Academic Well-Being as Transition Work: First-Semester Students’ Navigation in a Problem-Based Learning University

Abstract

Academic well-being is often examined as an individual condition or support need, but less is known about how students construct well-being during transition into demanding pedagogical environments. This qualitative study explores how first-semester students in a Danish Problem-Based Learning (PBL) university understood and sustained academic well-being. Semi-structured interviews with 17 students from health-related and engineering/technology-related programs were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings show that academic well-being was experienced as transition work: students made academic demands meaningful through relevance and purpose, developed confidence through emerging competence, negotiated support and vulnerability in teamwork, and managed autonomy within pedagogical and institutional structures. The study contributes to higher education research by showing how academic well-being emerges through interactions among intrapersonal resources, peer collaboration, and learning environments. It argues that transition support in PBL contexts should scaffold autonomy, collaboration, belonging, and academic meaning-making rather than treating well-being as an individual student responsibility alone.