On the problem of first year students adaptation to the learning process in a university

The relevance of the studied problem is the fact that successful adaptation of a first year student to life and academic activity in a university is the key to the further development of each student as a personality and a professional in the field of his or her activity. The purpose of the paper is to identify the reasons for the decline in the efficiency of first year university students’ academic activity and to develop an integrated program aimed at more successful first year student’s adaptation to the studying process at a university. The leading approach to the study is the personal- and activity-based one, for it allows determining the best conditions for the development of a personality as an active subject that gets to know and transforms the world and itself in the process of activity. The results of the studying the adaptation of first year students to the learning process in a university are presented, and the authors propose an integrated program aimed at more successful adaptation of first year students to the learning process, including the meaningful, organizational and evaluative-productive components. At the same time, the substantial structure of the program was aimed at creating certain pedagogical conditions for the efficient adaptation of first year students to the learning process. The obtained results testify the fact that the wisely structured process of the first year students adaptation allows increasing their social activity and to reduce their attrition. In this study, the process of adaptation is based on the active engagement of first year students in various mass sports events. The materials of the paper may be useful to scientists dealing with the issues of improving the adaptive abilities of students, as well as specialists involved in the teaching organization, teachers and university students.Keywords: Adaptation, students, learning process, means of physical education, sports ans mass sports events