1.3.2 UOW First Year Experience
Enhancing first year curriculum design, teaching practices and coordinated transition support.
Purpose
This initiative establishes a distinctive and coordinated approach to the first-year experience at UOW, ensuring all commencing students encounter a distinctive, consistent, high-quality transition into university study.
It will create a university-wide First Year Framework, supported by aligned curriculum design, teaching practice and student support, alongside enhanced insight into student experience and progression, strengthening student confidence, engagement and success across all faculties and campuses.
Strategic alignment
| Strategic goal | Implement a whole of university approach to enhance the first-year experience through strengthened curriculum design, teaching practices and coordinated transition support. |
|---|---|
| Measure of success | A coordinated First Year Experience model implemented across the University, with aligned curriculum, teaching and support contributing to improved first-year retention, progression and student experience. |
Context
The first year of university is a critical period for student transition, engagement and long-term success.
Across the sector, there is increasing emphasis on student belonging, retention, equity and progression, alongside growing expectations for coordinated institutional approaches to student support.
UOW has strong examples of effective first-year practice, with an opportunity to build a more cohesive and consistent model that connects curriculum, teaching and support across all faculties and campuses.
This initiative responds to:
- The importance of the first year in shaping student success and progression
- Opportunities to strengthen consistency of experience across faculties and campuses
- Increasing expectations for integrated academic and support approaches
- The need for improved visibility of student engagement and progression patterns
- The opportunity to scale existing examples of effective first-year practice
This initiative provides UOW with an opportunity to move to a coordinated, institution-wide model that is grounded in student evidence, informed by internal and sector best practice, and supported by the professional capability, structural roles and shared framework needed to deliver a consistently high-quality first year experience across all faculties and cohorts.
This initiative operates in close alignment with the Evidence-Informed Student Success initiative, which focuses on strengthening UOW’s data, analytics and institutional coordination capability across the student lifecycle. Together, the initiatives provide a complementary approach: strengthening both how UOW identifies and supports students, and how it designs the learning experience to enable student success from the outset.
Approach
UOW will establish a coordinated, evidence-informed approach to the first-year experience, integrating curriculum design, teaching practice, student support and data-driven insight. The initiative will be delivered through five interconnected streams that together establish institutional foundations and support ongoing improvement.
- Develop a comprehensive evidence base of the first-year student experience
- Analyse student feedback, engagement and progression patterns
- Identify key transition points and opportunities to strengthen support
- Establish baseline measures to inform improvement and evaluation
- Engage academics in consultation to inform first-year teaching approaches
- Design and pilot a First Year Teaching Program
- Build capability in curriculum design, assessment and student engagement
- Establish a cross-faculty Community of Practice
- Conduct an institutional audit of first-year curriculum and support
- Identify and evaluate effective practice across faculties
- Develop a Best Practice Register to support scaling and consistency
- Inform the design of institutional models and roles
- Develop a university-wide framework for first-year curriculum, teaching and support
- Establish shared principles and minimum expectations
- Integrate curriculum design, assessment and student support approaches
- Align with broader student success initiatives and institutional priorities
- Develop faculty-level implementation plans
- Establish a First Year Intelligence Dashboard to support data-informed decision-making
- Enable whole-of-program visibility of student experience and progression
- Introduce an annual First Year Experience review cycle
- Support continuous improvement across faculties and campuses
Indicative timeline & milestones
Mid–Late 2026
Key activities
Evidence gathering, consultation, institutional audit
Key outputs
Student Experience Intelligence Report; Best Practice Register
Early 2027
Key activities
Framework co-design and capability development
Key outputs
Teaching Program designed; Community of Practice established
Mid
2027
Key activities
Pilot and validation
Key outputs
Teaching Program piloted; Framework drafted
Late 2027
Key activities
Endorsement and planning
Key outputs
Framework endorsed; implementation plans finalised; annual review cycle established
Assistant
