This report discusses the views of final year students and graduates who attended a TCD led, multi-institutional one-day workshop on what student success means to them, and what they identified as the facilitators of and barriers to achieving that success. The findings were based on the analysis of four types of inputs for the seminar: written submissions by students on the theme prior to the seminar, student talks, a panel discussion and workshop discussions on the day of the seminar. In order to have a framework to discuss the concept at the seminar, a thematic analysis was performed on the written submissions which students submitted prior to the seminar. Three broad categories of success were identified: academic, personal and social. While initially academic success features predominantly, as students progress through their studies, they develop a more holistic perspective where personal and social success become increasingly important to them. Student success is a broad concept. It is different for and personal to each student and changes with the student’s journey from initial entry to college through to graduation.

The aim of this resource is to explore what ‘student success’ means to students and to identify the main facilitators and barriers to students achieving that success. An important aspect of this resource is to hear the student voice on these questions. Final year students and first year alumni were asked to participate as they had progressed through several years of study and could therefore reflect on how they and their views had changed over the preceding years and also what they thought of their university experience as they prepared to enter the next stage of their lives. What the resource shows us is that definitions of student success are as varied as the number of students defining it. Every student that feels successful has an individual story of what that success means. There are a number of key points made by students in this resource that can help the reader better understand student success form the student perspective.