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Support for the Transition Model has now ceased. This page is for reference only.
The Orientate-Apply-Connect Transition Model is designed as a holistic discipline specific model to support transition and introduce the notion of employability to learners that are new to higher education. Below you will find some useful topics to consider
Online Pre-arrival Model
Online Pre-arrival Model
The employability of undergraduates continues to be the focus for the H.E sector. A particular challenge for non-vocational courses is how do we assist learners to link, often abstract concepts from their discipline area, to professional practice in the world of work?
An on-line transition model has been developed to give new H.E learners an authentic context to a topic from their subject discipline, supplemented with a selection of authentic tasks to apply this knowledge while drawing on their own experiences. Finally, the link to professional practice is provided through video interviews of professionals who put the topic into a real-world context.
The Pre- Arrival aspect of the model works as an online transition resource, presenting three simple steps to be completed by new students prior to their arrival at the university: Orientate, Apply, Connect.
View an example pre-arrival site here (you will need to register to use the BlackBoard Coursesites platform. Please follow the quick and easy instructions provided after clicking on the link above).
Welcome Week Model
Welcome Week Model
Your new Level 4 learners will have received their on-line pre-entry guest log-in to the Orientate-Apply-Connect Transition Model. Here, in the Orientate section they will have been introduced to a topic that is key to their discipline or is an area that your course team have identified as a concept that learners often struggle with. They will have experimented with this topic/concept in the Apply section, where they were asked to carry out a task(s) in their familiar home city/town surroundings, using their own experience to gain an understanding of the concept in an authentic context. And, finally in the Connect section, pre-arrival learners will have watched a short video(s), where they will have watched professional practitioners talking about what relevance the Orientate section topic/concept has in their professional day-to-day role.
The aim of the Orientate-Apply-Connect Transition Model Welcome Week (induction) - activity is to build on the pre-entry on-line learning, in order to support learner's transition into higher education and help them gain a sense of belonging to their course, peers and academic team in a discipline-specific context. It is hoped that the model will support the learner to recognise their own value by building their self-confidence in developing discipline knowledge (and applying it) from the get-go.
Creating Video Assets
Creating Video Assets
Please see the links below for support with creating video content:
1) How to Take a Great Home Video (SHU Internal Communications PDF Guide)
2) Guidance for uploading and editing in YouTube (SHU Internal Communications YouTube Guide)
Reflective Thinking
Reflective Thinking
What happened that most surprised you?
What patterns can you recognise in your experience?
What was the most fulfilling part of it? And the least fulfilling part of it? What does that suggest to you about your values?
What happened that contradicted your prior beliefs? What happened that confirmed your prior beliefs?
How do you feel about that experience now compared with how you felt about it at the time?
What does the experience suggest to you about your strengths?
What does the experience suggest to you about your weaknesses and opportunities for development?
How else could you view that experience?
What did you learn from that experience about how you react?
What other options did you have at the time?
Is there anything about the experience that was familiar to you?
What might you do differently as a result of that experience and your reflection on it? What actions do your reflections lead you to?
Ref Table 2, "Assessing Reflective Learning", Tom Bourner, 2003 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/00400910310484321, visited 27 June 2016.
Note Taking - Study Skills
Note Taking - Study Skills
Please follow the link for useful information on note-taking provided by The Skills Centre – Sheffield Hallam: https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/skillscentre/reading-resources/
I picked out two references from this document:
· Godfrey, J. (2014) Reading and Making Notes. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Available online via Library Gateway
· Rohde, Mike. (2013) The Sketchnote Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Visual Notetaking. Berkeley, California: Peachpit Press
Group Work - Learning Contracts
Group Work - Learning Contracts
Where possible, students will have discussed options for adjustments to group work in an appointment with a Disability Adviser. This discussion will have been based on the student's disability and cannot be course specific as neither students nor Disability Advisers have a full and up to date knowledge of competence standards for all courses at all times.
Overwhelming feedback from academic staff suggests they want to be more involved with discussing adjustments to group work and they have found the most beneficial way to do this is to contact the student directly and mutually agree a suitable adjustment. Students will be advised of this if they have been in contact with a Disability Adviser.
Students will have been given access to information highlighting the benefits of collaborative working directly via their learning contract, however, for some students, group work will feel insurmountable and alternatives must be discussed if so.
How it works
Ideally, academic staff will contact students with this learning contract recommendation and mutually agree an adjustment or adjustments to the group work task. This is to prevent disabled students from experiencing substantial disadvantage. The specific member of staff who does this may change from department to department.
Advice for Academic Staff
Other staff and students have found the following adjustments to group work tasks useful. Recommendations which can be offered and put in place across all courses are in bold and may already have been discussed with students for reasons relating to their disability:
Allocate groups so the student doesn't have to form their own.
The student chooses their group for disability related reasons (i.e. if they need to work with students they know well and who they are comfortable with).
Groups have a clear visual identity to help the student remember which one they belong to, e.g. team names, a coloured badge or assigned specific work areas.
Groups are kept small (e.g. pairs).
The student is given clear information about how much work they are expected to do in the group activity.
The student has a meeting with the academic staff member and their group to discuss roles and responsibilities.
Allocate discussion time so everyone has the same amount of time to put their point across.
Accept and make clear that contributions may not necessarily be only verbal and other forms of working are valued.
Groups are given a visual list of rules they can access and refer to.
The student is told who/how to contact if they have concerns about the group work situation or if they want to ask for help.
Groups create and submit a work timetable that is monitored.
Groups are asked to write down instructions so they have a record of what needs to be done, by whom and when.
Students are reminded about the accessibility of the physical/sensory environment when arranging where the group meetings will take place (i.e. busy/noisy environments may not be accessible to all).
The student is not marked down if they have disability related difficulties joining in/saying less than other students.
The student completes the same or equivalent task individually.
Consider ways for students to complete the group work task remotely, using software that can be amended by all participants (e.g, google docs or Trello).
Not all students are able to initiate contact with academic staff for reasons relating to their disability and, equally, not all staff feel they can talk to students regarding their disability. Here is a template email you might want to use to contact the student;
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