Putting the cart before the horse? Driving student engagement through first year career identity development in a large multidisciplinary creative industries cohort

It is now widely accepted that first year students benefit from pedagogies which mediate and support their transitions to university, and assist them to develop an adaptive student identity. We present an initiative which takes an alternative and additional approach to this way of viewing the first year experience. Based on research into creative industries career trajectories, this initiative focuses on the establishment of nascent career identity and professional self-concept amongst 600 first semester Bachelor of Creative Industries (BCI) students at QUT. The BCI is offered as a three year undergraduate program involving self-selection of majors, minors and electives, and also as a four year double degree with Business and Law faculties. Students engage in a scaffolded process of initial career visioning and reflective course planning, based on their own industry and careers research, guided by industry-active academic and careers staff, and drawing upon the experiences of final year students.

Law student psychological distress, ADR and sweet-minded, sweet-eyed hope

Empirical studies conducted by both Australian and American researchers have established law school’s causative role in increasing law student psychological distress. The purpose of this article is to highlight the role that law school curriculum might play in addressing this problem. By utilising lessons from the field of positive psychology (and in particular hope theory) a first-year law subject at the Queensland University of Technology has been specifically designed to promote law student well-being. Traditional legal education and pedagogy do not hold the answers for addressing this social phenomenon. A first-year curriculum that introduces students to alternative dispute resolution, non-adversarial justice, resilience and the positive role of lawyers in society may go some way to addressing the law student well-being challenge.

Contextualising learning for a real-world university: how an inverted curriculum in the first year can help better student retention

An identified issue within higher education is the high rates of student attrition after the first year, especially in the STEM disciplines. To address this issue, it is essential to reexamine and redesign the first year curriculum to engage and retain the students' interests while also scaffolding their learning experience. This session reports on an initiative based on the principles of the “inverted curriculum” within the Bachelor of Technology (BIT) course at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) that began in 2009 and has resulted in a reduction in first-year attrition rates from 18% in 2008 to 10% in 2009 and 2010 despite a growth in student intake of 15% to 40% in the past two years. We present the process and methods that helped achieve this and initiate a discussion on the innovations that are possible within this concept of inverted curriculum and how it can be implemented.

The culture of the journey as structure of the landscape: an inquiry on mobility facilities and identity of place

The structure of the travel, meant as cultural activity, is proposed as a key to read and design the urban or rural landscape.

Identifying engaging features of schooling : assessing the psychometric soundness of student generated research

In this article we report on data analysed from a student project about attitudes to school and student perception of engagement and disengagement. The data were collected by students in an Australian study that employed the Young People as Researchers Model. Middle years students devised and administered a questionnaire to students in grade eight, nine and ten at a secondary school in Australia. A total of 239 students completed the questionnaire. The students completed the initial analysis which was followed by a more detailed analysis by the authors of this paper. The findings support the work of American, British and Australian researchers about the factors that influence engagement and disengagement from schooling. The reported outcomes from the student work and the secondary analysis indicate that students do have the capacity to undertake valid and meaningful research and can make informed contributions to school improvement and student engagement.

Factors facilitating or constraining the fieldwork practicum experience for culturally and linguistically diverse student teachers in Queensland schools

Increasing numbers of Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) students, both from the international and domestic sectors are undertaking teacher education programs at Australian universities. While many have positive practicum experiences, there are a significant number who experience difficulties. Little work has been done on viewing this situation from a sociocultural perspective where learning is seen as a form of socialisation into the different beliefs, values and practices of the new community, the placement school. This study argues that all student teachers, particularly pre-service CALD teachers, require active learning communities to become successful. Using perspectives derived from situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and community of practice theory (Wenger, 1998) this study illustrates the processes of learning and identity development and the factors that facilitate or constrain the practicum experience for CALD pre-service teachers. This study adopts a methodology that is grounded in narrative inquiry, with in-depth interview techniques used to explore CALD teachers’ experiences of their fieldwork practicum and their attempts to participate and practice successfully. The data derived from fourteen in-depth narratives of pre-service CALD teachers is analysed from a sociocultural perspective. The practicum for these students is an experience of legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice (the practicum school), and the complex nature of the social experience as they engaged in building their professional identity as a teacher is discussed. This analysis is used to propose recommendations and strategies at the faculty and school levels to support positive learning and practicum experiences for this group of student teachers.

