“It’s Hard to Make Friends on Zoom Calls”: Navigating ‘Culture Shock’ and Academic Identity Development in Higher Education.

This small-scale project investigated student academic identity development within a university setting. It focused on the challenges encountered by students at university, particularly when beginning higher education, and explored how these had an impact on their self-esteem, confidence, and academic engagement. The project explored the journeys that students undertook and the barriers that they experienced. The project collected data using focus groups and questionnaires, which took place between May and August 2023, and four participants took part. The data was analysed and the findings were reported under three key themes: digital spaces, expectations, and time and workload. In the first theme, participants collectively experienced similar concerns and stresses within the university’s digital spaces. For example, being unaware that a large portion of their course would be held online, which was in part due to COVID. For some, this led to difficulties in forging new relationships within a digital environment. In the second theme, participants held inaccurate or negative expectations about university life before their arrival, such as it being strict and exam-based. In the third theme, students' workloads and time commitments, exacerbated by COVID and the cost-of-living crisis, left little room for socialising and networking. The project also identified good practices and strategies aimed at supporting students to develop a confident academic identity.