Twenty-sixth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

First-year students are considered to generally struggle with transitioning from school to university for several reasons, including issues of diversity, new curriculum content, differences in engagement with learning, and differences in assessment practices compared to their high schools. Across the world, first-year students are expected to confront new kinds of knowledge, and to enact competencies in these knowledge in ways that often confound them. It is perhaps these new ways of knowing, doing, and being that give rise to some serious contradictions between high school students’ school-leaving attributes and their readiness for university studies. While there is extensive literature on first-year students’ transitioning to universities, not enough attention has been placed in investigating how these students’ voices and experiences are reflected in first year curriculum in South Africa. More needs to be done to investigate how the design and enactment of first-year curriculum could be more representative of the students’ diversities. This paper explores the design and delivery of a University 101 transition module at a university of technology in South Africa. The paper uses Engeström’s (1987) concept of an activity system in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to examine how the University 101 module’s collaborative platform can serve as a mediating tool allowing for greater student participation in the curriculum, and ultimately contributing towards improving learning and retention for the foundation students. Kift’s (2008) transition pedagogy’s six core curriculum design principles are used to further interrogate the efficacy of this module.