Abstract:

The transition to higher education presents significant challenges for first-year students, particularly in managing study time, prioritising academic tasks, and avoiding procrastination. Although time management is widely recognised as a key transversal competence, scalable classroom interventions that explicitly support self-regulation and self-leadership in large cohorts remain limited.

This paper presents the design and implementation of a structured classroom activity embedded in a transversal skills course at NOVA School of Science and Technology (Portugal). The intervention was implemented with 1155 first-year students across 34 class groups, including 31 national classes taught in Portuguese and 3 international classes taught in English, one of which is delivered at the NOVA Cairo campus. Students worked collaboratively in teams of five.

During a 30-minute classroom activity, each team constructed a realistic weekly plan using a digital calendar (e.g., Google Calendar), integrating academic commitments, study time, personal activities, and leisure. After creating the weekly plan, students identified behavioural obstacles that could compromise its execution, such as procrastination, time underestimation, or digital distractions. Each group then selected one critical obstacle and proposed a concrete self-leadership strategy to address it. A final reflection encouraged students to distinguish between controllable and external factors influencing time management.

The dataset analysed in this study consists of 224 group submissions, including calendar artefacts and structured written responses. A template-assisted coding framework was developed to examine four analytical dimensions: planning structure and realism, categories of perceived obstacles, specificity of proposed self-leadership strategies, and locus of control expressed in students’ reflections.

The main contribution of this work is a replicable classroom protocol supported by a practical toolkit (teacher script, student template, coding framework, and LMS integration guidelines). The study demonstrates how short digital planning activities can be transformed into structured self-leadership exercises that are transferable across educational contexts and adaptable to different educational levels, including secondary and early higher education.

References:
[1] Napiersky, U., & Woods, S. A. (2018). From the workplace to the classroom: Examining the impact of self-leadership learning strategies on higher educational attainment and success. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 55(4), 441–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1263232
[2] Xu, Z., Zhao, Y., Zhang, B., Liew, J., & Kogut, A. (2023). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of self-regulated learning interventions on academic achievement in online and blended environments in K-12 and higher education. Behaviour & Information Technology, 42(16), 2911–2931. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2022.2151935
[3] Sá, M. J., & Serpa, S. (2018). Transversal Competences: Their Importance and Learning Processes by Higher Education Students. Education Sciences, 8(3), 126. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8030126
[4] Belchior-Rocha, H., Casquilho-Martins, I., & Simões, E. (2022). Transversal Competencies for Employability: From Higher Education to the Labour Market. Education Sciences, 12(4), 255. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12040255

Keywords:

Self-regulation, time management, self-leadership, first-year experience, collaborative learning, digital planning, higher education innovation.