The first FYYE Forum of the year has traditional touchpoints of belonging and inclusion. This year, in contrast to reacting quickly to the impacts of Generative AI in early 2023, focus has shifted to the aligning with and connecting to long-term strategies and policies – both within UTS (e.g. the Student Experience Framework and the Support for Students Policy) and more broadly (the Australian Universities Accord and the Higher Education Support Act). A common outcome stands out among all of these: student success at the centre.
Thankfully, this is no ‘start from scratch’ situation for UTS. As Sally Kift explained in her keynote at the FFYE Forum, we are in rude health for delivering these outcomes, due to many existing strategies, practices and support systems already in place. This official requirement just gives us a lever to deliver it more formally.
In this blog, I plot my way through Sally’s trademark rapid-fire, maximalist slides and present back highlights. If you want to dig deeper, video recordings of the event are available on our YouTube channel.
Growing the pie
Sally noted that there have been more than a few naysayers and hot takes on the Accord’s plan, with a mixed bag of views captured in this blog post. The importance of “growing the pie” (improving access for all students) was highlighted in an article by Andrew Parfitt, UTS Vice-Chancellor and President, where he described the plan as ‘sound’. The Minister for Education, Jason Clare, went back to his Western Sydney roots to release the Accord Report at the launch of the Fairfield Connect Study Hub and later that week, at the Universities Australia Gala Dinner, noted that there were both artificial and invisible barriers to break down to open the door to greater equity.
Improving the quality
Sally pinpointed the following aspects of the Accord as focus areas for improving the quality of teaching and learning to accommodate the Accord’s focus on diversity and growth:
- Revised curricula and teaching methods and advances in pedagogy to fulfil the potential of high-quality online and hybrid learning models
- How to facilitate student belonging – Sally mentioned she found the infographic in this blog post a useful resource
- Assuring world-class learning and teaching via moving past a minimum (regulatory) standards approach – what Sally called ‘virtuous compliance’
- Teaching approaches and delivery to support more diverse student cohorts
- Better metrics for reliable and actionable data
- Raising the teaching quality, status, professionalism and training for teaching
- Harnessing digital delivery and AI
- Teaching informed by First Nations knowledge
- High-quality generic skills, including WIL
There are some great intentions and ambitious targets in the Accord – but how do we know if we are on the right track? How can we look at the big agenda and apply it to our own practice?
Transition Pedagogy
At UTS, student success is at the core of the Student Experience Framework, with its four themes of Academic Engagement, Belonging, Partnerships and Wellbeing, and the Student Partnership Agreement is a means to connect with the real student perspective. Also key is Transition Pedagogy: a guiding philosophy for intentional first-year curriculum design and support. This integrative framework harnesses curriculum as an academic and social organising device.
Transition Pedagogy can be applied through effective practice as guided by 6 curriculum principles:
- Proactive management of transition
- Acknowledge and mediate diversity
- Intentional, inclusive curriculum design
- Enable engagement, belonging and a relationship-rich education
- Inclusive, authentic, authenticated assessment
- Evaluation and monitoring for quality assurance/enhancement and timely support provision
Transition Pedagogy was further explored in a world-cafe-style activity with grant holders sharing their practice as connected to one of the Transition Pedagogy principles. This highlighted the importance of the FFYE program, as coordinated by Kathy Egea, in connecting the learning and teaching community with transition pedagogies and inclusive practices in collaborative spaces.
Being informed with data
Also during the two-hour event, Joanne Gray provided insight into a transparent process of using AI to connect with new students, while Sonal Singh reintroduced the Social Justice Framework that was explored in the previous FFYE Forum.
You can have a framework but you have to have data collected around it as well. UTS is the first institution in Australia that actually has institution-wide data – from each faculty, from each subject, from each course – around how our students are tracking, what their progression is looking like. But that data is also complimented by case studies.
Sonal Singh
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Very impressive to take this insightful and deep presentation and summarise it Chris! Nice work.