First Year students in the Law Faculty

Background and experiences: Results of a survey of 245 first year students, 2001 Kathryn Boin The Transition Program



Who are the first year students?

Majority came directly from school to university

Reasons for studying Law:

interest or curiosity in the field money and prestige altruism pressure from others not wanting to ‘waste’ a good ENTER not getting into Medicine don’t know

How well are they prepared for studying Law?

   60% said they were prepared ‘very little’ or ‘not at all’ 77% studied Maths and Science at school 55% studied Humanities (excluding English)

“I needed science subjects to get a high enough grade to get in”

Assessment experience

  Average length of essays written before: 1000-2000 words A quarter have only written essays of 1000 words or less  Recent changes to the VCE make this even more of an issue:

“We are not well prepared enough for large complex assignments since the CAT system was abolished”

VCE experience

 Trend of students undertaking Maths/Science  Average length of assignments 600-1000 words  Teachers willing to read drafts  High proportion of assessment completed in class  Focus on ENTER score as main goal  Accustomed to being high achievers

Adjusting to university

 Independence – ie, having to work alone and motivate themselves - noted as biggest difference between school and university.

 Biggest difficulties in coming to terms with a new learning style:  the amount and type of reading  time management  independence  43% had felt intimidated by university learning

Difficulties in adjusting

    the amount and style of reading time management independence uncertainty about expectations

“We weren’t told any ways to go about studying law”

Reading

 62% did less than five hours a week of reading.  Only 12% completed more than eight hours.

 70% of students felt that the amount of reading set was ‘a lot’ or ‘too much’.

Feedback

 Most understood it to mean comments on assignments  Other forms of feedback: discussions with staff and in class; grades  46% feel that they did not get this feedback

Skills needed/wanted

   71% would have liked to develop more essay writing and research skills Half wanted more skills in individual study, and in oral communication Presentation and teamwork skills were also sought

Student support

  64% of students said they did not feel confident they knew about all of the support services available through the Faculty 71% did not know about support services available through the University.

“I basically felt we were on our own”