In February 2025, we began a longitudinal study to explore students experiences at Bristol with the aim of discovering where we could provide additional support for a more engaging and successful student journey.
The study began with a ‘hackathon’, where students shared their thoughts around five common themes drawn from the literature around transition; transitions in general (including living independently), academia, assessment, community and communication.
The hackathon findings were not surprising – the same things came up that we have found before when working with students. Students found the transition to living independently difficult – but also gained skills such as budgeting and being able to cook for themselves. Many felt homesick and struggled with making new friends, especially those who had missed key Welcome week activities due to VISA issues. Suggestions for a second ‘Welcome’ week in January were seen as a good idea.
Students reported feeling very stressed by their first set of exams, not knowing what ‘good’ looked like and there was a shared frustration at the lack of past exam papers to look at. With regard to communication, they felt overwhelmed with the number of channels that news and information came through – students felt positive when there was only one newsletter a week from their School that contained all the information they needed.
There were mixed experiences of whether they felt that they belonged or were part of a community here and many cited their academic society as a key place to make meaningful connections.
In June 2025, we ran about 8 focus groups to explore how the participants were doing at the end of their first year. Read on to hear about some of the findings.
Academics
As with the findings from the Hackathon, the flipped learning approach was mentioned with varying degrees of satisfaction as can be seen below.
Students enjoyed the flipped approach when they could apply the knowledge from the flipped content.
So the best, the best classes are the ones where you apply the knowledge.’
They also felt it was valuable to be able to ask questions about the flipped content in the live lecture, rather than not referring to it at all:
Need to be able to ask questions’
However, many students felt the flipped approach was a waste of time, some mentioning they had to watch two-hour long videos prior to the lecture, only to find the lecturer repeat the same content in the live session. This is perhaps due to lecturers not trusting that the students will cover the content on their own as one student mentioned.
And when I challenged the lecturers about that, they said that they are worried that people didn’t watch the videos’
Incorporating a flipped approach to learning can affect engagement, with students being strategic about the lectures they attend especially when they feel the flipped content is being repeated:
So the one-hour extra is like a huge thing for me where the amount of teaching that they give me in the lecture, I can get more if I just read through the notes and previous lecture notes that they’ve given me.’
Lecture Delivery
Something that students felt improved their engagement in lectures was when lecturers showed passion in their subject and connected the content to their own research or real life examples so students could see the relevance of the material:
They kind of bear up into their own research and they say, oh, as a little side though, here’s an example of how I actually, you know, put this in practice. And it’s really cool hearing that and seeing their passion in their field is very inspiring’
Participants also felt the value in the lectures when the content was made relevant to the assessment:
So they recap class is very good because it helps you with the exam itself or they talk generally about the exam’
However, students mentioned when lecturers just spoke at them with no pausing or interaction and just read off the slides, they felt that there was no value in actually attending in person,
Most of the classes itself like reading the slides and you can read the slides on your own.’
Some of them kind of just read off the PowerPoint and they just go through the slides and it makes me think I could have just done that.’
Some students valued the social side of attending lectures. For some of them, knowing they had their friends in lectures was an incentive for them to attend them as they had people to interact with. Similarly students said they enjoyed seminars because of being able to interact with peers and the lecturer.
Relating to interaction, participants mentioned an issue around communication about office hours, some did not know when these were or what the purpose was. Those that had made use of them mentioned how 15 minutes was quite short to get into any sort of discussion about an issue they may have been having.
Takeaways
- Ensuring the flipped content is not excessive in the time it takes to complete – once in class, quick check that flipped content has been completed before application in the lecture
- Training students in the use and value of flipped learning to ensure they cover the content before the lecture, and that there is no need to repeat it verbatim in the lecture.
- Bringing in more interaction in lectures, not just talking at students – chunking content to maintain focus and engagement and integrating with checks.
- Showing your passion for your subject
Assessment
The general feeling was that the assessments had gone better in TB2 compared to TB1. Participants felt they had in some cases managed their time better in the lead up to assessments. Knowing how to structure responses for essay type assessments had been highly valuable, as had having access to exemplars:
Exemplars made assessments easier to structure.
Definitely the ones who I had, exemplars were easier to structure because I had an idea of, OK, so I don’t need to go into great detail with setting out the law here because I can see they’ve just gone into and applied the law in this way.’
In some cases, the length of exams was a bit much (i.e. 3-hour exams). In certain cases, students would have preferred more choice in the format of the assessment and would have preferred not just having to write an essay.
One participant mentioned they had formative assessments along the way, but these did not inform the summative assessments:
We do have formatives along the way, but it’s different, completely different to the summatives where everything’s going to at the same time.’
Feedback wasn’t mentioned very much in the focus groups, with only a couple of mentions of peer review activities.
Yeah, yeah, yes, we do have peer review part of it and it’s been alright.’
Sometimes people don’t submit it or they don’t review it, but now some people do get it and it’s valuable for them.’
The spacing of assessments was mentioned and the need to have enough time between different assessments:
But the best thing that they can do to help me in second year is to continue communicating within their own team so that our deadlines are staggered.‘
Extra time had been appreciated. However, one participant had not applied for this as they felt it would go on their transcript, which reflects something around different cultural perceptions of the support that is offered.
Takeaways
- Ensure assessment expectations are clear through marking criteria explanation and/or exemplars
- Distribute assessments
- Highlight the value of feedback
- Talk about support for assessments e.g. extra time
Community
Many of the focus group participants said how they felt comfortable at the university and that they had developed friend groups within their units. Some had joined academic societies or extra-curricular activities that had contributed to them feeling a greater sense of belonging. There were some discrepancies across schools as to the number of events that were offered with some participants feeling that it would be good for Schools to offer weekly social events to support them in building relationships with their peers.
Some participants felt it was challenging to make friends outside their immediate circles:
The thing is that the campus itself has a large student body is very difficult for me to make friends outside of my like aerospace engineering community because I’m always spending time there.’
It was felt having more activities like those in Welcome week throughout the year would be beneficial for greater community building.
Participants from different schools reported differing experiences of community building, some schools had set up group chats for students, or organized a Parenting scheme to support students, which were felt to be very valuable.
Commuter students felt they missed out on social events due to financial costs of coming in for them but also sometimes due to the lack of communication around them taking place.
Takeaways
- More social activities throughout the year for diverse cohorts
- One general place to advertise these
Transition into second year
Many of the participants voiced concern over the workload for the second year with some wishing this could be balanced out more across the years. Suggestions were made around providing a reading list in advance of year 2 so students could use the summer for preparation. Similarly a student suggested having a guide:
I said that for the way I’m learning […] we wanted to find ways that can be more efficient since there are lots of contents and I can go through everything faster… like a guide that can help us or something we can we can read through. A tutorial online before year one starts that will be helpful.’
Takeaways
- Reading list in advance of starting lectures
- Guide for 2nd year
Conclusion
As you can see there are a range of experiences across these first-year students, it will be interesting to hear about their progress in the next focus groups in January 2026. In the meantime, please share the successes you have had in your schools around transitions.
Leave a Reply