Newsletter March 2025: First Year Pedagogy

In the early spring light, the start of the new semester in September may seem far away. However, we are addressing first year pedagogy now to ensure that various academic environments have time to incorporate different initiatives into the planning of new students’ first year at SDU. To support this, we have developed a new resource offering inspiration and concrete ideas for working with new students. We know that the early days at university are exciting, challenging, fun, and sometimes quite overwhelming for students. As teachers, we must strive to ease some of the difficulties and make this transition more manageable.

Becoming a university student
At the beginning, each student is in the process of building an understanding of themselves as a "university student": someone who receives SU (student grant), has recently just moved away from home, attends study group meetings, and more. In addition, they are also forming an identity as, for example, a German student, a law student, or a software engineering student. This academic identity formation is a crucial part of the student's sense-making and engagement. Understanding oneself as someone progressing towards a specific academic field or profession provides direction for their studies and a sense of who they are. As teachers we can support this academic identity formation in various ways, both within and outside the classroom.

Supporting Academic Identity Formation
Firstly, you can use yourself as an academic example by sharing with new students, what you are currently researching, how you approach it, the challenges you face, and how you try to overcome them. If you see yourself as an academic gatekeeper, you can try to slightly open the gate by offering students insights into what defines the field through personally experienced examples. By sharing your research stories—and the sometimes rocky paths—you also strengthen the relationship with students and appear more approachable. Accessibility and contact with teachers are among the key factors influencing students’ engagement and sense of belonging at the university. If you are also willing to talk about which academic elements you found difficult as a new student, you help validate that it is entirely normal to occasionally find being a new student challenging and overwhelming. 

Being Introduced
Students also want to be challenged and value the prestige of their education. As a teacher, you can achieve this by emphasizing the research basis of your teaching. For instance, present new students to a scientific article from your field. Help them dissect the article: What is its research question? Which method(s) was used? What data was generated? How was the analysis constructed? And so on. This allows students to: decode research elements, understand the components of academic work, and recognize the structure of academic processes. This initial guidance in decoding lays the foundation for later being able to "encode"—that is, to create knowledge in academically acceptable ways. At the same time, new students are given access to the "sacred halls" of academia and are intellectually challenged.

The Resource Site
On our new resource page about first year teaching, you'll find numerous additional points of attention and ideas for planning your teaching for new students at SDU. For instance, we introduce the concept of ‘Sense of Belonging’, a well-established theme in first year pedagogy, but nevertheless a highly useful perspective. We have also provided a reference to an article on the concept for further inspiration. Additionally, we introduce Self-Determination Theory, which is also worth keeping in mind. This helps ensure we consider new students' needs to feel competent, contribute to the community, and experience a sense of autonomy, without feeling controlled. Use this resource to enhance your teaching, benefitting both you and your new students. As always, we are happy to offer tailored ideas and advice to individual teachers/studies