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Increasingly, higher education institutions are being held to account for the performance of their students internally in terms of academic performance and timely program completion, as well as externally through job placement. This challenge is compounded by a range of additional factors including fluctuating, international economic conditions, an increasingly globalised, competitive environment, widespread provision of online qualifications, and high student drop-out rates. There is a pressing need therefore to understand the factors which contribute to positive perceptions of institutional services and the way in which these drive student retention, especially within the first year experience. This research aims to explore the role of affective commitment in students' perceived satisfaction within the student-university relationship and the effect of this on retention in an Australian tertiary context.

A qualitative approach was adopted using four focus groups and eight in-depth interviews with first year undergraduate students enrolled at a large metropolitan Australian university. In addition, an online expert forum was used to obtain qualitative verbatim from 22 internationally-based faculty educators.

The results of this study suggest that the development of deeply entrenched emotional bonds with students is important in facilitating high levels of satisfaction during the first year experience. In addition, a sense of belonging was perceived by faculty as being the primary mechanism for ensuring the retention of students beyond the first year of enrolment.

From a managerial perspective, uncovering the nature of student-institution relationships and the importance of affective forms of commitment will enable higher education institutions to develop more targeted relationship marketing programs to increase student retention.

In a unique contribution, this research examines this issue from the perspective of first year students, as well as from an international faculty perspective, enabling a multi-dimensional comparison to be drawn between the perceptions of the student, and the service provider.

This study describes the evaluation of a first‐year experience course which emphasised the “appreciative advising” theoretical model – a strength‐based, relational approach to student development that aims to enhance students’ self‐efficacy and academic self‐perception. In order to measure the effectiveness of the course and its impact on student academic achievement, an outcome‐based evaluation was conducted. The evaluation focused on the impact of the course on students’ attitudes and perceptions towards their academic ability, their actual academic achievement and student retention. Using a number of comprehensive measures, including the tracking of academic outcomes, and assessment of students’ attitudes and behaviours, the evaluation evidenced the positive impact of the course.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse data on first-year students’ needs regarding academic support services and reasons for their intention to leave the institution prior to degree completion. On the basis of the findings, a digital badge outline is proposed which could contribute to improved communication of academic requirements in order to help students to better adapt to higher education demands. Digital badges might also serve as an indicator for students’ needing additional academic support services.

An online-questionnaire was conducted with 730 first-year students at a German university. Participants’ responses to open-ended questions were coded and categorised. On the basis on these findings, an outline for a digital badge programme is proposed.

Participants seek the most institutional support regarding research skills and organisational aspects. Main reasons for participants’ intention to withdraw from the institution include difficulties with their programme choice.

These findings may enable higher education institutions to provide targeted support services that meet first-year students’ needs. On the basis of the findings, higher education institutions can create digital badge programmes, which may improve communication of academic requirements and may also serve as a platform for a staff-student conversation about expectations and demands for a successful first-year experience. Besides, further research and discussion may address using digital badges for learning analytics algorithms to even better identify students’ strengths and needs for targeted academic support services and enhanced student success in higher education.

Little is known about first-year students’ needs for institutional support and reasons for thinking about dropout in Germany. Understanding the student perspective is crucial for enhancing student retention. Digital badges are an emerging educational technology in higher education and they have the potential to target academic requirements, which may guide first-year students and help them to better adjust to universities’ demands.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2017 in over 200 journals, magazines, books and other sources.

The paper provides a brief description for all 590 sources.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper aims to provide an introductory overview and selected annotated bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy across all library types.

It introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2014.

It provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper aims to examine how new educational approaches to the presentation of electronic information resources can influence interest in their use among first-year undergraduates. Despite the variety of technological facilities available in universities, the learning process sometimes fails to keep pace with their advantages. Universities are investing in high-technology classrooms and an extensive multidisciplinary subscription to e-resources in the belief that students will make use of these opportunities. However, students often ignore the availability of relevant and verified content and prefer to retrieve information from Google’s search results. The absence of students’ initial motivation to work with a complex product is perhaps the greatest challenge faced by the teacher-librarian. Limited time available for training (a lecture and a seminar) and lack of preparedness among information specialists aggravates the situation.

The efficacy of new educational approaches to the presentation of e-resources was examined in a pilot study involving 940 first-year undergraduates at the North-West Institute of Management of the Presidential Academy (RANEPA). The authors replaced academic lectures with flexible and interesting techniques based on student’s interests, used attention triggers for each e-resource in lecture materials and focused the seminar on multiple specific searches to attract and keep students engaged. New educational approaches were implemented in four-hour sessions for first-year students in all disciplines.