Queer, student, activism

Queer student activists are a visible aspect of Australian tertiary communities. I explore the findings of interviews with eight queer student activists, whom were active between 2003 and 2006, in which they discuss their understandings of queer student activism and the way they see the university setting shaping their activism. These findings illustrate how the intersections of queer, student, activism, and their associated contexts, create a particular type of activism. This article thus contributes to queer history by demonstrating how one specific cultural subset does queer activism.

Team teaching : working together to promote student learning

This book chapter examines the concept of team teaching from the perspective of the various stakeholders, in order to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of team teaching for students, to consider the positive and negative dimensions of collaborative teaching for teachers, and to review the implications for educational administration. In addition, attention will be paid to the issues associated with team teaching in the context of e-learning. The chapter concludes with a case study which discusses how the implementation of collaborative teaching within the library and information science discipline at an Australian university helped develop the authors’ understanding of socially constructed knowledge.

Can we teach advertising students to think? Strategies to engage student thinking

Understanding and effectively managing students’ engagement in education plays a significant role in enhancing learning processes and outcomes. Research has shown that students learn more when they are actively engaged in their learning. However, as many educators know, this is not as easy as one might expect. Using a range of teaching approaches, we attempt to impart knowledge and develop understanding and comprehension (Angelo 1993; Biggs and Telfer 1987; Patti 2003; Ranburuth and McCormick 2001). These vary from “information dump” or teacher-centric approaches, to those that stimulate more active involvement. From the literature, we know that experiential learning, such as those strategies that help students acquire practice skills, apply critical thought and active learning, are likely to have achieve higher levels of intellectual skill and ability (Benson and Blackman 2003; Hampton and Lawrence 1995; Hopkinson and Hogg 2004; Kolb 1984).

An Econometric Analysis of Inter-Firm Labour Mobility

This paper utilizes the Survey of Work History (1981) data to examine the importance of non-random sampling in the context of a model of interfirm labour mobility. The paper adopts Heckman's two-step procedure in order to estimate a three-equation model incorporating an individual's mobility status as endogenously determined. The main conclusion is that in estimating wage equations it is important to consider the role of job mobility and to correct for the effects of sample-selection bias. The results generally accord with those reported by Osberg et al. (1986) in the only previous Canadian study of job mobility in a sample-selection context.

The evolution of QUT’s Student Success Program : 20,000 students later

“The Student Success Program (SSP) is a monitoring and early intervention program in operation at QUT designed to identify and support those students deemed to be at risk of disengaging for their learning and their institution” (Nelson, Quinn, Marrington & Clarke, 2011, p. 83). This report reflects on the development of the program since its inception in 2007. In acknowledging similar initiatives within the sector that monitor student learning engagement, the Nuts & Bolts session allows for identification and discussion of the critical success factors for these intervention and support programs.

Managing distraction and attention in diverse cohorts : 21st century challenges to law student engagement

It is imperative that we consider the use of current and emerging technologies in terms of the nature of our learners, the physical environment of the lecture theatre, and how technology may help to support appropriate pedagogies that facilitate the capturing of student attention in active engaging learning experiences. It is argued that a re-evaluation of pedagogy is required to address the tech-savy traits of the 21st century learner and the extent to which their mobile devices are capable of not only distracting them from learning but also enhancing face-to-face learning experiences.

Facilitating first year students’ engagement with planning education : utilising student affinity for technology to increase cohort cohesion and decrease attrition

First year students overwhelmingly indicate that a strong interest in a field of study prompts them to enrol in university (McInnis et al 2000), yet over a quarter indicate that they have seriously considered dropping out of studies during their first year, with boredom most frequently cited by those domestic students who do depart before graduation (Coates and Ransom 2011). While it may be comforting to write off such withdrawals to the presumed apathy of youth, student “disquiet (in) their first year on campus may be a result of courses and institutions that do not match their needs and objectives, rather than any uncertainty or lack of purpose on their part” (James et al 1999). Voting with their mouse clicks, The current research investigate two conceptualized types of student participation in online discussion forums to increase understanding of student affinity for technology and its potential for fostering social network development amongst first year students.

