“The workshop was great, very useful. Great layout and enjoyed opportunities for questions and discussions.” Workshop attendee While this Fellowship is looking broadly at ways to engage with the family and community of first-in-family learners, a key facet is working closely with two case study sites, namely UOW and UNSW. In both sites,… Read More
The Australian Tertiary Education Manager’s Forum ran a special session on retaining students and invited me to present. My session was exploring ways to support and retain first-in-family students with a particular emphasis on how HE mentoring programs could be designed to focus on this particular cohort. Some of the take-home messages I delivered from my… Read More
“For those of us who work in the support roles or are involved in teaching students, there is a responsibility to not only acknowledge [students’] strengths but also foreground them in how we define and also, assist student cohorts. This then is the challenge as student populations increase in number and diversity, working within… Read More
“Rather than focus on what people lack, better understanding is gained from focusing on strengths in order to develop ways of understanding first-in-family students that seek to challenge notions of access and participation.” (O’Shea,2015) In November 2015, I was invited to the QUT Caboolture Campus to run a workshop on first-in-family learners. During the day,… Read More