Supersonic schema switching: Transitioning final year Chinese
students into their first year at an Australian university
Shalini Watson, Patricia Dooey, Christine Symons, Communication Skills Centre, Curtin
Business School, Curtin University, Western Australia
Abstract
Many articulation students who sojourn to Australia to complete their studies
have a limited time to acculturate to the new learning environment. Without
overt interventions, these students will continue to be guided by learning
schemata deemed inappropriate to achieving academic success in the new
context. Therefore, Australian universities face the challenge of providing timely
interventions to facilitate the modification of incongruous learning schemata to
engage learning from the outset. Curtin University’s School of Accounting has
had a number of articulation programs with Chinese universities, where Chinese
students complete two years in the partner institutions before undertaking their
final year in Australia. In 2012, 200 students from these programs attended a
preparatory program, which included three sessions dedicated to addressing
issues of time management, academic writing, and referencing. A guide was
prepared and used interactively in these sessions to help students conceptualise
the need to recalibrate their learning schemata in each area. This presentation
showcases this innovative practice, and adds to the body of knowledge about how
effective learning designs can engage commencing students.
Introduction
In 2011, 79 826 or 26% of overseas students in Australian universities were enrolled in a
transnational higher education (TNHE) program (National Tertiary Education Union, 2011).
The product of formal collaborations between Australian universities and their overseas
partner institutions, these arrangements enable students to either complete their entire course
of study in their home countries, or a segment thereof at a partner institution, before
sojourning to the host institution abroad to complete their studies (Naidoo, 2009). One
category of TNHE programs is the articulation arrangement whereby “students undertake
part of a source country qualification in a host country and then transfer to the source country
institution with ‘advanced standing’ in terms of study credits and credit transfer to complete
the qualification at the education institution in the source country” (Naidoo, 2009, p.215).
The shorter duration abroad endows students with advantages such as reduced travel and
accommodation costs and the opportunity for cultural exchange. However, this relatively
short timeframe in the host country implies a smaller window of opportunity for students to
align their perceptions about learning and literacy with those of local students. Yet, the
acculturation process has been shown to develop gradually, with measurable changes being
recorded over the course of one semester (Volet & Renshaw, 1995). Therefore, transnational
sojourners will need additional opportunities to gain mastery over their environments as soon
as they arrive, so as to overcome the problem of compressed timeframes.
The argument advanced in this paper is that this mastery may be achieved by supplementing
face-to-face orientation presentations with learning resources that encourage students to
consciously reflect on their existing learning schemata, with the aim of bringing their
Supersonic schema switching: Transitioning final year Chinese students into their first year at an Australian
university, nuts and bolts
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schemata into alignment with what is required to succeed in the new learning environment.
A schema may be described as previously stored knowledge that relates to a specific event,
tangible item or abstraction of reality, upon which cognition is built and future learning is
influenced (Rumelhart, 1980). As such, it is important for students to have an effective
schema for each core determinant of academic success. Areas for schema development such
as time management, academic writing genres and referencing, are particularly important as
they can yield exponential benefits for the students due to high transferability to most aspects
of their short sojourn in Australia.
Context
The School of Accounting at the Curtin Business School (CBS) has had several articulation
arrangements with Chinese universities over a number of years. Students in these articulation
programs share linguistic, cultural and educational similarities, despite the large diversity of
program arrangements in place (Ang, Kerr, Scully, & Soontiens, 2011). All of these
articulation programs require students to complete a minimum of two years of study in their
respective institutions, before sojourning to Perth, Western Australia to complete their final
year of study, whereupon they are required to make a quick transition into new ways of
working.
An interesting phenomenon with articulation students is that in transitioning from one
environment to the next, these students can experience a slightly diminished status, even
though they are very academically capable. In recognition of the unique acculturation
challenges that they face, and the limited timeframes in which to overcome them, and in
keeping with first year curriculum design principles (emphasising transition, diversity and
reality of students’ previous experiences, and engaging materials) (Nelson, Smith, & Clarke,
2012), a program was conceived by the international section of the CBS in 2009, to address
these issues (Ang, et al., 2011). The aims of the program were to: (a) acculturate students to
the Australian culture in general, (b) acquaint them with the unique educational environment
of Curtin University in particular, and (c) make explicit the often tacit requirements for
academic processes, genres, and conventions. The initial three and a half day program
comprising 17 sessions is evaluated and refined yearly (Ang, et al., 2011).
In its 2011 iteration, the CBS Communication Skills Centre (the Business faculty-based
academic language and learning centre) was approached to run the sessions on time
management, academic writing and referencing. These sessions were based in part on
feedback from a number of students which revealed the nature of the shift they would need to
make in order to acculturate to Australian academic conventions. In particular, this feedback
focussed on the high intensity and timing of the program and the perceived insufficiency of
referencing information and practice (Ang, et al., 2011). This was understandable, given the
chaotic surroundings of the first few weeks on campus, and the pace at which the students
were being bombarded with verbal and print material. As such, the urgent need for a resource
that could be accessed beyond the initial sessions became apparent. It was also intended that
it be visually stimulating and interactive to assist students in the three previously mentioned
areas, which would in turn motivate and engage them in learning.
Supersonic schema switching: Transitioning final year Chinese students into their first year at an Australian
university, nuts and bolts
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The Curtin Business School Guide to Academic Preparation
In order satisfy the above criteria in preparation for the 200 Chinese articulation students in
the 2012 cohort, a decision was made to produce the first version of the Curtin Business
School Guide to Academic Preparation. This 32- page publication was divided into three
sections, namely: (a) time management (with subsections addressing how to utilise
course/unit information to plan ahead, use semester planners, break down assignment tasks,
conduct a 24 hour time audit and set weekly plans); (b) academic writing (which included
clarifying the assignment task and deconstructing an assignment question), collecting and
recording information, organising and planning and writing the first draft; and (c)
referencing, which is organised into subsections phrased as a series of questions and answers
addressing essential referencing information.
