The Churchill Fellowship began with a visit to Manchester – a city of great tradition and growth having a city scape dotted with building sites and development – not surprisingly Manchester has one of the largest number of cranes (n=64) within a city centre. My two day visit was with Prof Claire Hamshire and colleagues in order to discuss… Read More
The Australian Learning and Teaching Fellows network includes Australia’s leading higher education scholars, who bring a wealth of experience in evidenced-based approaches to support student success and high-quality learning and teaching. In recognition of this expertise, they have created the ALTF Student Success blog: a forum for Fellows to share their insights and… Read More
That’s probably a conditioning from a working-class family that didn’t see university as an option. Honestly, when you sat down as a child and you said, “I want to be an astronaut” – that was not something that… that’s great when you’re five but by the time you’re 13, 14, living in a country town,… Read More
At many institutions, these weeks mark the beginning of university for a new cohort of first year students. Orientation Week (or O Week) is when we invite our commencing students onto campus, generally bombard them with lots of information, perhaps even feed them and generally squeeze as much exposure to the institution as is possible… Read More
Welcome to 2018! Following a slight hiatus on the First-in-Family blogs, I have prioritised a regular blog after receiving data on how many people actually read the blogs in 2016-2017 – with just under 2,000 reads I have been inspired to keep writing! One of the reasons the blog entries diminished was due to my… Read More
This week our blog comes from some University of Wollongong and AIME colleagues who are reflecting upon a five-year research partnership that has explored the success of this Indigenous Mentoring program at a national and international level. Warm regards, Sarah The [AIME] program … was definitely something for me that kept me there [attending… Read More
‘My higher education journey was facilitated by the encouragement and guidance of the people around me. The support that I received provided me with a sense of purpose in my studies and a sense of belonging to the university community.’ (Lisa, FiF student 2016) Part of my OLT Fellowship is exploring ways to foreground… Read More
‘I have learnt [university] is not as daunting as I thought…’ (Grandmother of School Student, Survey Respondent 2016) The quote above is derived from research that I have been conducting with the parents / caregivers of future university students, concerning respondents’ perceptions and understandings about university. The data from this research, combined with interviews and surveys… Read More
This week we welcome ‘guest blogger’, Dr Cathy Stone who is currently a NCSEHE Equity Fellow exploring institutional factors affecting the academic success and retention of external, fully online undergraduate students, many of whom are first in their families to enrol in university. With Australian university student numbers set to increase as a result of the demand driven system… Read More
We’ve been working really hard to refine and bring together these overarching principles. They are the result of some great contributions from practitioners given through feedback and workshop activities across the country. The 7 Overarching Principles are: PRINCIPLE 1: Changing conversations: Engage with family and community. PRINCIPLE 2: Take the mystery out of university PRINCIPLE 3: Make… Read More