Page 241 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Chapter 8
college. Evaluation studies of dual enrollment showed that participation contributes to college readiness: Students who participated in these programmes, regardless of whether they had a low or high SES background, had a higher rst-year GPA and were less likely to need remediation courses (An, 2013; Edmunds et al., 2017). In the Netherlands, dual enrollment has not really taken root as yet, but there are some promising initiatives in a comparable direction. An example are web classes for pre-university students that universities o er with the aim of familiarising prospective students with the rst-year content of a speci c degree programme. At the University of Groningen, such online courses are o ered for many programmes and consist of approximately 10 hours of study load, spread out over four weeks. Students read academic texts, complete assignments, and discuss the content with other participants and the teacher of the web class (University of Groningen, 2017b). e content mirrors the actual content in the degree programme. Not all Dutch universities o er such web classes, although they seem a very promising and e cient initiative, especially for degree programmes that are far removed from the subjects that secondary school students are familiar with. Other integrative practices that are already in place are the provision by universities of guidance, facilities, and equipment for secondary school students to conduct their grade 12 research project, as well as the guidance they o er to secondary school teachers on how to supervise and evaluate these projects, for example in the form of workshops (e.g., Radboud University, 2017). Additionally, some schools sometimes invite university lecturers or researchers to give lectures or workshops. Guest speakers contribute to useful educational experiences, especially if they have good pedagogical skills, if their eld belongs to the ones that the students are unfamiliar with, and if the lectures closely resemble university lectures (Marland, 2003).
e aforementioned integrative practices that provide students with reasonably authentic university experiences will not only familiarise them with university-level content and give them a realistic impression of what it is like to study at university, but will also aid them in the process of choosing a degree programme by giving them an impression of the kind of content that they will encounter in certain programmes (Dare & Nowicki, 2015). Moreover, in the Netherlands, it can help students who are unsure whether to continue to university or professional education. Students who nd out they are not too keen on the complex academic content, the research-based attitude, the high level of independence that is expected, or other aspects of university studies may better choose a professional degree programme – which a little less than ten per cent
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