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As part of its commitment to making Australia one of the most educated and highly skilled workforces in the world, the Australian Government has set targets for increased participation rates of low socio-economic students. In the past decade, there has been an increase in the number of mature age students currently entering higher education. However, some of these students are not sufficiently prepared to meet the academic and social requirements of tertiary study. Therefore the transition to university can be a significant challenge. As a response to this challenge CQUniversity has developed an enabling program to assist a diverse student cohort to transition into university. The goal of this research was to investigate the experiences of a small cohort of students as they settle into university life and reflect on what has helped them to successfully transition to university.
This research explored the lived experiences of eight first year undergraduate students who each successfully completed their first year of undergraduate study in their chosen degree. In addition, these participants had all completed an enabling program on a regional campus prior to entering the higher education arena. Experiential evidence points to the fact that students who complete an enabling program enter university better prepared and with a higher level of resilience. Therefore this research aims to explore this idea from the student perspective.
The findings from this research project were presented at the EAPRIL conference, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands in November 2012.
Trixie James is a lecturer with STEPS on the Bundaberg campus. This presentation is based on her Masters research.
Teresa Moore is a senior lecturer with School of Education on the Rockhampton campus and supervised the research project.
07 August 2012
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