1. Bibliographic Information

• Title: 'Hardworking, determined and happy': first-year students' understanding and experience of success
• Authors:
  • Catherine Picton (University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia)
  • Ella R. Kahu (Massey University, New Zealand)
  • Karen Nelson (University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia)
• Journal/Conference: Higher Education Research & Development. This is a reputable, peer-reviewed international journal focusing on research and development in higher education.
• Publication Year: 2018
• Abstract: The paper addresses the gap in understanding student success by exploring it from the perspective of first-year university students. While institutions typically measure success through grades, retention, and completion rates, this study finds that students have a broader, more nuanced view. Using weekly interviews with students at an Australian regional university and analyzing the data through a student engagement framework, the authors find that success is deeply linked to the student experience. Students use institutional measures like grades and feedback, but also consider their own behavioural engagement (e.g., time management, effort) as an immediate measure of success. Furthermore, feelings of happiness and satisfaction are essential for some to feel successful. The perception of success leads to positive outcomes like increased positive emotions, self-efficacy, and a sense of belonging in their course. The findings suggest a multi-dimensional view of success and lead to recommendations for a staged approach to support first-year students.
• Original Source Link: /files/papers/68e2f4f713faedd96e42f8f3/paper.pdf. This is a formally published article in a peer-reviewed journal.

2. Executive Summary

• Background & Motivation (Why):

  • Core Problem: The concept of "student success" in higher education is predominantly defined by institutions using metrics like grades, retention (students not dropping out), and qualification completion. This definition is limited because it overlooks the students' own perceptions and experiences.
  • Importance & Gaps: The institutional view often creates a "deficit narrative" focused on attrition and fails to capture other valuable aspects of the student journey. There is a significant lack of research that directly asks students, particularly those in their critical first year, what success means to them. Existing literature debates whether factors like student engagement are a part of success or merely a means to achieve it, a question that the student voice can help resolve.
  • Innovation: This study centers the student voice to build a more holistic and immediate understanding of success. It uses a longitudinal qualitative approach (weekly interviews) to capture how students' perceptions of success form and evolve during their first year.

• Main Contributions / Findings (What):

  • Success is Multi-dimensional: First-year students define and measure success in multiple ways, not just through grades.
  • Behavioural Engagement as Success: Students view their own behaviours—such as managing their workload, meeting deadlines, preparing for class, and putting in effort—as a direct and immediate measure of their success, not just a pathway to good grades. This supports the view of theorists like Kuh et al. (2006).
  • Psychosocial Dimensions are Crucial: Success is inextricably linked to emotions and well-being. For many students, feeling happy and satisfied is a necessary component of being successful.
  • A Positive Cycle of Success: Experiencing success (through good grades, effective behaviours, or positive feedback) creates a positive feedback loop. It boosts students' self-efficacy (belief in their own ability), strengthens their sense of course belonging, and generates positive emotions, which in turn encourages further engagement and future success.

3. Prerequisite Knowledge & Related Work

To understand this paper, a few key concepts are essential:

• Student Success: Traditionally, this term refers to institutional outcomes like students passing their courses, remaining enrolled semester after semester (retention), and ultimately graduating (completion). This paper challenges this narrow definition.
• Student Engagement: This refers to the extent to which students invest time and effort in educationally purposeful activities. It is often broken down into three types:
  • Behavioural engagement: Attending classes, participating, completing assignments.
  • Emotional engagement: Feeling interested, happy, and connected to the university.
  • Cognitive engagement: Using deep learning strategies, thinking critically.
• First-Year Experience (FYE): This is a major area of higher education research focused on the critical transition period when students enter university. The first year is seen as foundational for later success, and students face unique challenges related to academic and social adjustment.
• Self-Efficacy: A concept from psychology, it refers to an individual's belief in their own capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. In this context, it's a student's confidence that they "can do" university-level work.

