Down the rabbit hole

For many students, starting at university is a bit like falling down the rabbit hole. The bewildering beginning of a journey for our next generation of researchers, professionals and other destinations. Some students enter first year with effective life and learning skills. Most do not. This poses a great challenge to academics. First year educators must: *respond to the needs of individuals who are often academically naïve; *cope with the inherent demands of large cohorts, including providing multiple learning materials to a cohort that often want it ready yesterday; *undertake curriculum renewal initiatives such as moving towards blended learning when organizational supports are at fledgling stages. Our research team will investigate how the move towards greater delivery of blended learning works on the ground for delivery to large first year classes. Do students utilise the new digital learning objects and materials that we create? How much time and effort does go into creating a new object? What are the costs and benefits of such an undertaking within our USC context, for both students and staff? Development, delivery and engagement will be analysed specifically with respect to our first year students, who will be surveyed three times through semester – early, mid and late. The process will be repeated over Summer 2014/15. This research matters because the creation of new digital learning objects is seemingly limitless – lectures, snippets, concepts, revision material – we could spend years developing new material. With the variety of student learners and learning strategies within our student cohort, there will be students that really enjoy and engage with the new options for learning (and some that don’t!). We want to find out how the work undertaken to improve the variety of resources for students is utilised by our student population