Entry Course on Attending Lectures

Main idea

Outline

Since first year students are often used to attending classes consisting of maximum 30 pupils, the transition to higher education involves a getting used to learning in bigger groups. This workshop aims to prepare students for this new and challenging way of learning by building their confidence and competency.

There are three ‘keys’ to attending a lecture that are addressed during the workshop:

1. Vocabulary (e.g., Which terms are the students (un)familiar with? What strategies did they use to find out what certain terms meant?)
2. Metacognition (e.g., knowing how to adapt)
3. Attending lectures (e.g., learning how to take notes)

Each aspect begins with an example (e.g. a part of a lecture) which then gets deconstructed. The students are asked questions about their actions and thoughts during this ‘exposure’ after which the strategies for successfully attending lectures are explained.

The workshop takes place before the start of the academic year, but after enrolment. It’s currently not part of the curriculum but takes place in the context of an entry-level course.

Target group

The workshop is mostly attended by first years, but since it’s open for all, there might be some other students joining in as well. Although the workshop is not targeted towards a specific group of students, it’s especially valuable for non-native speakers and pioneer students.

Who organizes this?

The workshop is organized by the Office of Study and Career Guidance at Artevelde University of Applied Sciences (AUAS), which is a central service supporting educational programs and students in the transition of to the first year of higher education and acquiring academic skills.

Goals

• Giving the students tools to successfully follow lectures
• Building confidence
• Building competency
• Contributing to the social belonging by bringing students together to learn

Obstacles targetted:

• Educational difficulties
• Social obstacles

Students involvement

The workshop is very interactive, so the students are encouraged to actively take part.

Inspiration and evidence

There are three ‘keys’ to attending a lecture that are addressed during the workshop:

1. Vocabulary (e.g., Which terms are the students (un)familiar with? What strategies did they use to find out what certain terms meant?)
2. Metacognition (e.g., knowing how to adapt)
3. Attending lectures (e.g., learning how to take notes)

There’s empirical evidence for all three aspects. In general, the workshop is based on research on listening comprehension skills and learning a second language. The underlying idea is that academic Dutch is different from the Dutch used in everyday life, thus learning academic Dutch is similar to learning a second language.

Success criteria

• Where other initiatives on improving listening comprehension focus mostly on taking notes, this workshop goes a step further by adding vocabulary and metacognition to the mix.
• During the workshop the lecturer writes a schematic overview on the blackboard. This provides the students with a summary of the workshop.

Points of attention

• The workshop is currently not part of the curriculum but takes place in the context of an entry-level course. Ideally, though, it would take place in the first week of classes, immediately following a lecture so the students have an authentic experience as a starting point for the workshop. This way it would be possible to respond to the needs of the students as they arise during this experience.
• It might be a good idea to ask students what they find difficult about attending lectures or what they expected to learn in the workshop.
• This workshop is valuable for all students, not just those who enrolled for the entry-level course.
• The students receive a bundle of papers which does not follow the structure of the workshop. This can be improved.

Do you feel you can effectively provide the support that students require?

Would you recommend this to other institutions?

strongly agree

Evaluation

This project is evaluated in two ways:

• By researching the links between listening comprehension skills, meta-cognition and vocabulary.
• By questioning students:
  Are they satisfied with the information they received?
  Was the workshop helpful?
  Was the lecturer competent?
  …

This second part of the evaluation takes place both formally, by means of a questionnaire that will be sent automatically after the workshop takes place, and informally, by mailing some of the students separately to acquire some additional input.

Results

The workshop gets a positive evaluation. This can be explained by the fact that it has taken place for many years and has gone through some adjustments. One of those adjustments is that the ‘exposure’ used to be at the beginning of the workshop, but now it’s split up in three parts.

Communication

It’s part of an entry course which is mentioned on the website and on the platform for new students.

Timing

The workshop takes three hours. The first two aspects are similar in length (around 45 minutes), but the last part about learning how to take notes is a bit shorter (about 30 minutes). The workshop takes place before the start of the academic year, but after enrolment. It’s currently not part of the curriculum, but takes place in the context of an entry-level course. Ideally, though, it would take place in the first week of classes, immediately following a lecture so the students have an authentic experience as a starting point for the workshop.

Resources

• You need someone who wants to give the workshop. They need to be competent and knowledgeable about the three aspects of the workshop.
• You need three hours for the workshop itself and if necessary an hour of preparation time.
• A room, a blackboard, a projector and a computer
• Communication material

Transferability

We think it is easily transferable to other contexts or groups.

The workshop had not been made with a specific group or with specific needs in mind, so in general it would be easily transferable to other groups by making some small adjustments. It would be more challenging, though, to do this workshop with groups that experience language related difficulties (e.g. students with poor auditory processing, deaf students…)

Whether it is transferable to another context is depending on whether the lectures are something new for students. In Belgium, people follow classes in smaller groups (±25) with small proximity to a teacher until they transition to higher education, so in our context students are not used to attending lectures in big groups (±200). This might not be the case somewhere else.