Editor's Note

EDITOR’S NOTE

Tracey Glaessgen, Associate Director, Center for Academic Success and Transition/Director, First-Year Programs, Missouri State University

Emily Shreve, Associate Director of Academic Transitions, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Transition has been on our minds. Throughout the past year, higher education professionals and the students with whom we work have had to navigate shifting public health policies and the return to more in-person instruction, services, and events, all while considering big questions surrounding the future of online learning, virtual services, and work from home flexibility. For that reason, the first-year seminar (FYS), a class designed specifically to support the process of transition, demands our attention and offers opportunities for reinvestment and redesign.

As one of the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ high-impact practices, the first-year seminar serves an important function in transitioning students into higher education and welcoming them to particular institutions. In this curated edition of E-Source for College Transitions, we highlight five articles that explore what makes the first-year seminar high impact, even in times of change. Throughout the pieces, you’ll find a common emphasis on the necessity of regular assessment and on the community-building elements that connect students to their campus communities. In particular, these articles emphasize the value of peer leaders in the classroom and of empowering FYS instructors to teach with confidence.

To begin, Dallin George Young’s “The State of First-Year Program Assessment: Recent Evidence from the 2017 NSFYE” reinforces the importance of assessing first-year initiatives along with sharing highlights from the National Survey on the First-Year Experience, in particular frequency of assessment. Continuing with the theme of assessment is “An Assessment of First-Year Modality and Academic and Social Belongingness” by Deborah Smith and Miyanna Clements-Williamson in which they consider the difference among students’ sense of social and academic belongingness and four different modalities of course offerings. Exploring the impact of a team approach in first-year seminars by utilizing a faculty member, undergraduate teaching assistants, and peer mentors, as an instructional method is the focus of Shelley Judge, William Santella, Wylie Greeson, Juda Culp, Christa Craven, and Mazvita Chikomo’s “The Impact of a First-Year Team of Undergraduate TA’s in a First- Year Seminar.” Realizing that many institutions hire part-time instructors to teach the first-year seminar and the need to offer self-directed learning as a result for both students and instructors is the topic of Lydia Laucella’s “Self- Directed Learning to Support Part-Time FYS Instructors: A Proposed Model.” Finally, this E-Source for College Transitions closes with Daniel Friedman and Sandy Greene’s “Increasing the First-Year Seminar Quality Through Greater Curricular Flexibility” and their discussion on striking an appropriate balance between consistency with such a high enrollment course yet encouraging instructional flexibility which allows for instructors to be innovative to meet the needs of their students.

Within higher education, first-year seminars have served as the hallmark for the first-year experience as students are transitioning into the collegiate culture. Whether it’s devising new and creative approaches to assessment, teaching, and even faculty and student self-directed learning, we hope that you will glean some useful insights from this curated edition to apply to your university’s first-year seminar.