Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-Conference Workshops

Keywords: Academic / Learning Analytics, Mental Health and Well-being, Orientation and Induction, Student Engagement, Transition

#1 – EFYE: An Orientation Session: An Introduction to the European First Year Experience Conference

HS II (ATK1008H)

 

#2 – Educating tutors supports the well-being and retention of new students

HS V (HSV)

 

#3 – Keeping the passion alive – Bridging the gap from enrolment to start

SR Architektur 098 (AT01098)

 

#4 – Education for mental health: supporting learning and wellbeing through the curriculum

SR Architektur 104 (AT01104)

 

#5 – A Conversation Around Diagnostics and Personalised Approaches to Student Success 

HS XII (ATEG036)

 

#6 – Teaching on/offline – A Journey through First Year in Architecture
Participants will be accompanied to the workshop location by the presenters. Meeting point: Foyer HS I

 

EFYE: An Orientation Session: An Introduction to the European First Year Experience Conference

Dr Diane Nutt (1), William Carey (2)
Higher Education Consultant, United Kingdom (1); Munster Technology University, Ireland (2)

This workshop is designed to provide an introduction to European First Year Experience. Is this your first EFYE conference? Are you new to the research and debates about first year experience? This session will orientate you to the conference, first year experience research and the EFYE movement. Just like an orientation session for students new to a university, this session will also provide the opportunity to meet other new delegates and talk about shared interests and your aims for the conference.

Discussions and ideas about supporting first year students and understanding their particular experiences have been around for a long time. The USA has a long history (primarily through the National Resource Center for First Year Experience and Students in Transition) of interest in, and research about, first year experience. From this amazing groundwork other countries and areas around the world (e.g. Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, UK) have addressed their focus on the specific challenges experienced by students in their first year and at key transition points. A number of established writers, researchers and theorists have developed a greater understanding of what shapes the first-year experiences and first point transitions of our students. This session will provide a brief exploration of some of the key research findings and explore some of the activities we know work to enhance student transition experiences. It will also highlight recent and ongoing work across European Higher Education institutions.

The European collective FYE movement began in 2005, with conversations between Europeans, and conversation remains a fundamental element of EFYE events. This session is interactive and will include opportunities to share your own specific interests in relation to transition and begin to make some connections with other delegates working in similar areas.

Educating tutors supports the well-being and retention of new students

Keywords: Beginners, Mental Health and Well-being, Student Engagement

Up until recently the tutors of our 25 bachelor programmes have been prepared locally for their tasks up to and during study start. The faculty aims for an all-round professional study start for our new students, where the tutors’ work and planning of the study start are connected to the common framework for the study start at the University of Copenhagen, and to the faculty’s other study start initiatives and activities. This calls for an equal preparation of all agents with a role in the study start.

Hence, since 2019 the faculty has worked on developing a training programme for all tutors. The training programme covers tutors from all 25 bachelor programmes welcoming new students. The study start training programme for tutors is covered by 3 digital e-learning modules, 2 on campus workshops and 1 first aid course for the tutors followed up by training activities at the single departments.

During the workshop we will include practical examples, on both successes and failures from our first experiences developing and running the study start training programme, to establish the best basis to discuss the concept in relation to the participants’ home institutions.

Keeping the passion alive – Bridging the gap from enrolment to start

Keywords: Beginners, Orientation and Induction, Transition

Pieterjan Bonne, Veerle Vanoverberghe, Han Crevits
Artevelde University Of Applied Sciences, Belgium

Higher education institutions go out of their way to support prospective students in their educational quest: organizing information fairs, setting up open days and classes, connecting them with enrolled students, etcetera.

The final step for prospective students and the climax of this exploration is enrolment. And then, after weeks or even months of intensive contact, prospective students are left to… wait.

In this workshop, we focus on bridging the gap between enrolment and start. With the group, we will look at what institutions currently do, zooming in on both need-to-haves and nice-to-haves. The participants will work on nice-to-have by brainstorming ideas and designing concrete initiatives. All of these will be collected in group at the end.

