All hands on deck: A team approach to preparing year one Arts students for their first major assignment. A Practice Report

Abstract

The First Year Experience Programme (FYE) at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Arts is in its second year of operation. After a year of focusing on pastoral care, things were running smoothly. We were able to implement a special project in the second year focused on two significant areas of academic support which are increasingly underused by first year students: student willingness to access to university wide teaching support services; and low usage of tutor office hours when students are preparing for a major assignment. The solution was the creation of Targeted Learning Sessions which are designed to attract students in selected large year one courses to engage with an easy-access option of discipline-specific academic support. This article sets up factors influencing the conception of the project and then provides a systematic breakdown of the way in which course convenors, the First Year Experience programme, library and student learning personnel combined forces to offer students a new way of seeking academic support that was not behind a closed office door.