The present study investigates the characteristics which differentiate between first-year university students who maintain their high school averages (Maintainers: n = 165) and those whose averages decrease at least one letter grade (Decliners: n = 435). The 600 students entered first year at one of six Canadian Universities, which varied in size and ethnic diversity. Data were collected in August, prior to the start of school, and in November of first year. Multivariate analyses indicated significant group differences between Maintainers and Decliners on familial variables (gender, fathers' education level, but not family income, parental reciprocity, parental support or immigrant/generational status), psychological well-being (perceived stress in August and November, and November depression, self-esteem and health), and university adjustment (university plans, transition perception, time management and university adaptation). The current study addresses a gap in the existing academic achievement literature, while providing practical information to students, parents, and educators involved in the transition to university.

As research on virtual worlds gains increasing attention in educational, commercial, and military domains, a consideration of how player populations are 'reassembled' through social scientific data is a timely matter for communication scholars. This paper describes a large-scale study of virtual worlds in which participants were recruited at public gaming events, as opposed to through online means, and explores the dynamic relationships between players and contexts of play that this IntroductionThis paper reports on a mixed-methods study carried out across 20 public gameplay sites, including large-and small-scale local area network (LAN) parties, fan culture conventions, Internet cafés, and pub-based gaming nights. The purpose of this fieldwork was to document and compare the gamesrelated and games-based forms of communicative activity, particularly with regards to play in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), that different public venues make possible. This work merges qualitative research methods (participant observation and interviews) with quantitative data collection and analysis (via a survey administered to each participant), enabling a mixed-methods, multisite exploration of game-based computer-mediated communication in public settings. The sites at which we met participants to observe and discuss their play involved multiple and different configurations of * Accepted by previous editor Maria Bakardjieva social, technological, material, and economic resources -in other words, different virtual and material ''assemblages'' (Taylor, 2009) for public play. Participants included classmates playing at an Internet café after school before heading home for the evening; hobbyists brought together for a day of card, computer and tabletop gaming at fan culture events; ''clanmates'' commuting for hours, and sleeping in tents and cars, to spend time with one another at massive, multiday LAN events; and GLBTQ gaming enthusiasts congregating for gaming gatherings at a neighborhood pub.We situate this project alongside other current accounts of both public gaming and MMOG play, and we detail an approach that merges qualitative methods for studying players in public sites with a concern for generating quantitative accounts and analyses of MMOG-based interactions. The central question guiding this investigation is as follows: what happens to our understandings of the forms of sociality supported by networked digital games when the research sites are not individual online gaming environments, but rather the physical settings in which many players gather, publically, to play? We suggest that this marks a departure, both methodologically and ontologically, from the ways quantitative studies of MMOGs have conventionally been carried out, insofar as our research contexts allowed us to observe players' interactions, both computer-mediated and face-to-face, through direct observation instead of through survey self-report and/or in-game actions. We then briefly describe each of the public gaming contexts we visited, pointi...

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