News

In late May, we put out a call for FFYE grants. From a competitive process, a set of ten grants were successful. They all demonstrated:

1. Enhancing engagement and authentic learning through story-based pedagogy

  • Faculty: Business
  • Academic: Amir Armanious 

In Financial Literacy, first-year students often struggle to engage with abstract mathematical concepts, leading to disengagement and difficulty applying knowledge to real-world contexts. The Finance Narratives project aims to enhance students’ engagement, conceptual understanding and authentic problem-solving skills through innovative use of story-based pedagogy. By integrating narratives that highlight real-world applications and ethical dilemmas, the subject matter will be more accessible, relatable and engaging for students.

  • Curriculum Principles (CP): Diversity, Engagement, Design 
  • Student Experience Framework (SEF): Academic Engagement, Belonging, Wellbeing

2. Enhancing student feedback literacy

  • Faculty: Business
  • Team: Dr Tracey Walmsley, Troy Sarina, Ram Ramanathan and Deepa Subhadrammal  

Students transitioning from high school to university may struggle to become active learners, particularly in a complex subject such as People and Organisations. This project aims to develop and implement a strategy to help students achieve academic and personal success in this subject through developing their feedback literacy. Through the creation of short videos that focus on the value of feedback, students are likely to become more active seekers of feedback.

  • CP: Transition, Assessment  
  • SEF: Academic Engagement

3. Tailored pacing of subject delivery to reduce pressure to plagiarise

  • Faculty: FEIT
  • Team: David Milne, David Dyer, Crystal Chen, Abida Sadaf, Ezwan Shah and Emma Nguyen  

To alleviate the pressure to plagiarise in an introductory programming subject, a self-assessment tool can assess students’ learning each week by determining whether they’re ready to advance to the next week’s content. It also optimises the lab schedule based on student availabilty, so that some labs can progress to new topics, while others focus on revision and consolidation. Students who aren’t ready to progress can automatically gain extensions for any remaining weekly tasks, but would forgo more advanced extension topics. This intervention aims to reduce cheating by alleviating pressure and improving students’ motivation, accountability and self-efficacy.

  • CP: Diversity  
  • SEF: Academic Engagement

4. Fostering academic excellence and engagement through tailored learning and peer support​

  • Faculty: FEIT
  • Team: Peiyuan Qin, Can Ding, Gang Lei, Majid Amiri, Liam Davies, Lizhao Song, Yubo Wen, Linda Zhou and Yachao Zhu

The advent of GenAI has significantly impacted student engagement in a couple of fundamental first-year core subjects. While tools such as ChatGPT can provide easy access to answers, they have also led to a reduction in class attendance and active participation. This project aims to create a robust learning environment with facilitated peer support that promotes active participation and collaborative learning. Tutorial and lab activities can be redesigned to emphasise collaborative, group-based learning activities, thereby enhancing student engagement, critical thinking and collaboration.

  • CP: Transition, Engagement, Design  
  • SEF: Wellbeing, Partnerships, Belonging 

5. Game-based learning for enhanced student transition

  • Faculty: FEIT
  • Team: Dush Thalakotuna, Jiao Jiao Li, Haiyan (Helen) Lu, Gavin Paul, Jason Do, Jeremy Lindeck and Timothy Boye

This project aims to create an interactive game-based learning approach built from the student-designed FEIT iAmbassador Survival Guide. The game will support students in overcome various transition challenges, such as navigating the university life, time management, academic expectations and information-seeking behaviour. This help-seeking resource will be trialled across Spring and Orientation, and embedded in the curriculum in Autumn 2025.

  • CP: Transition, Diversity  
  • SEF: Belonging, Wellbeing and Partnerships 

6. Empowering student agency through peer mentoring  

  • Faculty: Health
  • Team: Dr Elizabeth Brogan, A/Prof Lynn Sinclair, A/Prof Jacqui Pich, Jessica Durant, Dr Rob Bower and Dr Lee Wallace 

This project draws from research on efficacy of peer mentoring in enhancing the transition experience and improving student engagement and sense of belonging. It aims to address student transitional challenges by embedding a peer mentoring program in two foundational Health subjects. The proposed program will train and support peer mentors to lead curriculum-based activities and discussions, and provide guidance and resources to new students.

  • FYCP: Transition, Engagement  
  • SEF: Academic Engagement, Belonging, Wellbeing and Partnerships  

7. Broadening students’ outlook and confidence to explore diverse career possibilities

  • Faculty: Health
  • Team: Poppy Watson, Phoebe Bailey, Kiley Seymour, Kell Tremayne, Catherine O’Gorman, Matt Davidson, Aaron Veldre, Milan Andrejevic, Tracey Glover Chambers and Ruth Wilcock

While many psychology students aspire to become clinical psychologists, they often lack awareness of alternative career options. In this project, video resources will showcase diverse individuals who have pursued different career paths after studying undergraduate psychology. This will increase the focus on careers during the first year of the psychology curriculum. An optimistic lens on alternative paths will also reinforce the value of their degree, helping to strengthen their commitment to study and reduce the likelihood of attrition.

  • CP: Transition, Diversity, Engagement, Monitoring and Evaluation 
  • SEF: Academic Engagement, Belonging, Wellbeing

8. Enhanced student engagement through scaffolded and reflective physics learning

  • Faculty: Science
  • Team: Dr Annette Dowd , Eva Gaarder (Student) and Dr Zahra Zabolizadeh 

The project addresses declining engagement in UTS’ first-year physics course by tackling reliance on online resources and concerns about academic integrity. To enhance student engagement and academic success, the project will introduce videos to aid self-study before in-class quizzes, conduct quizzes in workshops for immediate feedback, facilitate collaborative problem analysis to deepen understanding, and offer opportunities for students to revise and resubmit solutions using structured templates and a clear rubric. This iterative improvement and reflective practice helps foster a supportive environment for effective problem-solving and enhanced learning outcomes.  

  • CP: Engagement, Assessment  
  • SEF: Academic Engagement, Belonging  

9. From subject outline to your next job: a correlation of skills task​ 

  • Faculty: Science
  • Team: Mackenzie De La Hunty, Morgan Alonzo, Tracey Glover Chambers and Ciara Devlin 

Many students overlook the importance of reading subject outlines, which contain crucial information about subject learning objectives and graduate attributes. To improve engagement, a customisable activity will connect students to their learning, guiding a deeper engagement with the subject outline. The activity involves reading the subject outline, identifying three skills that will be learned and then finding a job outside of their discipline where those skills would be useful. Students then create a short video describing the skills and their relevance to the job role. 

  • CP: Transition, Engagement  
  • SEF: Academic Engagement  

10. Using human intelligence and AI to realise innate employability​

  • Faculty: Science
  • Team: Bronwyn O’Brien, Inah Camaya, Sarah Su, David Yeats, Dimity Wehr 

This project aims to address two gaps in the curriculum: the lack of skills to use generative AI responsibly, ethically and effectively, and the lack of awareness of the employability value of the subject’s learning outcomes. Guided by the five student-centred principles to guide usage of GenAI, the aim is to enhance employability recognition and development by using GenAI as a creative partner. Through a sustainable and transferable set of learning resources, students will build an understanding of how GenAI can support the evidence-based process to find solutions to contemporary medical problems, and be a catalyst for critical thinking and creative problem-solving.

  • CP: Transition, Engagement
  • SEF:  Academic Engagement

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