Harnessing the curriculum to mediate access to support for first year students.
Associate Professor Karen Nelson
Director, First Year Experience
Queensland University of Technology
QUT’s approach to managing the first year experience is founded on one central principle students must encounter curriculum that engages them in their learning and that mediates access to support. Our key strategy to implement this principle is the student success initiative (SSI). This initiative, which monitors student engagement in a holistic and systematic way, is designed to enhance the experience of commencing students by facilitating both persistence and academic performance. Its focus is on harnessing curriculum, the discipline and classroom experiences to create bridges between commencing students and the specialist support services available to assist them with their learning and/or management of issues that may be interfering with their ability to focus on their learning. The initiative has required the formalisation of an intra-institutional partnership between the five key groups: unit coordinators, the SSI team, specialist service providers (e.g. counsellors), student administrators, and the IT and systems team.
Associate Professor Karen Nelson - Bio
Associate Professor Karen Nelson is the Director, First Year Experience at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia. She has led several teaching and learning projects at QUT and is currently the co-leader of the three-year “Transitions-In” teaching and learning development project. Her research interests focus on student engagement, the first year experience and institutional responses to these, in particular intra-institutional practice partnerships. Karen entered academic life in 2002 following a successful career as an IT project manager and consultant and since then has received several QUT T&L awards. In 2007 she was awarded ALTC citation for curriculum design. Karen’s work as Director has three foci: curriculum design, institutional student support partnerships and staff development.
How do we know what’s working?: Institutional approaches for evaluating and monitoring first year interventions.
This session will discuss the institutional context for promoting and evaluating first year interventions. What are the possibilities, what are the major hurdles and how do we harness our disparate data collections for effective action to enhance the engagement and empowerment of first year students?
Bill Johnston - Bio
Bill Johnston is Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. He collaborates with academics to develop their courses and pedagogy, and to research and publish on these topics. He contributes to the University's academic staff development programme, including the post graduate certificate in advanced academic studies. His approach to educational development is student centred and entails: institutional strategic planning; curriculum development; course evaluation and design; academic staff development; and student learning support. His research interests include: information literacy and disciplinary difference; student employability and curriculum; the relationship between work and learning; and the first year experience.
Recently he has been involved with the Scottish Funding Council, Quality Assurance Agency's First Year Enhancement Theme. This is a major sector-wide programme of research and development combining international perspectives on the first year with in-depth case studies of good practice in Scottish universities. Bill is a member of the national steering committee for the theme, and co-director of a sector-wide, qualitative project to investigate student reflections on their expectations and experiences of first year, and their understandings of the key terms engagement and empowerment.
Bill is a member of the Society for Research in Higher Education, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
