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Freshman Interest Groups and the First-Year Experience: Constructing Student Communities in a Large University
Abstract
A qualitative case study of Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) was carried out at a large, public, research university. The intent of the study was to understand how participation in a FIG influenced students' learning experiences, and how those experiences fit in with broader experiences as first-year students. Three one-week site visits were made; data collection consisted of participant observation in 12 classrooms and 43 interviews with 24 students. Three themes are reported here. First, FIGs allowed students to interact repeatedly with a consistent set of peers across their classes. This, in turn, enabled students to form a social network in which other academic support mechanisms could begin to operate. Finally, writing link classes enabled students to become engaged with their course content at the same time as they continued their social interactions. The balance of students' social engagement with their academic engagement demonstrates the potential of FIGs to influence students' first-year experience.
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“Prior research has documented that first-year students who participate in learning communities have higher grades, retention rates, and self-reported levels of engagement than their peers who have not had a learning community experience.”
From Success with EASE: Who benefits from a STEM learning community? (2019) · cites this paper as [24]
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Adding value: Learning communities and student engagement
Zhao, C.-M., & Kuh, G. D. (2004) · Research in Higher Education · doi:10.1023/b:rihe.0000015692.88534.de · Cited by 1,198
The Psychology Underlying Successful Retention Practices
Bean, J., & Eaton, S. B. (2001) · Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice · doi:10.2190/6r55-4b30-28xg-l8u0 · Cited by 464
(2006) · Cited by 256
Increasing retention and graduation rates through a STEM learning community
Dagley, M., Georgiopoulos, M., Reece, A., & Young, C. (2016) · Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice · doi:10.1177/1521025115584746 · Cited by 109
Success with EASE: Who benefits from a STEM learning community?
Solanki, S., McPartlan, P., Xu, D., & Sato, B. K. (2019) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213827 · Cited by 55
Metadata
- Authors
- Tinto, V., & Goodsell, A.
- Venue
- Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition
- Published
- 1994-01-01
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 7-28
- ISSN
- 1542-3077
- Cited by
- 10
- References
- 0
- Language
- en
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- Tinto, V., & Goodsell, A. (1994). Freshman Interest Groups and the First-Year Experience: Constructing Student Communities in a Large University. Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition. https://doi.org/10.65005/154230794813696237
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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