Previous Works & Differentiation:

The authors position their work against the dominant, institution-centric view of success. They summarize key literature to build their argument:

• Institutional View (Dominant but Limited): The paper notes that most literature defines success by academic achievement, retention, and completion (York et al., 2015). This is criticized for overlooking the student perspective and contributing to a deficit view of attrition.
• Broader Definitions: Some researchers have proposed wider definitions.
  • Kuh et al. (2006) defined success as including academic achievement, engagement in educationally purposeful activities, satisfaction, and persistence.
  • Schreiner's (2010) concept of thriving also broadens the definition to include engaged learning, academic determination, positive perspective, and social connectedness.
• The Point of Contention: A key debate highlighted is whether engagement is a component of success (Kuh's view) or merely a mediating variable that leads to success (York et al.'s view). This paper uses the student voice to weigh in on this debate.
• The Missing Piece: The authors found only two recent studies that incorporated the student voice. Naylor (2017) found students value completion, achievement, and belonging. Hannon et al. (2017) found students also included balancing commitments and feeling happy. This paper builds directly on this nascent area by providing in-depth, longitudinal qualitative data.

Theoretical Framework:

The analysis is guided by Kahu's (2013) conceptual framework of student engagement, later refined by Kahu & Nelson (2017). This framework is crucial for understanding the paper's structure and interpretation.

Image 1 shows that the student experience is a complex, dynamic process occurring within a Sociocultural context.

• It begins with Structural influences (university policies, student background) and Psychosocial influences (teaching quality, student motivation).
• These influences shape the Educational interface, where key psychological factors (Self-efficacy, Emotions, Belonging, Wellbeing) interact with Student engagement (Emotional, Cognitive, Behavioural).
• This engagement leads to Immediate outcomes (knowledge, skills, satisfaction) and Long term outcomes (retention, work success).
• The bi-directional arrows highlight a cyclical process: for example, positive emotions increase engagement, which leads to good outcomes, which in turn fosters more positive emotions. This paper uses the framework to explore where "success" fits into this picture from a student's perspective.

4. Methodology (Core Technology & Implementation)

This study employed a qualitative, longitudinal research design to capture rich, in-depth data about the student experience over time.

• Participants:

  • 19 first-year students (11 female, 8 male) at an Australian regional university.
  • All participants were 17 years old at the start of the study, full-time, and campus-based.
  • They were enrolled in a diverse range of disciplines (health, business, arts, law, etc.).
  • Notably, 11 of the 19 students were first in their family to attend university, a demographic often considered at higher risk of attrition.

• Data Collection:

  • Pre-semester interview: A one-hour interview was conducted before the semester began to capture students' expectations.
  • Weekly interviews: 18 of the 19 students participated in weekly 15-minute semi-structured interviews during their first two semesters. On average, each student completed 20 interviews.
  • The semi-structured format allowed the interviewer (the first author) to ask guiding questions while also giving students the freedom to discuss what was most important to them that week.

• Data Analysis:

  • The researchers used a three-phase thematic analysis approach, a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within qualitative data.
  • Phase 1 (Organisational): The entire dataset was coded deductively using the concepts from the Kahu & Nelson (2017) engagement framework. During this phase, success was identified as a theoretically interesting theme that emerged frequently.
  • Phase 2 (Substantive): The data subset related to success was analyzed again, this time using an inductive approach where themes were developed directly from the data without preconceived categories. The researchers went back to the full dataset to search for any related data they might have missed.
  • Phase 3 (Theoretical): The final themes and findings were framed and discussed in relation to existing theories and literature on student success and engagement.

5. Experimental Setup

As a qualitative study, this paper does not have a traditional "experimental setup" with control groups and quantitative metrics. Instead, the "setup" refers to the context and design of the research.

• Research Context: The study was conducted at a single Australian regional university. This context is important, as students at regional universities may have different backgrounds, motivations, and experiences compared to those at large metropolitan institutions.
• Data Corpus: The primary "dataset" consists of the transcripts from hundreds of semi-structured interviews conducted over the course of an entire academic year with 19 students.
• Evaluation Approach: The "evaluation" of the data was not based on statistical metrics but on the rigor of the thematic analysis. The three-phase process, combining deductive and inductive coding and ongoing discussion among the researchers, was designed to ensure the integrity and validity of the emergent themes.

6. Results & Analysis

The findings reveal that students' understanding of success is multi-layered and evolves over the semester. The key themes are presented below with illustrative quotes.

