Faculty

This portion of our website is dedicated to faculty who teach first year students.  We hope that you find this site useful.  If you have any comments or examples of practice that you would like to share, please contact us: firstyear.experience@senecac.on.ca.

How to Make a Referral
Often student issues are much more complex than you are trained to handle.  The best thing to do is to refer the student to the proper service.  Finding the right approach to refer a student can sometimes be tough. Here are our tips on Making a Referral.

Teaching First Year Students: Student Expectations & Strategies to Meet Them
Based on feedback from students in focus groups about the first year student experience at Seneca College, we have identified four principles for teaching first year students and used examples from the literature to give faculty ideas for addressing student concerns in the classroom. Teaching First Year Students is a great resource for both new and seasoned faculty.

How Students Develop
This is a great introductory resource to Student Development Theory. Understanding how students develop can help us understand behaviours of students, both inside and outside of the classroom. We can use student development theories as a foundation for our practice.

The W Curve
This piece, written by William J. Zeller and Robert Mosier, links theories of culture shock to the first year experience of college & university students. Learn about the different stages of The W Curve and the First Year Experience.

Reports & Resources Online

Here are a few resources and links that you may find useful or at least informative in understanding first year students and try to improve our practices.

The Toolbox:
The National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition is pleased to offer The Toolbox: A Teaching and Learning Resource for Instructors, written by Brad Garner from Indiana Wesleyan University. This online professional development newsletter offers innovative learner-centered strategies for empowering college students to achieve greater success.  The newsletter is published six times a year, and the online subscription is free. Past issues have explored topics such as building a syllabus, classroom icebreakers, cooperative learning strategies, and mentoring millennials, to name a few.  To view the current issue, register for newsletter alerts, and access back issues, visit www.sc.edu/fye/toolbox/.

Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) Homepage: www.ccsse.org/

CCSSE 2009 Report: www.ccsse.org/publications/national_report_2009/CCSSE09_nationalreport.pdf

Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) Homepage: www.ccsse.org/sense/
SENSE 2008 Report: www.ccsse.org/sense/survey/SENSE_2008_National_Report_March_18.pdf

National Resource Centre for the First Year Experience & Students in Transition: www.sc.edu/fye/