prof. richard baker, anu: improving the quality of the student experience
DESCRIPTION
Professor Richard Baker, Pro Vice Chancellor (Student Experience), ANU delivered this presentation at the inaugural Student Experience conference in 2013. A quality student experience is a critical component when examining the attributes a university offers a prospective student. It is equally as important sector wide, in producing highly educated, well rounded and qualified individuals that make up the future of the national workforce. As a result, it is crucial for universities to assess not only ways they can improve their institution’s student experience but ways they can differentiation themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Factors that holistically impact student experience include the interconnections between student services, methods of course delivery and the use of technology along with all that this entails. The Inaugural Student Experience Conference will endeavour to address these complex and challenging issues within the context of the evolving Higher Education sector. For more information about the event, please visit the conference website http://www.informa.com.au/studentexperienceconferenceTRANSCRIPT
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Enhancing the student experience:
ANU as a case study
Richard Baker
Pro-Vice
Chancellor
(Student
Experience)
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Outline of talk
1. Need to remember what is so special about universities
in general and then identify what is special about our
individual universities and then do everything we can to
enhance these respective strengths
2. Need to examine the complex interconnections of the
student experience and focus on improving positive
feedback loops
3. Value of high impact learning strategies of George Kuh
4. Value of a focus on student leadership
5. Value of making the most of the research-education
nexus
6. Conclusions
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Aung San Suu Kyi
and ANU students last Friday
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What is the purpose of
universities?
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The purpose of universities
“A University is a place … where inquiry is
pushed forward, … discoveries verified and
perfected, and … error exposed, by the collision
of mind with mind, and knowledge with
knowledge”
Newman, J.H. The idea of the University. Notre Dame
University Press. 1852.
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“Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of
thought, which the student also breathes.”
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Distinctive aspects of ANU
• 34% of students living on campus
• Equal number of graduate and undergraduate
students – c10,000 of each – on one campus
• Approx. half our commencing undergrad students
enrolling in double degrees
• Research-led education focus
• Access to national cultural institutions in walking
distance
• Long history of Asia-Pacific research focus
• National focus of our domestic student intake –
highest % interstate of any Australian university?
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Quality of our students
• Wonderful mix of rural and urban Australians
and of international students and Australian
students
• Demonstrating extraordinary leadership
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Bhiamie picture
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Extent to which ANU
community is
intellectually stimulating
Extent to which
ANU supports
student health and
wellbeing
Extent to which student
activities are integrated
into ANU research culture
and practice
Extent to which ANU
students are empowered by
their intellectual and social
experiences
Quality of campus
and extracurricular
experience
Quality of ANU
student experience
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Quality of ANU
student experience
Quality of campus
and extracurricular
experience
Extent to which ANU
community is
intellectually stimulating
Extent to which
ANU supports
student health and
wellbeing
Extent to which student
activities are integrated
into ANU research culture
and practice
Extent to which ANU
students are empowered by
their intellectual and social
experiences
Extent of Alumni support
for ANU
Ability of ANU to
attract high quality
students and staff
Attractiveness of
ANU as a centre of
learning
Reputation
of ANU
Strength of Alumni connection with the
ANU
Ability of ANU
graduates to build
influential careers
Ability of ANU graduates
to lead in Australian and
International communities
ANU effort develop
innovative curricula
Extent and quality of ANU
research
ANU
commitment
to providing a
rich student
experience
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Creating pathways between:
Domestic students International students
Residential students Non-residential students
Students from different degrees Students from different degrees
Current students Former students
Research Teaching
Groups who are traditionally poorly represented at universities ANU
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It was teachers who thought
outside the box who inspired me
• Being asked in High School to run English class
on my favourite author
• Same teacher linked Bob Dylan to TS Eliott, Van
Morrison to WB Yeats
• Life long learning exemplar of best books of the
year to read
• Research led teaching at ANU – Mulvaney’s
suitcase
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Need to ignore this advice and think
outside the box to make a difference
to the student experience
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George Kuh high impact activities
1. Thinking outside the box – other
ways of doing things – don’t just
teach the way we were taught
2. Making our teaching relevant by
bringing in real world issues and
connecting the known with the
unknown
3. Internships
4. Field courses
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High impact activities for
academics
• Cross discipline teaching
• Cross cultural experiences
• Skills in getting effective feedback from students
– e.g. one minute papers, mid course evaluations,
end of course evaluations, reflective student
assessment pieces, letter to future students,
keeping in touch with former students
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High impact activities for
institutions
• Linking research and teaching effectively
• Effective student consultation processes
• Effective educational planning processes
• Promoting learning outside the classroom
• Supporting students to become leaders
• Fostering residential and campus communities
• Allowing students and staff to take risks
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Leadership focus for ANU
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Chieu photo
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International students give domestic
students the most extraordinary
learning opportunities
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Learning Communities
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Lena Karmel Lodge
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Our students are global citizens
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Cross Disciplinary Student
Academy – google “ANU XSA”
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Student representation processes in
science at ANU
• Details of 2 reps from each course plus the ANU Student
Association Science reps listed on every LMS page
• Head of Education in each discipline meets class reps
from their areas in week 3-4 to identify and address
issues while course is running
• Director of Science Education end of each semester runs
focus groups with all reps
• And separately meets with exiting Honours students and
has regular meetings with ANUSA Science Reps and
ANUSA President and VP
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Consultation has benefits
Innovations that came directly from this
student feedback include the
establishment of
1.First year PAL
2.A whole of Science Student Society
3.Interdisciplinary whole of Science first
year course – “Science under the
Microscope”
4.More details google “ANU Science
student representatives”
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Peer Assisted Learning
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Planning
and share
ideas
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Conclusions in 2012 on
research-led education
• Start in first year
• Model research mindedness
• Develop critical thinking and awareness of how
research is done and what researchers do
• Focus at beginning of first year on what is not
known to create inquiry based ethos from
beginning of degree
• Link into lab design and assessment
• Create more research project courses
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What is it that our students
value about ANU?
