Orientation and Transition Resources

Background Information

The current work on the ANU 2025 Strategic Plan demonstrates that the ANU community is committed to student experience, and to ensuring that we have a thriving and diverse student community. In order to assist commencing students of all levels succeed at ANU, we have a responsibility to support transition into the university in an intentional, holistic and coherent way.

Our current Orientation Week delivery requires a siginificant reform. The ANU orientation experience is extremely fragmented with low engagement with key orientation activities. This is compounded by a decentralised communication approach that effectively overwhelms students at a pivotal time in their student journey. ANU needs to improve how we support students as they transition to tertiary study and the university in an intentional, holistic and coherent way throughout a student’s first year of their degree.

An Orientation and Transition Framework has been designed to be implement across a diversity of contexts for a diversity of student groups. An agreed-on orientation and transition approach will improve student retention and ensure incoming students are set up for success academically and socially, preparing them as leaders in Australia and internationally in their chosen fields.

This page is aimed to provide information on the new Orientation and Transition Framework and whole of university approach. You can find resources, documents and symposium information in this page. If you have any questions, please contact student.experience@anu.edu.au 

Orientation and Transition Resources

The Orientation and Transition Symposium was held on the 3 November 2021 to launch the Orientation and Transition Framework. The event brought together over 200 academic staff, professional staff and student leaders accross the University. To encourage best practive and information sharing, resources relating to orientation and transition programming will be regularly updated on this page. 

Video Resources 
In the videos below, we interviewed a range of practitioners within ANU to share best-practices and experiences relating to first-year students.

• Video 1 - Aidan Delaney on SET4ANU Mentoring 
• Video 2 - Sai Campbell on students from low-SES backgrounds, overcoming adversity
• Video 3 – Simone Dennis on utilising podcasts to engage students in class
• Video 4 – Anna Cowan on diversity, equity and inclusion
• Video 5 – Dipika Nand on student experience and academics 

Orientation and Transition Framework and Symposium powerpoint slides
Please refer to the "reference documents" section of this page. Keynote presentation is available as sharepoint link. We request that you do not distribute Sally Kift's presentation externally. If you'd like to make a reference to Sally's presentation in the future, please contact us to seek permission from Saly Kift. 

Semester 1 2022 Orientation Week
Resources relating to S1 2022 O-Week will be updated in December.