Students' Success and Expectations of University Life

Background

The transition into university can be a difficult time, as first-year students navigate many personal, social, and academic transitions. The University of Melbourne is keenly invested in supporting students to succeed through this transition, however, evidence suggests that there is a mismatch between how the University thinks about “student success” and how students think about “student success”.

Research Questions / Hypotheses

In this project, we aimed to map out how students’ changing expectations and experiences of university life contribute to their overall satisfaction with university life. We also aimed to identify differences between the student perspective and the teachers’ perspective.

Participants

286 students completed the survey. No exclusion criteria applied. The survey opened in Week 10 and remained open until the end of the exams period.

Methods

Students completed a survey reflecting on their current expectations of university, and their expectations of university in orientation week of semester 2. They also answered questions about their values and their satisfaction with university life. This study was also run in Semester 1.

Results

The patterns were similar to those found in semester 1: Students were moderately satisfied with university. Changes in expectations between orientation week and Week 10 contributed to the variation in students scores. Specifically, students whose expectations about assessment difficulty increased across the semester, and whose expectations about making friends decreased across the semester, were less satisfied with their university life. Students whose expectations about infrastructure and quality of teaching increased across semester were more satisfied with their university experience. We are in the process of comparing the patterns in these data to the perceptions and expectations of teaching staff, collected in a different survey.

Implications

The patterns in our data suggest that students' expectations of university life are diverse, and contribute to their satisfaction with their university life. Whether and how these match with teaching staff's expectations will help us to understand where teachers might be well placed to invest their energy, and where their energy might not be having an impact.