Doing so, participants will gain insight in:

• What crucial elements need to take place between enrolment and start;
• What types of nice-to-haves can be implemented between enrolment and start;
• What different institutions already do between enrolment and start;
• Different initiatives of nice-to-haves to implement between enrolment and start.

Education for mental health: supporting learning and wellbeing through the curriculum

Keywords: Teaching Staff, Academic / Learning Analytics, Mental Health and Well-being

Gareth Hughes
University of Derby, United Kingdom

In this pre-conference workshop, we will explore the relationship between student learning and student wellbeing and look at how the curriculum can support good student mental health.

Every aspect of university life has a potential impact on the wellbeing of students. The curriculum is important to mental health and wellbeing because it is one of the few guaranteed points of contact between students and the university. The curriculum is central to the student experience providing focus, structure, connection and purpose. If universities are to take mental health and wellbeing seriously, the role of the curriculum must be core to their response. Research has also shown that the way students learn and the way they are taught and assessed, can have siginficant impact on their wellbeing – positive and negative. Drawing on the newly launched, open access toolkit Education for Mental Health, we will examine this research evidence, to establish key principles and some practical steps staff can take to enhance the learning and wellbeing of their students, through curriculum design and delivery.

This will be an active workshop with opportunity to debate, discuss and share practice.

A Conversation Around Diagnostics and Personalised Approaches to Student Success

Keywords: Teaching Staff, Academic / Learning Analytics, Technology Enhanced Learning

Dr Luke Millard
Abertay University, Scotland

Standard approaches to university admission see students meet the criteria for acceptance and then receive a standardised cohort experience through their induction and initial learning journey.  However, as a sector we are well aware that students enter our universities with a diverse range of abilities and skills.  This discursive session will have at its core the work of the Scottish Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Collaborative Cluster project PARC.  The Personalised Approaches to Resilience and Community (PARC) project is looking at how student diagnostics can be best deployed to help students succeed in their first year of study and includes Abertay, Glasgow Caledonian, Birmingham City, Warwick and Robert Gordon Universities together with the University of the Highlands and Islands.  You will be invited to share your perspectives and approaches around this fascinating area of work. Further details on the QAA project can be found at the Website of Enhancement Themes.

Teaching on/offline – A Journey through First Year Architecture

Keywords: Teaching Staff, Academic / Learning Analytics, Technology Enhanced Learning

Wolfgang List, Lisa Obermayer, Petra Petersson, Iulius Popa
Graz University of Technology, Austria

The pre-workshop session is organised by the Institute of Construction and Design Principles (KOEN) at the Technical University in Graz. The Institute has its focus primarily on teaching architecture to first-year students. The integration of the two main courses Construction and Design within one department enables us to emphasise their tight interrelationship.

The first-year course focuses on the essentials, with the goal of teaching a basic understanding of architecture, three-dimensional space, and the contextual connections in the built environment. We present the difficulties in simplified terms and, step by step, we try to give the students the means to explore the complex connections for themselves. We ask the primary questions “Why” and “How”. The main aims are those of learning how to see, how to draw, construct and how to design. In addition, the students are given tools with which to further develop and communicate their ideas. These include sketches, technical drawing (by hand and computer), layouts, and modelmaking, as well as verbal and written presentations.

The pre-workshop session will introduce the Institute’s “Beginners Workshop“ as well as the hybrid teaching and learning concepts that were developed over the last two years. The contemporary digital methods and media used in architectural teaching show the didactic focus on communication, collaboration, and contemporary knowledge transfer through the supportive use of digital media.

Taking into account various didactic taxonomy levels, methods such as working with the concept of the “flipped classroom” or with digital whiteboards, the use of teaching videos with a green screen, and a digital collection of contributions in a cloud were used and are presented. Furthermore, the challenges and development potentials of hybrid teaching and learning for first-year architecture students are described.