Stretching the Student Transition: Developing a Pre-Arrival Platform to Meet the Evolving Needs of the Student Population

Abstract

The transition into higher education (HE) is a “mega-scale” change in a student’s life. Many of the needs and priorities of incoming students change year-on-year, fuelled by local and global instability. Relying on the traditional “induction week” approach to student arrival is no longer sufficient. We addressed this issue by curating a pre-arrival toolkit, which “stretches-out” the student transition period to begin earlier. Through this non-credit bearing toolkit, prior to arrival, students can access online socials, lab simulations, 360˚ virtual tours and more. Three iterations of the toolkit have shown consistent high engagement levels during the initial transition period and beyond, with some students even returning to this resource in their final year. Despite challenges associated with adopting transition pedagogy for the pre-arrival period, we show that with the right resources, students may adopt transition pedagogy principles to support themselves throughout their individual HE journeys.