Tackling Transition: Exposing Secondary School Students to Tertiary IT Teaching and Learning

Students entering university from school often experience difficulties as they adapt to tertiary life. During this time of transition, students must adjust to new teaching and learning environments as well as different social and physical environments. Students in computing degree programs face particular problems. For example, they can have misconceptions about studying computing at university because their experiences with computers at home or at school usually bear little resemblance to what they study in a tertiary computing degree. Research has identified the key issues relating to transition, however the methods to address this problem to date have had mixed success.