Early Perceptions of Success

• In the first few weeks, students lacked external validation (like grades) and felt uncertain.
• Their primary measure of success was behavioural: managing their workload and meeting deadlines. As one student, Mia, said: "I feel like I'm relatively on top of everything."
• Early formative feedback from teaching staff was a powerful and critical early indicator of success. It provided reassurance, boosted confidence, and helped form a student's identity as someone who "can actually be a uni student successfully."

Academic Outcomes

• Grades were a clear and reliable measure of success for most students. For some, it was the most important indicator.
• The meaning of a "successful" grade was highly individual. For one student, a "pass" was successful; for another, only a "high distinction" counted.
• Success was also comparative. As Matthew noted, getting "above the average mark" made him feel more successful.
• Grades served to validate their behavioural efforts. A good grade confirmed they were "doing something right" (Isaac).
• Interestingly, the acquisition of knowledge or skills was rarely mentioned as a measure of success.

Behavioural Engagement

• Crucially, students saw their behaviours not just as a means to an end (good grades) but as a form of success in itself.
• Successful behaviours included being prepared, participating in class, managing time effectively, and, most importantly, working hard and trying one's best.
• Melanie's quote captures this sentiment perfectly: "not always achieving good marks. Just knowing that I've put in 100%... That satisfaction."
• This finding directly supports the argument of Kuh et al. (2006) that engagement is a dimension of success, challenging the view of York et al. (2015).

Success in the Educational Interface (Psychosocial Dimensions)

• Happiness and Positive Emotions: Success was deeply connected to feeling good.
  • Some students saw happiness as a prerequisite for success. A successful student was described as "hard-working, determined, happy" (Isaac).
  • For others, positive emotions like satisfaction and pride were an outcome of success.
  • One student, Sienna, saw success as balancing study with her social life because "Happiness is also success."
• Self-Efficacy: Achieving success (e.g., getting a good grade) directly increased students' belief in their ability to continue succeeding. Felix explained success as "knowing that I've still got that positive outlook of, 'Hey, I can keep doing this'".
• Course Belonging: Success was linked to feeling like they were in the right place. Good grades reassured students that they had chosen the right course and belonged there. As Peter stated, "Knowing I'm succeeding is my belonging."

7. Conclusion & Reflections

• Conclusion Summary: The paper concludes that for first-year students, success is a complex, multifaceted concept that goes far beyond institutional metrics. It is a dynamic cycle where behavioural engagement provides an immediate sense of accomplishment, which is then validated by institutional measures (grades and feedback). This validation generates positive psychosocial outcomes, including happiness, satisfaction, increased self-efficacy, and a sense of course belonging. These positive feelings, in turn, motivate deeper engagement, creating a positive spiral of success.

• Limitations & Future Work:

  • The authors acknowledge that the study's findings are specific to its context: first-year, on-campus students at a single regional university in Australia.
  • They call for further research with different student cohorts (e.g., students at metropolitan universities, in vocational courses, from different equity groups) who may define and experience success differently. Comparative research would be particularly valuable.

• Personal Insights & Critique:

  • Contribution: This paper makes a significant contribution by providing rich, empirical evidence from the student perspective, shifting the conversation about success from a purely administrative concern to a holistic student experience issue. The longitudinal design is a major strength, allowing for a view of how perceptions of success evolve.
  • Practical Implications: The findings offer clear, actionable advice for universities. The importance of early, low-stakes formative feedback cannot be overstated. It is a crucial tool for building confidence and identity in the uncertain early weeks. Institutions should also consider how to help students reflect on their behaviours as a form of success, not just their grades. A mid-semester survey asking students if they feel successful, rather than just asking about their grades, could identify at-risk students who might otherwise be overlooked.
  • Theoretical Impact: The study provides strong support for frameworks that conceptualize success broadly (like Kuh et al., 2006 and Schreiner, 2010) and challenges narrower, outcome-focused definitions. It demonstrates that the elements in the "Educational Interface" of Kahu's framework (emotions, belonging, self-efficacy) are not just inputs but are deeply intertwined with students' very definition of what it means to succeed.