The transition from one level of education to the next one has always been a challenge both for students and teachers alike, although the problems we have to face are quite different. In Hungary more and more emphasis has been laid on these transitional periods and researched since the political changes of the regime in 1989, among them the one from secondary education to the tertiary one has become especially important recently. To avoid, or at least to decrease dropout from higher education, several higher education institutions are trying to introduce different study programs or courses in order to facilitate learning for the first year students and help them recognize their own ways of learning and identify what kind of learners they are. At the University of Pannonia a new course was launched starting from the first semester of the 2023/24 academic year. The introduction of the methodological course started with the involvement of 814 students from the Faculties of Business and Economics, Engineering, Humanities, Information Technology. Based on the survey of their competences about learning, learning habits at their university entrance we have found that the students’ time management, their knowledge about learning support applications, learning goal setting and their skills concerning self-regulatory motivation must be developed. During the 2024/25 academic year we have modified our learning methodology course, in which we have developed online study material and offline trainings focusing on these fields. The results of the students’ feedback about the pilot course show that the students welcome a course like that and they find it more useful if this online course is accompanied by some face-to-face lessons as well. It suggests that the failure of learning methodology comes partly from the solely online learning environment they had to cope with during the pandemic, but it is also worth looking at the different faculties of the university where different academic fields are taught and the awareness of students about learning varies accordingly, indicating that various ways and aims of the learning process need various approaches. The results are also interesting from the point of view what kind of schools and learning environment our students come from and how it affects their self-reflective knowledge about their own learning.

Key words: methodology of learning, tertiary education, transition from secondary to higher education, self-reflection on learning