Regional Australian University Research Articles

First year allied health student transition to a regional university.

Students from regional and remote backgrounds are more likely to stay and work in regional and remote locations. Health students transition and retention at university impacts the retainment of a competent rural health workforce. This study aimed to examine the perceptions of allied health students as they reflected upon their first six weeks at university and identified strategies which enhanced these experiences. A cross-sectional study. Surveys were administered to students who then completed a reflection exercise. Data were analysed using Pearson correlation coefficient and chi-squares. An Australian regional university. First year occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech pathology students. Factors influencing the first 6weeks at university. One hundred and forty-three students participated. Homesickness was the major challenge in transitioning to university life. Subthemes identified were adjusting to being away from home, adjusting to university culture and the mature-aged student. Specific issues included a lack of familiarity with university campuses and services, being unprepared for the workload and confusion while learning new skills. Orientation week activities assist students transition into university and age-appropriate and family-friendly activities should be considered for mature-age students. All students were found to benefit from support to address economic pressures and skill development focusing on coping with university workload. The development of regional university policy including these strategies is likely to enhance student success.

The WIL to learn: students’ perspectives on the impact of work-integrated learning placements on their professional readiness

ABSTRACT Work-integrated learning (WIL) has assumed life as a central feature of higher education curriculum design in a wide range of disciplines with the ultimate goal of producing work-ready graduates. Under recent Australian government initiatives affecting teacher education, placement forms of WIL have been touted as the panacea for perceived problems with graduate teacher quality; resulting in the national regulation of placement design and length in this discipline. This article reports the findings of a qualitative study into the perspectives of fifteen teacher education students from one regional Australian university. The study investigated these students’ placement experiences and the impact of these experiences on their perceptions of readiness for a career in the teaching profession. Thematic analysis is the method used to identify two key themes in the data collected through semi-structured interviews. Despite recognising the benefits of real-world opportunities for skill development and practice inherent in WIL placement experiences, the study highlights important limitations of these forms of WIL on the development of professional readiness arising from the contextual features of particular placement sites; relationships with workplace supervisors and performance pressure associated with assessment during placements. These findings not only confirm the importance of social processes in the preparation of work-ready graduates but question reliance on placement forms of WIL learning for nurturing graduates’ readiness for professional work.

Students’ conceptual understanding and attitudes towards technology and user experience before and after use of an ePortfolio

EPortfolio use meets institutional reporting requirements and provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate learning, showcase their strengths to future employers, and develop lifelong reflective practice. At the same time, ePortfolio use offers students repeated opportunities to develop the skills necessary for academic progress and participation in contemporary online professional environments. To ensure that any ePortfolio implementation is making a positive impact across these areas it is important to be informed about the users’ attitudes, conceptual understanding and achievements when using this pedagogical and professional tool. We report student ePortfolio use at an Australian regional university. The paper compares students’ conceptual understanding and attitudes towards technology and user experience before and after use of an ePortfolio. It provides an overview of pertinent literature, outlines the research context and methodology, followed by the comparison results. Its contribution to ePortfolio research and practice, and implications for educators and institutional decision makers are also discussed. These results highlight the importance of adopting innovative ways to reinforce the value of ePortfolio for students through external motivation until they adopt their career persona and become intrinsically motivated to embrace strategies and tools that facilitate their progression.

Experiences of internationally qualified registered nurses enrolled in a bridging program in Australia: A pilot study

BackgroundThe recruitment of internationally qualified registered nurses (IQNs) is one strategy to meet Australia’s healthcare needs. New Australian Standards require some IQNs to complete an approved bridging program run by an eligible higher education institution in Australia. Little is known about the experiences of the IQNs enrolled in these bridging programs or their intention to remain in the workforce. AimThe aim of this pilot study was to investigate the experiences of IQNs enrolled in an approved bridging program and explore their intention to remain and seek employment in the Australian healthcare system. MethodsStudents enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Australian Nursing program for internationally qualified registered nurses at a regional Australian university were invited to participate. A longitudinal, mixed-methods, exploratory design was used. Participants completed the Six-dimension Scale of Nursing Performance (Schwirian, 1978) and the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey (Casey et al., 2004) pre, and post-program, and also participated in post-program focus groups. FindingsThe program met participant expectations, provided confidence in clinical practice and perceived competence, particularly in the leadership domain. However, the cultural differences and expectations in nursing and academia experienced by participants require further investigation and intervention. Over time, the participants experienced stress related to social and financial issues, with the greatest concern around gaining employment. All participants indicated their intention to remain and seek employment in the Australian healthcare system. DiscussionIQNs enrolled in approved bridging programs intend to remain in the workforce. Consideration of how to support IQNs experiencing social and financial stress, and achieve successful employment post program is warranted. ConclusionA transition to professional practice program may support the integration of IQNs into the Australian healthcare workforce.

