Sessions 4 - 7

Session four (4E):  Shaping student experience and transition at ANU. ANU have overhauled their enrolment processes and orientation for their students: Simplifying procedures and clarifying communication. One of the changes to orientation was the students could download an app and create their own Orientation week schedule. They also created 8 “Uni Keys” which are short videos (cartoons with narration) that guide students through some of the aspects of orientation and enrolment that they find confusing. The new approach appears to be working well, although students living on-campus continue overall to have a better orientation experience than those who don’t.  Other people were at that session, so expect further insightful and coherent comment from them J

Sessions five and six focussed on the important of giving formative feedback.

Session five (5C): At the University of Queensland they found that although students were supposed to have achieved high school level chemistry this was not always the case and there were different student cohorts: some students had no chemistry background, some studied overseas, some had studied at school and thought they were ok, some had studied at school but a while ago. A group of academics developed a formative feedback strategy to inspire active self-regulated study. Students are tested using Concept Inventories and are then given formative feedback (not just the numeric value) so they would know what areas they need to focus on. The “diagnostic/intervention framework” is currently being trialled. Possibly a “watch this space” at this stage, but certainly presented some interesting ideas on getting students to be aware of their own knowledge and skill level early on in the semester.

Session six (6C): This session really just reiterated the importance of giving students formative feedback, even for students who do well – pointing out what they have done well can also aid learning. The general gist of the session was that effective and timely feedback can make a significant contribution to student learning and achievement. The argument was that assessment is part of the learning, and not just a measure of learning. Also raised, was that assessment has to be well designed to lend itself to formative feedback. The components of good feedback included: provide specific advice, easy to interpret, acknowledge achievements as well as shortcomings, language and tone used needs to be accessible (and appropriate), and feedback should be timely (which sometimes means before they hand it in).

Session seven (7B): The impact of online peer mentoring on first year student transition, problem solving skills and academic success. The programme is very similar to PASS (and our Peer Mentoring Groups). Biggest difference was that the students weren’t paid. The context is that this was trialled in the psychology department (University of Southern Queensland) and senior students were given the opportunity to try out some of their skills by mentoring first year students. It was described as assisting the transition in and out of university. The programme has shown to improve students’ problem solving skills. Other differences between that programme and PASS are that there are weekly de-brief sessions with the mentors, and there is a handbook to help train them. The mentoring sessions themselves consisted of using discussion forums on Moodle – an hour a week was set aside for a mentor to work with a small group of students.

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