The development of an evidence based, evidence generating framework for enhancing Indigenous student success at an Australian university.

Abstract

In 2019, Kurongkurl Katitjin, Centre for Indigenous Australian Education and Research at Edith Cowan University, set up a new Indigenous student support service with the aim of enabling Indigenous students to progress through their degree at rates commensurate with the broader student population. This was an opportunity to design the service on the best available evidence and to embed an ongoing evaluation system that would generate evidence of its efficacy and with that, the capacity of ongoing refinement. The design of the service synthesised material from four discourses; existing literature on Indigenous student success, the demography of students, and best practice for service provision for marginalised and student voices. Key values and a service mission were identified, these underpinned the process of design, and the operations of the service. A framework was developed that enabled the generation of quantitative and qualitative data about the efficacy of the service. This paper demonstrates the significance of the process of design as well as describing the service and its embedded evaluation system.