Connecting Our Future aims to develop and implement relevant evidence-based activities that impact society and science. Our goal is to understand what kind of activities work, how they work, and when and for whom they work.
We support and track students across significant transition periods to identify the key people and processes that impact these transitions. Furthermore we obtain detailed insight into the experiences, support needs, and ambitions of students at our university. Essential stakeholders such as students, parents, educators, and educational institutes are actively involved in all stages of the scientific process to refine our scientific outlook and ensure a needs-based approach. From this, we actively share our research results with the academic community and stakeholder groups in policy and practice.
Study Career & Important Transitions
Evidence shows that the study careers of historically underrepresented students in higher education, e.g. students with a migration background or first-generation students, differ from their peers. Consequently, we aim to investigate the micro, meso, and macro levels that affect study careers. We follow students longitudinally, focusing on crucial transition periods, such as primary to secondary education, secondary education to higher education, and higher education to doctoral studies.
Outreach Interventions
Through our interventions, Connecting Our Future reaches out to historically underrepresented students in primary, secondary, and higher education to enhance access and progression in higher education, increase a sense of belonging and promote well-being and student satisfaction. We aim to investigate the effectiveness of our interventions and examine the factors that impact their efficacy and successful implementation. As such, we are contributors to a growing global knowledge base on outreach interventions. We achieve this by comparing students before and after interventions and, additionally, between students who have participated with outreach interventions and students who have not. Furthermore, we conduct surveys amongst students and schools to examine how our interventions and efforts are received and can improve further. We feed these research insights back to practice to support the vital work of teachers, school leaders, and policymakers.
Student Well-being
Connecting Our Future strives to increase student well-being and student satisfaction of historically underrepresented students at EUR. We aim to obtain more in-depth insights into our students' experiences, well-being, and needs by conducting interviews, focus groups, and surveys with students during their student journey at EUR, starting from the moment of enrollment until the moment of graduation.