Integrated ‘one-stop’ support for student success: recommendations from a regional university case study

ABSTRACTCohesive integration practices within ‘one-stop’ student support services are critical for student success, however empirical studies in this area are limited in number and scope. This case study addresses this gap by exploring the lived experience of staff and managers who support students at a regional Australian university’s integrated student service. This integrated service provides students with support through the following services: the library, ICT help, student support and retention, learning support and student services. Semi-structured interviews with integrated service managers and staff, alongside observations of front-facing staff and students, provided the data set for this research. Thematic analysis was used to code 18 interview transcripts and seven observation journal entries to analyse and develop themes of experience. The five identified themes form a hierarchal relationship across individual and interpersonal levels of participant experience. On the individual level, are the themes of understanding, skills and student-centred philosophy. Building upon these individual-level themes are the two interpersonal level themes of communication and collaboration. Recommendations derived from these findings encompass practical strategies for universities looking to enhance their integrated service point operations. These strategies include comprehensive professional development, enhancing communication and supporting collaborations. Overall, this case study highlights the critical interpersonal and individual factors that affect this integrated service’s ability to support student success.

Drowning in the shallows: an Australian study of the PhD experience of wellbeing

ABSTRACT The number of students undertaking PhD studies is growing substantially; however, recent research indicates that doctoral students experience poor wellbeing outcomes during candidature. A study of doctoral student experiences at a regional Australian university (n = 222) explored some of the challenges that PhD students experience during their studies. Doctoral study requires deep sustained engagement to successfully contribute to a scholarly field, yet findings suggested that many PhD students experienced shallow supports, which they perceived as insufficient to meet their candidature needs. PhD student experiences are visualised through Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems model and the authors draw upon Bauman’s liquid modernity to trouble impacts of contemporary accountability and performative practices in postgraduate research. The authors propose that liquid institutional support encourages PhD student success to rest largely on self-navigation, individual resourcefulness and the ability to locate anchoring ports.

Remembering Australia’s past project: pre-service history teachers, national narratives and historical consciousness

Historical consciousness is a complex phenomenon that has been defined, in the North American tradition, as how we understand and relate, both cognitively and affectively, to the past (Seixas 2006), and in the German tradition from which it arose, as the act of orienting oneself in time through the construction of narratives about the past (Rusen, 2004). It manifests through the narratives we use to make meaning of the past and our relationship and attitude to particular times, events and groups. In post-colonial Australia, the so-named History Wars controversy of the 1990s and early twenty-first century brought into question how aspects of national history should be interpreted and how they should be represented in everyday historical cultures, such as museums and film, and in school curricula (MaciIntyre and Clark 2004; Sharp 2017). The Remembering Australia’s Past (RAP) project, conducted by a history research group at an Australian regional university in New South Wales, sought to examine how pre-service history teachers articulate a narrative of national history. These participants engaged in the study of history during or in the immediate aftermath of the History Wars, and they will have an important influence as future History teachers. Using an open-ended narrative methodology, the project aimed to explore what pre-service History teachers know, understand and believe is important about Australia’s past. This paper will report on what events, people and groups were viewed as historically significant in these national narratives and make some preliminary observations on the influences that shape the pre-service History teachers’ national narratives.

P111 Australian Nutrition and Dietetic Students’ Familiarity with Dimensions of Sustainability

Background There is increased focus on integrating sustainability in University level nutrition and dietetic curriculum, however developing relevant learning activities and assessment can be challenging due to varied experiences and views of this topic. Understanding the student perspective can provide interesting and important insights which may identify current curriculum needs and student knowledge gaps. Objective To describe a cohort of Australian nutrition and dietetic (N&D) students’ familiarity with dimensions of sustainability. Study Design, Settings, Participants An observational cross-sectional study was undertaken using a self-administered online survey completed by 95 N&D students enrolled in a nutrition or dietetic undergraduate course at a regional Australian University. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Familiarity with sustainability and related concepts of social development, environmental integrity, economic resilience and cross-cutting issues (relating to social, economic and environmental sustainability), were measured on a five-point Likert scale (1: very familiar - 5: not at all familiar). Descriptive statistics were calculated. Results Most students reported being very familiar (28%), quite familiar (45%), or familiar (23%) with the term sustainability. A greater proportion of students were very or quite familiar with the term environmental sustainability (75%), compared to economic (47%) and social (22%) sustainability. The sustainability related issue of widespread availability of highly processed foods (environmental integrity concept) and secure livelihoods (economic resilience concept) had the highest level of familiarity (90.5% and 80% very or quite familiar respectively), while least reported familiarity was living conditions of farm labourers (social development concept) and the use of food and agricultural policies (cross-cutting concept) (41% somewhat or not at all familiar respectively). Conclusions Students reported varying levels of familiarity with terminology and concepts of sustainability. Identification of gaps and areas of student interest may assist with the design of curriculum and associated learning, teaching and assessment resources.

