An important question in higher education is how to retain as many students as possible
and support them in such a way that they graduate within the prescribed time. The first
bachelor year seems essential in this respect. Once students survive their first year and
decide to move on to their second bachelor year, the majority graduate within three of
4 years (Baars and Arnold 2014). In their review of the first-year experience, Harvey et al.
(2006) conclude that the experience of being a first year student who is ‘‘one of the
masses’’, of not being seen as an individual, is one of the main issues. Yorke argued that
the focus of the first year should be to provide for students’ individual needs, instead of
seeing first-year students as a potentially problematic group of students (Yorke 2000). The
review of Harvey et al. (2006) showed that students seem to prefer student-centred learning
environments and activating learning activities rather than lectures. Furthermore, activating
learning activities seem to be effective, provided students are well-prepared. Severiens
and Schmidt (2009) arrive at a similar conclusion on the basis of their literature overview:
most studies investigating the link between the extent to which course programmes are
student-centred on the one hand and promote academic success on the other hand, find
positive relationships between the two. This positive relationship can be explained by the
constructivist principle that student-centred learning environments invite students to
actively engage with the learning material. These learning environments require students to
cooperate with their peers on tasks and to deeply process the learning material (consisting
of authentic tasks), more than traditional learning environments do (Trigwell and Prosser
1991; Vermunt 1998). This also implies that student-centred learning environments make
use of relatively small groups. Thus, small group learning environments may provide an
answer to the question raised above: introducing such learning environments could help
more (first-year) students to obtain good study results, thereby improving the effectiveness