First-semester belonging changes around key moments, not in a straight line
Updated Apr 18, 2026
Belonging in first semester rarely moves in a neat upward line. A student can feel settled after one seminar, knocked sideways by a poor first assessment, then steadier again once they find the right peer group or a small class where they can speak. At Student Voice AI, we see the same pattern in early student voice data: transition is rarely one story. That is why Petrie J. A. C. van der Zanden, Tamara E. T. van Woezik and Paulien C. Meijer's Studies in Higher Education paper, "Stories of transition: sense of belonging in the first semester at university", matters for UK universities. It shows that first-semester belonging is shaped by key moments, and that students can experience those same moments in sharply different ways.
Context and research question
Belonging is now a familiar theme in transition, retention, and student experience work. The problem is that universities often talk about it as if it were stable enough to capture in one survey item or one induction check. This paper starts from a different assumption: belonging is dynamic, situated, and tied to context, including time, place, people, and students' own sense of who they are becoming.
The study took place at a Dutch public university and focused on first-year psychology students in their first semester. The context is still useful for UK higher education teams because it includes familiar features: a large first-year cohort, an introduction week, a mix of lectures and smaller group teaching, commuting students, and first-generation students. The authors interviewed 11 students in December and January, after they had completed their first assessments. Using semi-structured interviews, metaphor cards, and a timeline exercise, they asked a practical set of questions: how do students describe the development of belonging in the first semester, what elements do they associate with it, and which experiences shift it up or down?
Key findings
Belonging did not develop in one common pattern. Some students described a gradual increase or decrease in how much they felt they belonged. Others described sharper ups and downs across the semester. That matters because a single average score can smooth over the very fluctuation student experience teams need to see.
"The development of sense of belonging can be either gradual or fluctuating."
Students attached belonging to four distinct elements: Social, Academic, University, and Self. In practice, that means belonging was not only about friendship or fitting in socially. It also involved whether students felt academically capable, whether the institution itself felt like a place they could inhabit, and whether they still felt like themselves while adapting to university life. For UK teams, this is a useful corrective to survey designs that treat belonging as a single undifferentiated feeling.
The same transition moment could strengthen belonging for one student and weaken it for another. Introduction week is the clearest example. Some students found it helped them connect quickly with peers and the wider university. Others felt distress when they did not form friendships there and then. That distinction matters because universities often evaluate transition activities in aggregate, even though the same event can create reassurance for one group and disconnection for another.
Academic belonging often depended on smaller settings and competence cues. The paper shows that some students needed experiences that made them feel like legitimate university students before belonging grew. Discussion-based small groups and doing well in early assessments helped some participants feel academically at home. For UK institutions, that is important because comments about confusion, silence in class, or first-assessment anxiety may also be belonging evidence, not just teaching feedback.
The broader lesson is that belonging needs varied interventions, not one headline fix. Because students moved between social, academic, institutional, and personal interpretations of belonging, the authors argue for a variety of interventions and for helping students take some control over how belonging develops. That means universities should stop treating transition support as one programme with one outcome and start treating it as a set of linked moments that need different kinds of response.
Practical implications
First, UK universities should measure belonging across key moments rather than once in the first few weeks. Use induction feedback, then follow up after the first assessment period and later in the first term. Related evidence on welcome week attendance and peer belonging already shows that early activities can help, but this paper underlines that their effects do not settle the story. The benefit is a more accurate picture of when students start to connect, wobble, or recover.
Second, institutions should ask about different dimensions of belonging and pair scaled items with open text. A generic prompt such as "I feel I belong here" can still be useful, but it should be followed by questions that help explain whether the issue is friendship, academic confidence, navigating campus, or whether university still feels like a good fit. Prompts such as "What has most helped you feel part of your course this month?" and "What has made that harder?" are much more actionable when analysed with a defensible open-text methodology. That is where Student Voice Analytics fits naturally: it helps teams separate recurring social, academic, and practical barriers instead of reading a long comment list as one blur.
Third, universities should design multiple routes into belonging rather than assuming peer socialising will do all the work. This paper suggests some students need low-pressure peer contact, others need academic legitimacy, and others need clearer familiarity with the institution and its routines. In practice that points to smaller discussion spaces, structured peer contact after induction, clearer signalling before first assessments, and visible personal tutoring and tutor check-ins. The benefit is that more students can find an entry point that fits how they actually experience transition.
Fourth, teams should treat mixed responses to the same event as evidence, not noise. If one group praises introduction week while another says it intensified anxiety, that is not a reason to average the two away. It is a signal to segment transition feedback by commuter status, first-generation status, age, or other relevant characteristics, much as belonging can diverge later in first year for some groups. The benefit is better-targeted support instead of another generic belonging campaign.
FAQ
Q: How should universities apply this paper when designing first-semester feedback?
A: Build a small sequence rather than one survey. Ask a short belonging question after induction, repeat it after first assessments, and add one open-text prompt each time so students can explain what changed. Make sure the questions cover more than peer friendship, because this paper shows that academic confidence, familiarity with the institution, and students' sense of self can all shape whether they feel they belong.
Q: What are the methodological limits of this study?
A: This is a qualitative study of 11 first-year psychology students at one Dutch university, and all participants were female. It is therefore best read as evidence about mechanisms and interpretation, not prevalence across the sector. The value for UK higher education lies in the detail: it shows how students make sense of belonging in the first semester, and why the same transition moment can land very differently across individuals.
Q: What does this change about student voice practice more broadly?
A: It shifts student voice away from the idea of one transition score and towards a more dynamic model of listening. Universities should expect early comments to reflect movement, contradiction, and context, not just stable sentiment. That makes student voice more useful for transition work, because it helps teams see which moments, settings, and support routes are shaping belonging before disengagement becomes harder to undo.
References
[Paper Source]: P. J. A. C. van der Zanden, T. E. T. van Woezik and P. C. Meijer "Stories of transition: sense of belonging in the first semester at university" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2026.2635654
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