Inspiring Achievement in First Year University Students Discussion Fora details

Forum 8: 1 December 2008
2:00pm - 4:00pm
Rm 329, IST Building

Inspiring Achievement in First Year University Students Forum 3 2008, Keynote Speakers: Verity Kingsmill, Graduate Skills Development Coordinator, Veronica Ghee and Heidi Savilla, Liaison Librarians, Flinders University.

Verity, Veronica and Heidi will discuss how the work they currently do with academic staff to provide support to first year students and possibilities of what they can do to inspire achievement in first year students. The Academic Development Team will also launch the new website for staff working with first year students at Flinders University.

Forum 7: 25 August 2008
9:30am - 12:30pm
Rm 329, IST Building

Inspiring Achievement in First Year University Students Forum 2 2008, Keynote Speaker: Dr Lynn Burnett, Griffith Institute for Higher Education, Griffith University

Dr Burnett is a lecturer in Higher Education her primary role is to coordinate the First Year Advisors at Griffith University. She works across the institution focussing on supporting staff with strategies for engaging students in the first year. Prior to this she was the was the First Year Experience Project Coordinator at The University of Queensland.

Dr Burnett's discussion will cover issues raised within the Inspiring Achievement in First Year University Students Working Party which include:

• Level of student engagement with university - high percentages of people not showing up for a lecture even in week 1,
• Communicating university expectations of students,
• Building bridges between supporting services (libraries, student learning centres, careers centres),
• Supporting international students and students with English as a second language.

Forum 6: 2 June 2008
9:30am - 12:30pm
Rm 329, IST Building

Inspiring Achievement in First Year University Students
Featuring a range or presenters from Flinders University who will showcase current practices which help to address issues of academic literacy, expectations, retention and attrition for first year students.

Aim:  To initiate discussion across the University about the importance of first year in addressing issues of academic literacy, expectations, retention and attrition.  To examine ways in which first year can be used to spark interest and build skills enhancing student success across their course of study.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Sally Kift. Professor of Law, Director of the First Year Experience Project, Queensland University of Technology.

Professor Kift was awarded a Carrick Senior Fellowship in 2006 to focus on the national learning and teaching priority of enhancing the first year experience of Australian higher education students. Her Carrick Fellowship “Articulating a transition pedagogy to scaffold and to enhance the first year student learning experience in Australian higher education” has contributed to the understanding of the first years student’s transition experience.

Aim:  To initiate discussion across the University about the importance of an institutional approach to the first year experience to address issues of transition, retention and attrition.  How intentional curriculum design might be harnessed to better mediate the first year experience will also be addressed

Changes to the Student Union: Implications for first year students

Visiting Scholar, Dai Hounsell, will be leading a workshop for teachers of First Year students and will be addressing issues of grading and giving feedback to First Year Students.

Dai Hounsell is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Edinburgh, where he is a member of the Moray House School of Education and was the founding director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. He has also held posts at Portsmouth, East London and Lancaster Universities and a Swedish Institute Visiting Fellowship at the University of Gothenburg. He is currently head of the Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project [http://www.ed.ac.uk/etl], which is a large-scale cross-institutional project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council as part of the Teaching and Learning Research Program His main area of research interest has been undergraduate learning and teaching, particularly in relation to academic discourse, assessment practices and their influence on the quality of learning, and the teaching implications of research on student learning.

This program is open to all disciplines, but is restricted to 20 people.