About
START Cambodia 3 Lines of Work
START Cambodia fosters the structural reform through activities organised around three interconnected axes or lines of work:
Line 1: More equitable access since upper secondary education stage
Line 1 focuses on supporting transition to Higher Education already at the Upper Secondary School stage. This is the period when learners need to make key career choices. At this stage the role of teachers is crucial in ensuring learners and their families - especially in the case of learners from less advantaged backgrounds - receive accurate and timely information and guidance. All learners need to be supported at this stage, and even more so learners from vulnerable groups. START Cambodia will create tailor-made information and didactic resources for Upper Secondary School teachers to use; and will develop training modules for pre-service and in-services teachers to discover how they can best accompany and support learners at this stage of transition. NIE experts, undergraduate students, and Upper Secondary School actors work together on these START Cambodia activities.
Line 2: First-year courses revision for stronger retention and academic success
Line 2 focuses on revising first-year undergraduate courses in ways that help promote stronger student retention and set all students for academic success. START Cambodia faculty members will experiment with active learning techniques and methodologies, identify those that work in their particular contexts, and create resources for all Cambodian Higher Education teachers.
First-year courses will also be revised with the aim of building in learning outcomes linked to transversal competences key for student retention and academic success. Students will be actively involved in this work as well, helping make choices in the first place and providing feedback on effectiveness of interactions. Students and academics will jointly work on revising the courses to better meet diverse - and especially vulnerable - students' needs.
Line 3: University schemes and structures for more inclusive transition to Higher Education
Line 3 focuses on schemes and structures Higher Education Institutions can put in place - beyond what can be done in the first-year subjects - in order to support students in transition from the moment one officially becomes a student and throughout the first semester or year:
- how undergraduate students from later years can support new-comers;
- how first-year undergraduates can be better introduced to the new expectations and key aspects of the university culture; and
- how institutional efforts can be best organised to make this stage of transition better for all students, especially those from less advantaged backgrounds.
Key Deliverables & Outcomes
- Didactical resources to prepare for transition to Higher Education – Infographics with information about (1) transition to Higher Education (HE), (2) competences required for success, (3) challenges experienced by 1st-year undergraduate students, & (4) responses to questions school teachers have about HE. These resources are intended to be used by secondary school teachers in career counseling sessions in order to help learners – especially representatives of vulnerable groups – to have accurate information about HE that learners need to better prepare [D2.1]
- Information capsules for learners and their families – Tiktok-style videos for (i) USS learners (encouraging to enrol in HE, helping with the choice of programme to enrol in, & responding to questions school learners have about HE/transition to HE, esp. learners from vulnerable groups) and (ii) families will little/no experience of HE (responding to questions family members have about transition to HE & ways to support their children in accessing HE and succeeding in HE studies) [D2.2]
- E-learning modules for (i) initial teacher training for Upper Secondary School teachers & (ii) in-service Upper Secondary School with activities that lead to discover D2.1 & D2.2 and identify ways to use these with learners & their families as didactical resources for ‘career counseling activities’, esp. learners from vulnerable groups.
- How Higher Education and Upper Secondary School Sectors can join efforts to achieve more equitable access to Higher Education at national level policy note – a document with concrete recommendations of actions found effective in engaging Higher Education and Upper Secondary School actors in joint effort aimed to achieve equitable access to Higher Education in Cambodia – actions that can be used to guide development of evidence-based policy on transition at national level.
- Innovative ways to put active learning principles in practice in your 1st-year undergraduate course – Collection of examples of Teaching and Learning activities that can strengthen retention and promote academic success – tried out in Cambodian 1st-year undergraduate courses with students from vulnerable groups. Based on key principles of active learning and illustrating how these can be put in practice in 1st-year undergraduate courses in different STEAM disciplines.
- How to help Cambodian vulnerable students succeed in HE by using active methodologies – Tutorial videos explaining how (elements of) active methodologies can be applied to solve challenges that those teaching Cambodian 1st-year undergraduates report as having the biggest negative effect on student retention & success – especially for vulnerable groups.
- Revised 1st-year curricula that help vulnerable students to develop soft skills required for study success – Curriculum proposals for 1st-year undergraduate STEAM courses which include learning outcomes linked to soft skills necessary to set less prepared students for success, with associated assessment, teaching and learning activities). Based on curriculum redesign conducted by project participants and piloted during the project lifetime.
- Guidelines for building & maintaining academic-student partnerships that can ensure stronger retention & higher academic success of ALL students – Step-by-step description of strategies that a Cambodian Higher Education Institution interested in promoting retention of less prepared students and academic success of ALL students can implement to revise 1st-year undergraduate curricula (strategies that engage students and academics as equal partners) – strategies that have been found effective in Cambodian context across multiple Higher Education Institutions and disciplines.
- “How to become an active and successful undergraduate student” E-module – Self-paced e-module that will allow new students to learn more about the university culture, what is expected of them as increasingly autonomous learners and how to use their time and effort best in order to achieve academic success.
- Student-to-student mentoring schemes – Students – both from privileged and vulnerable groups – will be trained to become mentors for new students from vulnerable groups. Mentoring schemes will be set up in SRU, RUPP, ITC & UHST and described for other Cambodian HEIs to be able to replicate.
- Student Success Units – Student Success Units (SSUs) will be established in SRU, RUPP, ITC & UHST. SSUs will bring together students, faculty, faculty developers and others at each HEI who will use START Cambodia deliverables in order to ensure inclusive transition, more equitable access, stronger retention and higher academic success rates for vulnerable groups.
- START-Cambodia Policy note for Education Strategic Plan – Lessons learned during the STAR Cambodia project implementation will be summarised as inputs for discussion when preparing Cambodian policy documents (Education Strategic Plan – ESP, etc.) for the post-project period.
START Cambodia Erasmus+ project: 101235749