Innovative perspectives and
approaches for
enhancing the student experience
Hamish Coates
Paula Kelly
Linda Corrin
Ryan Naylor
Project overview
• Rationales
• Aims
• Focus and scope
• Major activities
• Outputs
• Outcomes and impact
Rationales
• Student survey response rates are low and shrinking, variance explained
is small, and more effective electronic footprints are available
• Institutions and stakeholders are increasingly unresponsive to results
from student surveys, which are increasingly used for external purposes
• The student experience is highly individual in nature, yet prevailing
analytical myths emphasise crude group-level generalisations
• Australia is seriously lacking data on who students are, how people
approach higher education, the ways in which they learn, and how
people change as they progress
• Most work on this front is framed within the context of institutions and
fields, but higher education is increasingly trans-disciplinary and transinstitutional in nature
Aims
• This study aims to bring about sustainable strategic change through
improving institutional capacity to enhance the 21st century student
experience by:
– building new concepts for understanding Australia’s higher
education students
– identifying new data sources and approaches for measuring the
student experience
– engaging institutions in enhancement work and new
conversations about students
Focus and scope
• By blending earlier work on students with more contemporary perspectives
the project validates new concepts and new methods for helping institutions
lead the student experience
• Substantively, we will investigate who students are and what they expect
from higher education—inquiry that goes beyond stereotypes, generalities
and dated assumptions about demography and contexts
• Methodologically, we will develop sustainable new approaches for Australia
to measure and report on these new constructs and profiles by developing
the field of education analytics and helping institutions leverage underutilised existing data for quality enhancement
Study design
Education
analytics
Student
experience
Study success
Model of success
Admission
• Awareness
• Access
Engagement
• Subject
completion
• Quality
learning
outcomes
• Quality student
experience
Completion
• Timely
qualification
• Broader
capabilities
• Work readiness
Postgraduation
• Employment
outcomes
• Further study
• Societal
outcomes
Hyper-intersectionalities
Analytical leadership
Study
success
Student
data
Personalised
advice
Education
analytics
Major activities
• Phase 1: Development
– Detailed project planning
– Background research
• Phase 2: Validation
– Student interviews
– Institutional scan
– Model development
• Phase 3: Engagement
– Enhancement Framework
– 21st Century Students Report
– National Engagement Workshops
Deliverables
• Phase 1: Development
– Detailed Project Plan
– Background Research Report
• Phase 2: Validation
– New Perspectives and Prospects
Report
• Phase 3: Engagement
– National Engagement Workshops
– Enhancement Framework
– 21st Century Students Report
– Project Website
Progress to date…
 Established research and
management team / resources
 Obtained ethics approvals
 Developing project identity
 Several team meetings
 Convened first PRG meeting
 Completed detailed project planning
 Finalising background reviews
 Secured several international and
several national conference
presentations
 Drafted institution and student
instruments
 Prepared fieldwork plans
 Published three scholarly papers
 Prepared a book proposal
 Initiated a new international network
 Specified project impact, stakeholder
engagement and publication plans
Outcomes and impact
• Outcomes
– new constructs and profiles for understanding undergraduate students
– expanded data sources and approaches for measurement
– framework, guidelines and case studies for institutional enhancement
• Delivered to have widespread and sustainable impact:
– national awareness of student identifies and expectations
– different conceptions and dialogues about Australia’s students
– more effective means for monitoring and enhancing education
– new foundations for substantial further work
– national involvement in an area gaining momentum internationally
– papers in media and academic journals detailing the processes and
outcomes of the project
Questions
• What are the main opportunities and challenges shaping this
research?
• In what ways could the model of study success be improved?
• How could hyper-intersectionality best be framed to advance
thinking and practice?
• In what better ways can institutions use big data to enhance
student success?
• What are the main obstacles and facilitators of institutional
change?
melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au
© Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne
2015