand, a literature review was conducted with 79 different sources from 20 countries to identify the main challenges students face transitioning to higher education. The categorisation of these challenges constitutes the theoretical framework for all the START project further professional development resources. On the other hand, 65 first-year students, 89 academics teaching first-year undergraduates, and 27 faculty developers were interviewed through focus groups in the five universities of the START consortium.
The primary data used for the handbook, come from the focus groups in which university teachers were asked to list the main challenges they experience when working with first-year undergraduate students. A thematic analysis showed 17 main difficulties which guide the structure of the handbook.
The handbook contributors looked into what has worked for them and other academics in relation to these difficulties and identified a wide range of resources and pedagogical strategies that could be of help for teachers who also experience some of the 17 challenges. Three types of content are proposed: in-depth content, easy-to-use resources and global pedagogical strategy.
How to use this handbook
You can consult the handbook1 by chapter if you have identified a teaching problem. Like any other book, you can go to the table of contents (top left) and navigate to the different chapters of the book. At any time, you can click on the name of the book (top center) to return to the home screen. If you wish to see a full-screen table of contents, please visit this page.
If you look for teaching resources, you can go directly to the end of the handbook where a list of recommended resources is presented.
Every chapter has the same three sections: (1) overarching strategies, (2) quick wins and (3) the further information box. As mentioned before, the chapter title represents one of the identified first-year teaching challenges. It is followed by one or more propositions of pedagogical solutions formulated as questions.
The overarching strategies (1) propose the reader some big categories of strategies that have been adapted to tackle the teaching challenges from the transition perspective.
The right column of each chapter presents quick wins (2) that can be ideas or resources in an easy and quick-to-implement format.
At the end of the chapter, a blue box presents further information (3) such as an annotated bibliography, scientific references or recommended resources.
To assess your competencies to teach first-year students, you can use the Self-Assessment Tools that the START team has created.
For more information about the project, contact us here.
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