Transition to university life is not seamless for a majority of Botswana’s secondary school completers seeking a STEM qualification. They enter the first year with a range of potential threats to their initial academic integration with their new institutions such as academic deficits acquired over their years of primary and secondary education and a learning loss arising from a nine-month wait to start classes. Utilizing a narrative review of the literature, this study sought to investigate developmental education interventions public universities in Botswana can proactively implement to improve the chances of matriculant’s academic success in their first year at university. Regular, avoidance and acceleration developmental education models are assessed in order to identify the most feasible intervention for the local context. Timely programmatic intervention is important for STEM students in their first year of university life given the importance of knowledge and skills in Mathematics and other critical core courses to the practical preparation of the next engineers and scientists, and the tendency for student departure from university to be at its highest during the first six weeks of the first semester of academic life.

Authors: Dawn Lyken-Segosebe, Michael Sparrow

Published in: Canada International Conference on Education, 2024

• Date of Conference: 23-25 July, 2024
• DOI: 10.20533/CICE.2024.0049
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-65-5
• Conference Location: Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada