Monitoring the social and academic integration of first year education students at a regional university

Monitoring the social and academic integration of first year education students at a regional university

It is agreed that the first year of study in higher education is a time of great change in the lives of students and as such they are at risk of performing below their capability or withdrawing from the institution. Studies have identified the social and academic integration of students as a priority during this period leading to the implementation of a range of strategies to address this issue. To monitor the engagement of students, higher education institutions have devised measures (usually in the form of surveys) to identify students that could be in need of support to enable them to continue their studies. To this point in time the monitoring of social integration has had very limited attention. This paper describes a tool used to monitor both academic and social integration as well as broader factors throughout the education students' first year of study. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the monitoring tool is discussed using the results of semi-structured interviews conducted with the students.

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