Moving beyond transition pedagogy: Maturity models and student engagement

Australian higher education institutions (HEIs) have entered a new phase of regulation and accreditation which includes performance-based funding relating to the participation and retention of students from social and cultural groups previously underrepresented in higher education. However, in addressing these priorities, it is critical that HEIs do not further disadvantage students from certain groups by identifying them for attention because of their social or cultural backgrounds, circumstances which are largely beyond the control of students. In response, many HEIs are focusing effort on university-wide approaches to enhancing the student experience because such approaches will enhance the engagement, success and retention of all students, and in doing so, particularly benefit those students who come from underrepresented groups. Measuring and benchmarking student experiences and engagement that arise from these efforts is well supported by extensive collections of student experience survey data. However no comparable instrument exists that measures the capability of institutions to influence and/or enhance student experiences where capability is an indication of how well an organisational process does what it is designed to do (Rosemann & de Bruin, 2005). This paper proposes that the concept of a maturity model (Marshall, 2010; Paulk, 1999) may be useful as a way of assessing the capability of HEIs to provide and implement student engagement, success and retention activities. We will describe the Student Engagement, Success and Retention Maturity Model (SESR-MM), (Clarke, Nelson & Stoodley, 2012; Nelson, Clarke & Stoodley, 2012) we are currently investigating. We will discuss if our research may address the current gap by facilitating the development of an SESR-MM instrument that aims (i) to enable institutions to assess the capability of their current student engagement and retention programs and strategies to influence and respond to student experiences within the institution; and (ii) to provide institutions with the opportunity to understand various practices across the sector with a view to further improving programs and practices relevant to their context. The first aim of our research is to extend the generational approach which has been useful in considering the evolutionary nature of the first year experience (FYE) (Wilson, 2009). Three generations have been identified and explored: First generation approaches that focus on co-curricular strategies (e.g. orientation and peer programs); Second generation approaches that focus on curriculum (e.g. pedagogy, curriculum design, and learning and teaching practice); and third generation approaches—also referred to as transition pedagogy—that focus on the production of an institution-wide integrated holistic intentional blend of curricular and co-curricular activities (Kift, Nelson & Clarke, 2010). The second aim of this research is to move beyond assessments of students’ experiences to focus on assessing institutional processes and their capability to influence student engagement. In essence, we propose to develop and use the maturity model concept to produce an instrument that will indicate the capability of HEIs to manage and improve student engagement, success and retention programs and strategies. References Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Australasian Survey of Student Engagement. Retrieved from http://www.acer.edu.au/research/ausse/background Clarke, J., Nelson, K., & Stoodley, I. (2012, July). The Maturity Model concept as framework for assessing the capability of higher education institutions to address student engagement, success and retention: New horizon or false dawn? A Nuts & Bolts presentation at the 15th International Conference on the First Year in Higher Education, “New Horizons,” Brisbane, Australia. Kift, S., Nelson, K., & Clarke, J. (2010) Transition pedagogy - a third generation approach to FYE: A case study of policy and practice for the higher education sector. The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 1(1), pp. 1-20. Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. (n.d.). The University Experience Survey. Advancing quality in higher education information sheet. Retrieved from http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Policy/Documents/University_Experience_Survey.pdf Marshall, S. (2010). A quality framework for continuous improvement of e-Learning: The e-Learning Maturity Model. Journal of Distance Education, 24(1), 143-166. Nelson, K., Clarke, J., & Stoodley, I. (2012). An exploration of the Maturity Model concept as a vehicle for higher education institutions to assess their capability to address student engagement. A work in progress. Submitted for publication. Paulk, M. (1999). Using the Software CMM with good judgment, ASQ Software Quality Professional, 1(3), 19-29. Wilson, K. (2009, June–July). The impact of institutional, programmatic and personal interventions on an effective and sustainable first-year student experience. Keynote address presented at the 12th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference, “Preparing for Tomorrow Today: The First Year as Foundation,” Townsville, Australia. Retrieved from http://www.fyhe.com.au/past_papers/papers09/ppts/Keithia_Wilson_paper.pdf