{"id":25508,"date":"2026-04-09T08:27:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/?p=25508"},"modified":"2026-04-09T08:27:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T22:27:29","slug":"five-ways-to-help-first-year-student-become-better-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/five-ways-to-help-first-year-student-become-better-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"Five ways to help first year student become better learners"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Sydney’s 2026 Transition Symposium<\/a>* asked a deceptively simple question: Do we actually teach students how to learn? Keynote speaker Professor Sally Kift (QUT)<\/a> made the case that transitioning to university is not a single event but a continuous series of “firsts” – first lecture, first assessment, first mistake, first moment of asking for help. Each one is a threshold that can build confidence or quietly erode belonging.<\/p>\n

In this post, we unpack five practical approaches from Kift’s keynote for embedding self-regulated learning<\/a> (SRL) into your teaching – the deliberate, cyclical process of setting goals, choosing strategies, monitoring progress, and adapting. These are strategies any educator can use, regardless of discipline, to help first-year students develop the learning skills that many have never been explicitly taught.<\/p>\n

*Recordings and resources from the symposium accessible for Sydney colleagues behind Unikey login<\/em><\/p>\n

The hidden curriculum of university learning<\/h2>\n

But before we get to those, it’s worth pausing on why this matters \u2014 and why so many students arrive without these skills in the first place.<\/p>\n

Many students arrive at university believing \u201cindependent learning\u201d means doing everything alone, unaware that many successful students plan strategically, seek support, and continuously evaluate their progress. This is part of the hidden curriculum of higher education, and for equity-group, first-generation, and neurodiverse students, the cost of not knowing it is high.<\/p>\n

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is the deliberate, cyclical process of setting goals, choosing strategies, monitoring progress, and adapting. It involves three phases: forethought (planning before a task), performance (managing effort during it), and self-reflection (evaluating afterwards). Without scaffolding, many students skip one or all of these phases \u2014 mistaking busyness for progress, or moving on without ever asking what they\u2019d do differently next time.<\/p>\n

As Dutch speaker Alexander den Heijer<\/a> reminds us: when a flower doesn\u2019t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.<\/p>\n

Kift echoed this in her keynote:<\/p>\n

the SRL cycle isn\u2019t something students should be expected to discover on their own. It\u2019s something we can design into the conditions of learning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Diagram
Image: Kristin O’Connell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

1. Make the destination visible<\/h2>\n

The forethought phase depends on students forming a clear mental model of what success looks like. For many new students, it’s not clear. Without a picture of mastery, meaningful goal-setting is almost impossible.<\/p>\n

Kift\u2019s suggestion is deceptively simple: spend time decoding the unit outline with students. Walk through the learning outcomes together, name the cognitive verbs (describe, analyse, evaluate), and ask students to say in their own words what success means in this context. This isn\u2019t remedial \u2014 it removes assumed insider knowledge for everyone.<\/p>\n

Spending the first ten minutes of a tutorial having students set one specific goal and share it with a peer scaffolds forethought directly. Naming a goal activates task analysis and strategy selection; sharing it introduces social accountability. Unpacking assessments extends this further, breaking a 2,000-word task into sequenced steps with dates \u2014 mirroring the planning behaviour of experienced learners and externalising what strategic students often do privately.<\/p>\n

2. Name and teach the skills of performance<\/h2>\n

The performance phase \u2014 enacting strategies and sustaining effort \u2014 draws on executive function: the cognitive capacities that manage purposeful behaviour. These include working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, task initiation, and planning. These capacities continue developing into the mid-twenties, meaning many first-year students are still building the architecture that independent study requires. For students with ADHD, anxiety, or those studying in a second language, the gap between demand and capacity can be acute.<\/p>\n

Yet executive function is rarely named in a curriculum, let alone taught. Kift pointed to Professor Emily Nordmann\u2019s<\/a> \u2018How to Study\u2019 lecture at the University of Glasgow as a model: explicitly teaching evidence-based study strategies rather than assuming students will absorb them. Nordmann has embedded these strategies throughout her first-year curriculum.<\/p>\n

In practice, this might look like modelling how to read a journal article in Week 1, showing a worked study schedule alongside the content schedule, or scaffolding the approach to an assessment task explicitly. When students can also choose how to demonstrate understanding \u2014 a diagram, an oral explanation, a written reflection \u2014 they practise the strategic decision-making that self-regulation requires. A brief team agreement at the start of a group task externalises the same skills collectively, making planning and shared goal commitment a visible structure rather than a private burden.<\/p>\n

3. Build in structured reflection<\/h2>\n

The self-reflection phase is where learners evaluate performance against goals and decide what to change. Without structured prompts, most students skip it entirely.<\/p>\n

Kift advocated for a semester-long pulse-check approach: brief check-ins at Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8 that ask not just how students are going, but what they actively did to engage. This builds the metacognitive habit of noticing and naming one\u2019s own learning behaviour. Reflective prompts at assessment submission (\u2018What strategy did you use? What would you do differently?\u2019) embed the same habit at high-stakes moments.<\/p>\n

ePortfolios, which Kift positioned as a transition and retention intervention, give students a longitudinal view of their own development. They also build what Professor Phillip Dawson<\/a> (Deakin University\u2019s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning<\/a>) calls evaluative judgement: the capacity to assess one\u2019s own work against disciplinary standards \u2014 a capability that is essential not just for university, but for professional life.<\/p>\n

4. Design feedback as a prompt to adapt<\/h2>\n

The SRL cycle closes when students use feedback to change what they do next. This sounds obvious, but it requires both structural and cultural support.<\/p>\n

Kift described Flinders University\u2019s practice<\/a> of embedding academic support links directly in assessment rubrics \u2014 a structural nudge toward help-seeking at exactly the moment students are processing feedback and most likely to act on it. Normalising revision (\u2018What will you do differently next time?\u2019) shifts the message from \u2018you either got it or you didn\u2019t\u2019 to \u2018learning is iterative.\u2019<\/p>\n

With four in ten undergraduates experiencing imposter syndrome, designing teaching so that adjustment is expected \u2014 and supported \u2014 reduces the affective toll of transition and creates the psychological safety that effective self-regulation requires.<\/p>\n

5. Name the transition students are navigating<\/h2>\n

None of the above works in isolation. SRL develops through consistent, scaffolded experiences across a whole program, not a single tutorial activity. But that doesn\u2019t mean individual educators are powerless.<\/p>\n

Kift\u2019s call to action was for educators to choose their \u2018plus one\u2019: one explicit conversation about how to approach an assessment, one structured peer reflection, one moment where you name the transition your students are navigating and tell them it is normal to feel overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

These are not remedial measures. They are the conditions under which all students \u2014 not just those who arrived already knowing the rules \u2014 can develop the learner identity they will carry into professional life.<\/p>\n

As Kift put it:<\/p>\n

we\u2019re not just building competence for while they\u2019re here. We\u2019re building it for life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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