The results suggest that the new educational approaches and teaching techniques can raise the level of students’ involvement and interest in the use of subscribed e-resources. To assess the developed approach, the authors analyzed the dynamics of the students’ visits to subscribed resources and observed a significant increase in the number of visits. The authors found such a trend for all the types of requests and resources. Overall, the number of visits and full-text requests increased from 88 to 284 per cent for the 2017-2018 academic year compared to the 2016-2017 one.

The findings of the study demonstrate the necessity of applying new educational approaches to teaching students who lack the motivation to use high-quality electronic resources. The teacher-librarian can be an important link between scientific information and consumers. The newly developed techniques have great potential for a wide range of educational applications including the development of teaching materials and training programs.

The approach combines teaching methodology with rich informational environment, enhancing students’ motivation to information literacy through mastering their digital skills. Students’ interest in subscribed resources initiates their professional work with scientific information. Students need to constantly use subscribed resources. Otherwise, the skills of using information e-resources will disappear and motivation for their use will decrease. The development of techniques that can help to maintain students’ interest in information e-resources is continuing, and new findings will be presented in future papers.

In the scientific literature, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no information is available on the use of similar techniques at Russian universities. It is hoped that developed techniques helps students with low digital literacy from other universities or colleges overcome their bias against high technology.

This paper seeks to explore the successes and challenges associated with teaching first‐year students a session on plagiarism avoidance through the use of an audience response system.

An audience response system was used to test first‐year students' knowledge of plagiarism. Quiz questions about academic honesty and plagiarism were administered, and were answered anonymously with hand‐held remote control devices. The reporting feature of the technology was used to gather results of the answers to these questions, which will be used to improve the session in future years.

Data gathered from the sessions indicated that this session helped students retain knowledge of plagiarism rules. Comments solicited about the session indicated that the students enjoyed the lesson, that they were better able to recognize problem areas in their own writing, and that the interactivity kept them focused on the lesson.

The session will have to be repeated over a number of years to determine whether there is a link between it and the number of plagiarism incidents on campus.

This paper provides a practical and relatively inexpensive approach for teaching academic integrity to large groups of students. An undertaking of this magnitude requires dedicated involvement from an institution's administration. Any correlation between the session and the number of plagiarism cases may never be able to be proved conclusively.

Audience response technology is not yet widely used in small academic libraries. This paper offers a suggestion for implementing this technology to teach academic integrity in a consistent and effective way to large groups of first‐year undergraduate students.

First‐year experience (FYE) courses are excellent venues for introducing freshman students to information literacy concepts. The authors, librarians and FYE instructors at their respective institutions, conducted a nationwide survey to determine whether FYE course curricula contained a library component and, if so, to what extent. Survey results indicate that the majority of FYE programs contain some type of library unit, though results varied broadly depending on institutional factors. Details the presence of a library unit in the overall curricula of FYE courses, who is developing the library component, who is teaching it, and what is being taught. Examines current practices within FYE courses and the results can be used by librarians and FYE professionals, as well as the larger academic community, to expand understanding of the role that libraries, and librarians play in this particular type of course. It will serve as a foundation for future development of FYE course curricula and can be used as documentation for conversations promoting further integration of information literacy.

This paper aims to explore how collaborative research assignment design consultations between instruction librarians and new graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) have the potential to improve the design of research assignments for first-year writing courses.

The author conducted a small number of questionnaires and structured interviews with first-time GTAs who serve as first-year composition instructors to explore their conceptions about teaching researched writing. Thematic analysis of the results of these qualitative instruments led to the design of a new framework for working with incoming cohorts of GTAs at her institution prior to the start of each fall semester.

New GTAs often emphasize strict source type parameters in research assignment design and expect their students to engage in expert research behaviors. Emphasizing the assignment design expertise of instruction librarians during new GTA orientation may lead to more assignment design consultations with first-time college writing instructors. Collaborative assignment design consultations between librarians and GTAs can improve the alignment of research assignment parameters with their shared goals for students' research and writing skills and habits of mind, including seeing research and writing as iterative and inquiry-based processes.

While not every instruction librarian works with GTAs, working with instructors to collaboratively design research assignments that shift focus away from using specific search tools and locating particular types of sources opens possibilities for what librarians are able to achieve in one-shot instruction sessions, in terms of both lesson content and pedagogical strategies used.

The existing literature on first-year writing addressing faculty and librarian assignment design collaborations, and research assignments more generally, does not often explicitly examine the experiences of librarians who primarily work with GTAs. This paper adds to this literature by highlighting specific obstacles and unique opportunities in librarian–GTA teaching partnerships in first-year writing courses.

This paper aims to highlight recent resources on information literacy (IL) and library instruction, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and IL published in 2015.

This paper provides information about each source, describes the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain either unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and IL.