Developing a New Generation MOOC (ngMOOC): A Design-Based Implementation Research Project with Cognitive Architecture and Student Feedback in Mind

Abstract This paper describes a design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach to the development and trialling of a new generation massive open online course (ngMOOC) situated in an instructional setting of undergraduate mathematics at a regional Australian university. This process is underscored by two important innovations: (a) a basis in a well-established human cognitive architecture in terms of cognitive load theory; and (b) point-of-contact feedback based in a well-tested online system dedicated to enhancing the learning process. Analysis of preliminary trials suggests that the DBIR approach to the ngMOOC construction and development supports theoretical standpoints that argue for an understanding of how design for optimal learning can utilise conditions, such as differing online or blended educational contexts, in order to be effective and scalable. The ngMOOC development described in this paper marks the adoption of a cognitive architecture in conjunction with feedback systems, offering the groundwork for use of adaptive systems that cater for learner expertise. This approach seems especially useful in constructing and developing online learning that is self-paced and curriculum-based.

Regionalism, Well-Being, and Domestic Violence in Tony Birch’s “The Red House”

It is generally accepted that the creative arts make a positive contribution to regional well-being and a diverse range of actors (government bodies, commercial entities, artists, researchers) are active in this space. Given this, it is concerning that the voices of creative artists themselves are sometimes not heard in the conversation. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s work on “resistant speech” is important here for the strategic recourse it offers to a range of subalternate populations, including regional artists, women and children, and for its solidarity with modes of being reliant on qualitative research engagements. Admittedly, examples of creative work that dramatize and interrogate the problem of well-being across the divide between urban and regional areas are comparatively rare. One standout is Tony Birch’s short story “The Red House” (2006), in which a storyline of well-being under threat from domestic violence is interwoven with a peripatetic narrative of the characters’ movements within the city of Melbourne and between the regional community of Clunes and Melbourne. As the lead piece in Birch’s collection of linked stories, Shadowboxing, “The Red House” is a significant literary exploration of how a variety of human relationships and responses to place (regional and urban) might bring about, but also help to alleviate, the circumstances of domestic violence as a threat to the well-being of women and children. Even as it posits a link between regional life and well-being, “The Red House” eschews a simple binary opposition between bucolic Clunes and the inner-city grime and unease of Fitzroy. Some of the violence and threats to well-being sourced from Melbourne re-appear in Clunes, while certain props of well-being first experienced in Clunes are subtly reincorporated back into the red house in Fitzroy. The relationship between medical well-being (health) and well-being as a more general index of happiness, comfort and security is also explored. Birch’s story is a valuable, fine-grained creative analysis of well-being (extending from happiness, comfort and security to the negative well-being that is domestic violence), which is matched to an equally fine-grained engagement with multiple modalities of place. It contests certain more reductive definitions of the regional and challenges the reader to creatively re-think how regionalism and well-being might align.

Has the open door become a revolving door? The impact on attrition of moving from elite to mass higher education

ABSTRACT As higher education has made the transition from elite to mass enrolments, the student body has become more diverse and online and blended learning have become more common. This study aimed to examine the impacts on attrition of admitting a more diverse student body with the shift towards online and blended learning. A hypothesised path model of attrition was tested with structural equation modelling. The model contained four presage variables related to the changed demographic of the student body and alternative modes of study; attendance mode, admission basis, remoteness and socio-economics status. There were two intervening variables; age and year of study. The two outcome variables were dropout and GPA value. The model was tested against a large sample of data from a student record system of a regional Australian university. The model showed a good fit to the data predicting that the expansion of higher education, along with the increasing use of online and blended learning, will impact on attrition.

The Challenges for Gender Equity and Women in Leadership in a Distributed University in Regional Australia

The barriers to women’s achievement and career progression in the higher education sector have been well researched. It has long been acknowledged that career breaks for child-rearing, and women’s self-beliefs about their abilities can impact negatively on their careers, and many programs and policies have been implemented to redress these around the world. This article is focussed around a regional Australian university, with multiple campuses distributed over 1000 km across two states. Courses, schools, and work teams are often spread across multiple campuses, and travel between campuses is sometimes a necessity; one that is time-consuming and requires time away from family. For some women, travelling is not possible due to family and other commitments or constraints. This paper explores how working in a regional university, with distributed campuses, has an additional impact on women’s career progression. Through auto-ethnographic accounts of four female staff members, we explore the intersection of gender and location through case studies of personal experiences, investigating the effects that distance and travel limitations can have on participation in work team and networking events, access to professional development opportunities, and career progression within the institution.