Perhaps as important as the choice of topics for the guide, were the motivational principles
upon which it was designed. The design of the guide was underpinned by the Attention,
Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) motivational model (Keller, 1987a,
1987b). The attention phase of this model acknowledges that attention is an antecedent to
learning, and is concerned with eliciting and maintaining the learners’ focus. The relevance
phase emphasises the provision of justifications for the instruction being applicable to help
learners achieve a particular goal. Next, the confidence phase acknowledges variability of
confidence levels in individuals, and proposes a number of strategies to boost confidence.
Finally, the satisfaction phase advocates strategies that allows the learner an element of
choice, without over-controlling, which can be detrimental to student motivation (Keller,
1987a).
These principles informed the design of the guide. Examples include the incorporation of
hand-drawn cartoons depicting students with learning schemata that were incongruent with
student success at an Australian university (attention/relevance), self-reflective quizzes with
answers that served to illuminate incongruent schemata (attention/relevance), the ordering of
less challenging to more challenging tasks (confidence) and the opportunity to apply the tools
and concepts in the guide to practical use, as in the case of time management, writing and
referencing resources (satisfaction). It is acknowledged that more elements of this model
could have been applied, and will be considered for consecutive versions of this document.
Nevertheless, it was envisaged that the interplay between these motivational elements would
prime the students in the process of assimilation and accommodation into the contextually
appropriate schemata (Skemp, 1962) .
Conclusion
This paper presents the endeavours of one business faculty based academic language and
learning centre to expedite the transition of a unique cohort of Chinese articulation program
students into the academic processes, genres, and conventions of an Australian university. It
is anticipated that the motivational design principles of this document can be particularly
efficacious in facilitating schema switching for students enrolled in articulation programs, but
need not be limited to this specific student cohort. It is envisaged that in the next iteration,
this resource will be extended to include other modalities such as audio-visual, with plans to
empirically validate the efficacy of this learning initiative with respect to facilitating schema
switching for students who are at different stages of their degree, and who have completed
previous study in different cultural learning environments.
Supersonic schema switching: Transitioning final year Chinese students into their first year at an Australian
university, nuts and bolts
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References
Ang, G., Kerr, R., Scully, G., & Soontiens, W. (2011, Nov 25-28). Using Student Feedback
to Inform Continuous Improvement of an Articulation Academic Induction Program:
A narrative of the CBS story. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the ChinaAustralia international conference on Accounting and Finance, Wuhan, China.
Keller, J. M. (1987a). Development and use of the ARCS model of instructional design.
Journal of Instrutional Development, 10, 2-10.
Keller, J. M. (1987b). Strategies for stimulating the motivation to learn. [Conceptual].
Performance and Instruction, 26(8), 1-7.
Naidoo, V. (2009). Transnational Higher Education. Journal of Studies in International
Education, 13(3), 310-330.
National Tertiary Education Union. (2011). Trends in overseas student enrolments 2004 to
2011. Retrieved from the National Tertiary Education Union website
http://www.nteu.org.au/campaigns/policy/international_education/offshore_campuses.
Nelson, K. J., Smith, J. E., & Clarke, J. A. (2012). Enhancing the transition of commencing
students into university: an institution-wide approach. Higher Education Research
and Development, 31(2), 185-199.
Rumelhart, D. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. J. Spiro, B. C.
Bruce & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension:
Perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and
education (pp. 33-58). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
Skemp, R. R. (1962). The need for a schematic learning theory. British Journal of
Educational Psychology, 32(P2), 133-142.
Volet, S., & Renshaw, P. (1995). Cross-cultural differences in university students' goals and
perceptions of study settings for achieving their own goals. Higher Education, 30,
407-433.
Supersonic schema switching: Transitioning final year Chinese students into their first year at an Australian
university, nuts and bolts
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Nuts and bolts session outline
Whole group discussion ice breaker (5 mins)
Consider a TNHE cohort you are familiar with. What are some counterproductive
assumptions that students are likely to make when attempting their first assessments at your
university?
Presenter (10 mins)
Brief illustration of a session exemplar e.g. time management. Participants will be asked to:
 estimate the steps required to complete a written assignment, and
 the duration each will take.
Discussion in groups of 3 – 4 (10 mins)
Think of an articulation student cohort you have encountered, and select one of the following
questions to discuss:
 What are some assumptions that articulation students are likely to make with respect
to assignment planning? What are the implications for students who have completed
the bulk of their studies in their home countries?
 What are some of the assumptions that faculty staff (e.g. Accounting lecturers/tutors)
tend to make with respect to setting assignment tasks and examinations for final year
articulation students? What are the implications for students who have completed the
bulk of their studies in their home countries?
 Are faculty staff able to distinguish between those students who have completed their
entire course onshore? Are there equity issues?
 What is the role of Academic Language and Learning Advisor in equipping such
students to acculturate to the new learning environment?
 Which aspects of this session can potentially benefit your commencing students?
Presenter/ whole group discussion (5 mins)
Consolidate ideas from participants on the issues presented, and implications for designing a
similar resource in their respective institutions.
How might this design be extended beyond the local experience?
Supersonic schema switching: Transitioning final year Chinese students into their first year at an Australian
university, nuts and bolts
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