Edinburgh Napier University

  Widening participation in higher education continues to be a key focus for Scottish government and the 2013 Post-16 Education (Scotland) Act places obligations upon Universities to achieve progress in this regard. The Act also makes provision for Additional Funded Places enabling more college students to transfer into higher education with advance standing (Scottish Funding Council, 2013). This paper provides an overview of the Associate Student project to date and examines how rethinking traditional articulation can increase attainment for all. This model of articulation has created opportunities for partnership working between colleges and universities which are designed to enhance student progression and attainment and to better prepare students as they negotiate the transition between college HN study and university. The paper describes ‘building bridges’ (Fisher and Atkinson-Grosjean, 2002) through partnership working between college and university and the interventions put in place to better prepare students intending to progress to University. The paper deploys theoretical conceptions of academic transitions as ‘boundary crossing’ (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011) and explores how the effectiveness a range of practical measures and theoretical conceptions may be understood in terms of their potential as boundary objects (Star, 2010). The paper concludes that Associate Student status of itself is not sufficient to enable effective transitions, but that a programme of targeted learning opportunities and experiences is likely to improve confidence and motivation for university study, ensuring that students are well positioned to negotiate the transition to undergraduate programmes in their third year of study.