Session Outline

We know that students experience a range of transitions through their academic journeys (e.g. Morgan, 2012) and supporting students through the key stages of the university life cycle can be a core activity for academic advisors or personal tutors (Lochtie et al, 2018). In this presentation I will briefly explore some aspects of student transition, and highlight the idea of ‘critical moments’ which shape student success. The focus of the session however, will be exploring the idea of identifying activities, which create positive approaches to change, and which could potentially be conceptualised as ‘projects of hope’.

I have been exploring transition, retention and first year experiences for almost 20 years, but more recently have been thinking about how we build hope in our students, and how we might work to create an environment of hopefulness and positive approaches to university life and to the future.