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This study intends to add to the existing body of literature on the impact of a newly implemented first year seminar in the College of Law and Business. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects the course have on students in regard to three aspects: student awareness and utilization of resources, interaction patterns, as well as, general interests and attitudes toward higher education.

The methodology of the assessment included analysis of a survey that has been conducted by the end of Spring 2014 semester. A quasi-experimental design was implemented to measure the impact of the intervention on students’ awareness and utilization of resources, interactions, general interests, and attitudes toward higher education. Through the SPSS application, the Mann Whitney U Test, and χ² tests were used to check for significant differences while comparing the means or frequencies for both groups. For the three questions, the authors have used the 90 percent confidence level and the standard significance level p-value of 0.05 or less for statistical analysis.

The results indicated that the course had a highly significant positive impact on student attitudes and awareness of campus resources but had less significant impact on student interactions and utilization of resources. The results in this study reveal a positive impact for the first-year seminar course on student satisfaction and attitudes toward higher education as well as their awareness of campus resources. However, in terms of the course impact on student interaction, results conveyed that students who have participated in the first-year seminar course show a slightly better interaction rate with instructors, academic advisors, and close friends than those in the control group.

The main limitation of this study was that the sample was small. Nonetheless, it has provided valuable insights into the understanding of the social and academic impact of first-year seminars on student engagement; through the use of comparison groups, this study increased the validity of prior research.

The first-year seminar course evaluated in this study demonstrated the potential to support and enhance student social and academic engagement during the first year of college. Based on the results in this study, the study team recommended some revisions to the current first-year seminar model (UNIV P100 Skills for University Success). The team proposed three models for subsequent first-year seminars at this university.

This study adds to the existing literature by examining the impact of a newly implemented first-year seminar course at the College of Law and Business at this university on both academic and non-academic aspects from the students’ perspective. These aspects were selected as retention and GPA effects have been widely explored; therefore, the focus is on the less studied emotional and social factors associated with student success and retention. The results from this study can act as a guide for universities intending to introduce a first-year seminar course as it gives clear guidelines on design, content, and course implementation, which can be useful in enhancing general student motivation and attitudes toward academic study and higher education in general.

The aims of this paper is to provide an overview on information literacy/library programs for first‐year students in Canadian universities and colleges.

The paper introduces and discusses periodical articles, monographs and up‐to‐date research on the subject. It presents anecdotal evidence gained from web site searches of 169 Canadian post‐secondary institutions complemented by personal communications from library and student services staff.

The study provides information about several types of library services for first‐year students currently in use in Canadian academic libraries.

There is no evidence of research in the area of library services for first‐year college and university students in Canada. This paper complements research on information literacy/library programs offered through academic libraries in other countries by focusing solely on first‐year student initiatives in Canadian academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine assessed seminars in law modules across first-, second- and third-year students at a higher education academy in Lancashire (England). This form of assessment is essentially a 1 h tutorial, where students are given marks for their oral contribution to class discussions. Assessment is a feature in all degree programmes conducted throughout higher education institutions. Recently, a move has been made from traditional examinations and coursework to assess students learning, to more inclusive forms of assessment following the changing nature of those entering higher education.

Using a quantitative survey, participants were asked to answer ten questions on their perceptions of assessed seminars as a form of assessment. To enhance the findings, interviews also took place with members of staff who had experience in teaching both assessed and non-assessed seminars.

This research found that although some students were daunted by assessed seminars, over the course of three years, their key legal skills had improved. Key skills enhanced through assessed seminars include communication-based skills and public speaking, whilst also being a positive form of assessment that maintains student retention.

This is a small-scale research project, completed in the fulfilment of the authors PgCert. However, it does provide a template for other legal institutions to follow.

With a growing concern across the higher education sector around student retention, assessed seminars are proven to be a form of assessment that ensures student attendance, whilst enhancing skills ready for the workplace.

This paper aims to discuss the background, design and implementation of the new library instruction. When a new core curriculum for first-year students was adopted at the City College of New York in the fall of 2008, the City College Library took this opportunity to establish a new approach to teach library research to freshmen. Two library workshops were embedded into a six-credit combined content and writing course.

This paper documents the process by which the City College Library successfully transitioned to the new system and also reflects on the theory and practice of teaching information literacy in an academic setting.

Library workshops embedded within the new core curriculum have clear advantages over previous library instruction. By designing and implementing library workshops to blend with the new course, the Library has become a partner in an innovative first-year program.

This study will provide useful information on the teaching and assessment of embedded library instruction and stimulate further thought on the role of information instruction in furthering the mission of undergraduate education.

This paper presents opportunities to expand library instruction to the first-year seminar, the most commonly implemented curricular intervention designed for freshman students. By taking part in this important project, the Library becomes an integral participant in the initiative for retention and success for undergraduate education.

This study was conducted to understand students' achievements in learning and to improve the overall curriculum of the first-year experience course.

In this study, a series of questionnaire-based surveys were conducted on students enrolled in the Introductory Seminar for Policy Science, a mandatory first-year experience course offered in the first semester (from April to July) at a university in Japan. The studies were conducted in 2015 (n = 29), 2016 (n = 29) and 2017 (n = 31).