Development and Application of a Distributed Leadership Framework to the Curriculum Mapping of Quantitative Skills in First-Year Undergraduate Agriculture Degrees

Quantitative skills (QS), the ability to use mathematical and statistical reasoning in context, are considered essential threshold learning outcomes in Australian university agricultural courses (degrees). Curriculum mapping can be used to determine how the existing curriculum fosters the development of QS, and identify where opportunities for skills development are missing in the curriculum. To address the challenges of curriculum mapping this paper describes the development and application of a modified distributed leadership model based on the merging of Kotter’s eight steps for structural change (2014) and Jones, Hadgraft, Harvey, Lefoe and Ryland’s framework for distributed leadership (2014). Distributed leadership is built on the foundations of change theory, moving beyond the traditional leadership boundaries and has been increasingly used in higher education. This case study demonstrates how distributed leadership has been used successfully in determining the graduate level QS and driving the mapping process for the first-year curriculum. Curriculum maps showed when the QS were taught, practiced and assessed across 10 science degrees, including three agriculture degrees, at a regional Australian university. As a result, holistic curriculum changes were flagged with the aim of enhancing QS development for both on campus and distance learning students.

Do health warnings on cigarette sticks dissuade smokers and non-smokers? A focus group and interview study of Australian university students.

Introduction: Young adults are a vulnerable population for experimentation with tobacco, which can lead to lifelong addiction. In an effort to ensure reductions in tobacco use through improved health promotion materials, we explored young adults’ perceptions of current Australian packaging warnings, and novel health warnings on individual cigarette sticks.Methods: Focus groups and interviews were conducted with smoking and non-smoking first-year undergraduate university students at a regional Australian university. Semi-structured questions were used to gather participant perceptions. Sixteen students participated across three focus groups, and eleven students participated in the phone interviews. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis in NVivo.Results: Six emergent themes were identified. Current cigarette packaging warnings were seen as ineffective, being disregarded by current smokers (theme 1), and seen as irrelevant by young adult smokers and non-smokers (theme 2). Several cigarette stick warnings were perceived as engaging and effective, due to the novelty of the cigarette stick as a medium (theme 3), and the proximal nature of the warnings used (theme 4). The warning depicting the financial consequences of smoking was considered the most effective, followed by the impact of smoking on personal appearance, and the “minutes of life lost” warning. Social media (theme 5), and the use of more supportive messages to assist smokers (theme 6) were considered the best next steps as tobacco control interventions.Conclusions: Supplementing packaging warnings which were seen as minimally effective in this study, using cigarette stick warnings and social media may lead to further reductions in tobacco use. New and relatable warnings such as the financial consequences of smoking and impact on personal appearance may be the most effective in dissuading young adults from smoking, particularly within the university environment.

Doctor Google, Health Literacy, and Individual Behavior: A Study of University Employees’ Knowledge of Health Guidelines and Normative Practices

ABSTRACTBackground: The success of public health campaigns to engender healthy behavior depends on effective communication of desired messages that inspire action utilizing health information that must be successfully understood. Research, however, illustrates that health guidelines are differentially interpreted, with health literacy and proclivities varying. Purpose: This article presents findings from a study examining major Australian health guidelines and behaviors regarding sun exposure, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and smoking. Methods: An online survey of rural and regional Australian university employees was designed and utilized to gather data about respondent health literacy relative to national guidelines. Results: Findings reveal disparate health literacy and behaviors among the 60 university employees surveyed, with antismoking being the most effectively communicated health message known and adopted. Discussion: Given that “Dr. Google” was respondents’ preferred source for health and health risk information, surpassing medical professionals, friends/family, and other media sources, the study raises concerns about the quality, availability, and suitability of Internet-based health information. Translation to Health Education Practice: Reconceptualizing health messages beyond “lose/gain” frameworks is suggested as a way to improve health knowledge to better assist individuals with negotiating conflicting content/quality of information available, differing health literacy, and differing sociocultural environments.A AJHE Self-Study quiz is online for this article via the SHAPE America Online Institute (SAOI) http://portal.shapeamerica.org/trn-Webinars

Chronicling engagement: students’ experience of online learning over time

ABSTRACTAlthough there is ample research into student engagement in online learning, much of this investigates the student experience through surveys administered at a fixed point in time, usually at the exit point of a single unit of study or course. The study described in this paper, by contrast, aimed to understand online student engagement over a whole semester, guided by two overarching questions: What factors impact students’ engagement over a semester? What factors account for fluctuation in engagement levels over time? This paper presents results from weekly feedback on online education students’ engagement over the length of one semester at a regional Australian university. It also chronicles in more depth the experiences of one student across the same semester. The findings offer longitudinal accounts of student engagement, demonstrating that levels of engagement fluctuate and are influenced by a variety of factors.

