Transitional dialogues: an evaluation of the impact of collaborative practice in enhancing the first year student experience of assessment in Higher Education

The transition into Higher Education provides a range of challenges to new students, whatever their age or previous educational history. One of the emerging issues on an early years undergraduate programme is how to support the students effectively with the assessment requirements. Concerns stemmed from students self reporting that their previous experience of education involved continual formative feedback prior to final submission of their work, provision of revision guides and limited use of the library. This paper reports on the evaluation of a collaborative project between the School of Education and the Department of Information Services at an English university with a specific focus on the dialogues that have taken place between lecturers, students and support staff. The small scale project aims to address the transitional challenges experienced by a diverse cohort of undergraduate students as they engage with the assessment requirements of their university career. Questionnaires and focus groups are being used to develop understanding of the diverse student needs at the start of their university career, at the end of their first module and their first year. Whilst this evaluative research is still being conducted, early findings clearly indicate that the student experience concurs with previous student cohorts self reported experience of assessment support prior to attending university. Initial findings indicate educational histories where continual support with writing assignments and completing coursework, prior to the final deadline, was normal practice. There was limited guidance on searching the internet and the library was rarely used.