Results revealed that, regardless of the year, students deepened their understanding of policy science and gained increased confidence to explain what group works and reports are throughout the semester. In addition, students' level of worry about life at the university decreased throughout the course in all three years. A stepwise multiple regression analysis (n = 84) revealed that those students who knew what policy science was (B = 0.271) and had the confidence to write their opinions in reports (B = 0.264) more likely answered that they knew what they wanted to study over four years at the university.

This study revealed that the mandatory first-year experience course taught by the same instructor generated similar educational effects for different students in different years. The results elucidated the progressive effects of different components of the course, eliminating possibilities of any bias or specific characteristics of a single group of students.

This paper aims to describe the unique library, research and information literacy skills that transfer students need, specifically at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, which led to the creation, recruitment and appointment of a Transfer Student Services Librarian at William Madison Randall Library (Randall Library).

Along with a brief review of the relevant literature, this paper describes the specific needs that were identified that led to the creation of the position; the unique gaps in information skills that transfer students have; how the university was addressing the needs of transfer students; how the library became focused on the needs of this population of students; how the library began collaborating with campus partners to address these needs; and, to date, how the position has impacted transfer students.

An increase in the number of transfer students from community colleges, four year institutions and military service combined with the institution’s information literacy curriculum requirements, led to the creation of a new position called “Transfer Student Services Librarian”.

Academic libraries wishing to explore the creation of such a position, or wanting to assess their own institution’s needs for their transfer student population, will benefit from this paper.

Few, if any, libraries have adopted a position specifically for transfer student services and this paper addresses how to assess the need and decide on practical applications for other academic libraries.

Given that there exists in the literature relatively little research into the effectiveness of writing centers at universities, the purpose of this paper is to show the impact of university writing centers on first-year business seminar student writing.

This quantitative study involved 315 first-year undergraduate business students. Logistic and quantile regression analysis was used to test two hypotheses.

Results indicate that student intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors positively influenced the likelihood that a student visits the center. Student grades on writing assignments were significantly higher for students who visited the writing center but only for students who scored in the top 40th percentile of the grade distribution.

Writing centers should try to reach all students not only those who are naturally motivated. Most importantly, centers should find ways to help students in the lower portion of grade distribution since these students presumably require sustained help.

This paper suggests that writing centers helped only students at the top of the grades distribution which may be valuable to universities in assessing impact of writing centers and help in the efforts to improve student writing. However, this effect can only be uncovered using quantile regression. Therefore, this research has demonstrated the potential usefulness of quantile regression as a predictive and explanatory tool in assessment.

This paper's aim is to examine the value of library participation in institutional governance in the implementation of a comprehensive model for student success at a research university.

The paper provides a case study comparing the historical and current governance structure in a high research university, the relationship between a new governance structure and the implementation of a comprehensive student success model and the inclusion of the library in creating, implementing and participating in student success initiatives.

Participation in university shared governance enhances the library's role in contributing to student success, retention, progression and graduation.

The paper contributes to the discussion of the value of academic libraries to student success efforts in retention, progression and graduation for university students.

The research project assessed information literacy skill changes in college students at two points in time, as entering first-year students in 2012 and as seniors in their senior seminar capstone courses in the 2015–2016 academic year. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) individual test was the selected instrument. Version 1 of the test was used for first-year students and Version 2 was used for seniors. All testing was done in person in computer labs with a librarian or library staff member present to proctor the test. This resulted in obtaining 330 student results as first years and 307 as seniors, with 161 exact matches for both administrations of the test. Exact matching of student scores to demographic details pulled from the college’s student information systems were used in the analysis.

The analysis shows that overall first-year students tested below the 70 percent proficiency benchmark in all eight skill sets, but by the time they were seniors they scored above 70 percent in three skill sets. Male students and students of color performed lower than their counterparts, but these groups did demonstrate significant improvement in four skill sets by the time they were seniors. Students in the Honors program, those who took longer to complete the test as seniors, those with higher GPAs, those in Humanities majors, and those who had upper level course exposures to librarian information literacy instruction had higher performance on the test. There were no statistically significant results for students who were first generation, Pell Grant eligible, or were in-state or out-of-state residents.

There are few published studies that utilized the SAILS test for longitudinal institution-wide assessment. The majority of institutions that utilized the individual version of SAILS did so to determine change within a selected course, or set of courses, in the same semester and very few are published.

This paper aims to describe a multifaceted campus-wide initiative to retain transfer students that was undertaken when it was recognized that their retention rates were lower than those of first-time, full-time students.

The Enhancing Student Experience (ESE) Working Group at the University at Albany (UAlbany) brought together key parties from Student Affairs and academic units, including the University Libraries, and provided an energizing arena in which existing student engagement and retention endeavors were discussed and coordinated, and new initiatives were inspired.

This paper reflects the work of a subcommittee of the ESE group that focused on developing strategies to increase the retention rate of students who transferred to UAlbany, and identifying characteristics of those first-time, full-time students who transferred from UAlbany. The efforts discussed in this paper, which were guided by professional experiences, institutional data and published reports, resulted in a 2 per cent increase in the student retention rate in the past two years.

The data collection and analysis, and the initiatives, are specific to one public research university.

Initiatives undertaken to address the retention of transfer students have begun to have an impact.

The “all-hands-on-deck” approach described in this paper demonstrates how strategic collaborations among the many institutional stakeholders at a public research university were marshalled to have a significant and positive impact on student retention.