Taking a Studio Course in Distributed Software Engineering from a Large Local Cohort to a Small Global Cohort

One of the challenges of global software engineering courses is to bring the practices and experience of large geographically distributed teams into the local and time-limited environment of a classroom. Over the last 6 years, an on-campus studio course for software engineering has been developed at the University of Queensland (UQ) that places small teams of students on different features of a common product. This creates two layers of collaboration, as students work within their teams on individual features, and the teams must interoperate with many other teams on the common product. The class uses continuous integration practices and predominantly asynchronous communication channels (Slack and GitHub) to facilitate this collaboration. The original goal of this design was to ensure that students would authentically experience issues associated with realistically sized software projects, and learn to apply appropriate software engineering and collaboration practices to overcome them, in a course without significant extra staffing. Data from the development logs showed that most commits take place outside synchronous class hours, and the project operates as a temporally distributed team even though the students are geographically co-located. Since 2015, a course adapted from this format has also been taught at the University of New England (UNE), an Australian regional university that is also a longstanding provider of distance education. In this course, most students study online, and the class has to be able to work globally, because as well as students taking part from around Australia, there are also typically a small number of students taking part from overseas. Transferring the course to a smaller but predominantly online institution has allowed us to evaluate the distributed nature of the course, by considering what aspects of the course needed to change to support students who are geographically distributed, and comparing how the two cohorts behave. This has produced an overall course design, to teach professional distributed software engineering practices, that is adaptable from large classes to small, and from local to global.

Opportunities for intra-university collaborations in the new research environment

ABSTRACTNew opportunities for research collaborations within universities are explored through reflection on a recent collaboration between an academic researcher, the library and the eResearch Centre at a regional Australian university. Such opportunities arise from significant changes to the research landscape, including increased emphasis on open access publication of research outputs and the growth of eResearch capabilities. The latter has resulted in increases in data size and complexity and provides opportunities for collaboration across research institutions. This article reflects on the dynamics and assesses the outcomes of a collaboration formed during an externally funded open research data project. This project and a precursor project are briefly described, together with the specific contribution of each collaborator. Collaboration dynamics and the reasons for project success are assessed, as are implications for future research practice. Outcomes from eResearch collaborations may provide broader benefits to universities, as well as rewards to academic researchers.

Creating space for critical feminist social work pedagogy

INTRODUCTION: The practice and teaching of western social work is shaped within the institutional context of a predominately managerial higher education sector and neoliberal societal context that valorises the individual. Critical feminist social work educators face constraints and challenges when trying to imagine, co-construct, enact and improve ways to engage in the communal relationality of critical feminist pedagogy.APPROACH: In this article, the authors draw upon the literature and use a reflective, inductive approach to explore and analyse observations made about efforts to engage with a subversive pedagogy whilst surviving in the neoliberal academy.CONCLUSION: While the article draws on experiences of social work teaching and research in a regional Australian university, the matters explored are likely to have resonance for social work education in other parts of the world. A tentative outline for thinking about the processes involved in co-creating a critical feminist pedagogical practice is offered.

Enabling success at university: the impact of an Australian programme to provide access to university

ABSTRACTIn Australia access to university studies is supported through students’ participation in government funded, pre-award programmes called ‘enabling’ programmes. These programmes allow students to meet university entry requirements and are designed to prepare students for the rigours of study. This article explores the performance and experience of students studying a range of undergraduate degrees after completing an enabling programme in a regional Australian university. Institutional data confirmed that post-enabling students in this study performed better in undergraduate programmes than traditionally enrolled students when grade point average (GPA), success and retention rates were compared. Students’ beliefs about the reason for this success were clustered within the six themes of confidence, ways of studying, managing lifeload, skills obtained, their attitudes to study, and the enabling programme staff and teaching. Students openly discussed their challenges and skills gained, and demonstrated confidence and resilience in undergraduate study. Staff reflections highlighted similar themes to those of the students, although in a different sequence of importance. Taken together, these three sets of results confirm that students who completed the enabling programme in this study were likely to succeed both personally and in their programmes of future study.