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Students clearly value:
• Our small size and flexibility
• maintaining an ANU identity and networks post
ANU – our students see the necessity of life long
learning and are keen to assist us in this task
• opportunities for real application of learning - our
students have a hunger to apply their knowledge in
practical ways
• multidisciplinary approaches and feeling
welcomed across the arts-science bridge
• Research opportunities
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“What is the best thing about
ANU” – survey of 86 completing
Science Honours students in 2010
“Moving from learning about science
to doing science”
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Teaching-research links
• “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be
kindled” (Plutarch, c46–127 AD).
• So need to focus on process rather than content
• Learning to think like a biologist rather than
knowing all the “stuff” a professor of biology knows
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Linking teaching and research a key to
keeping alive students passion to
learn
“Teaching students to be enquiring or research
based in their approach is not just a throwback to
quaint notions of enlightenment or liberal
education but central to the hard-nosed skills
required of the future graduate workforce.”
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/research/teaching Linking
Teaching and Research in Disciplines and Departments - April 2007
Alan Jenkins, Mick Healey and Roger Zetter
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Research
led/based/informed/enhanced
teaching is an iterative process that
integrates
• Teaching informed by the research we do
• Developing the research skills of our students
• Researching the effectiveness of our teaching and the learning outcomes of our students
• Need to see research as a continuum of finding out things new to individuals to things new to humankind
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All students can engage in
student research
• But to do so we must see “student research as a continuum
of knowledge production, from knowledge new to the
learner to knowledge new to humankind, moving from the
commonly known, to the commonly not know, to the
totally unknown”
• John Willison and Kerry O’Regan 2007 Commonly known, commonly
not known, totally unknown: a framework for students becoming
researchers. Higher Education Research and Development Vol 26
no4, December 2007, 393-409.
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The Vice-Chancellor’s Courses
“The Vice-Chancellor’s Courses epitomise ANU.
They are inter-disciplinary in terms of content,
teaching staff and the students enrolled in them.
They involve ANU researchers from different
disciplines sharing leading research ideas and
discoveries with students.”
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Four courses that students can
do as part of nearly any ANU
degree
• Unravelling Complexity
• Creating Knowledge
• Leadership and Influence
• Mobilising Research
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Need interdisciplinary
approaches to solve complex
problems
• VC courses aim to give students skills to see
across disciplines, cultures, time and space
• Really interesting things happening where
disciplines meet
• Eg camera pill for gastrointestinal viewing result
of discussions between missile designer and
gastroenterologist
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Encourage students to be bold in
taking interdisciplinary approaches
to address real problems
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Leadership & Influence
• Leadership and Influence gives students
opportunities to directly ask questions of
people who have created major change in
their own fields.
• Guest lecturers have included the Chief
Scientist, prominent Indigenous leaders,
retired high court judges and the former
chief of the armed forces
• The final assessment piece is a group
research project to develop an idea to
improve the ANU student experience that
each group has to pitch to the Vice-
Chancellor
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Unravelling Complexity
• Examines how engineering, science, maths, visual art,
history, psychology, political science, and other
disciplines address complexity.
• Assessment pieces require students to draw lessons
from different disciplines and apply them to
contemporary global problems
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“Universities serve to make students
think: to resolve problems by argument
supported by evidence; not to be
dismayed by complexity, but bold in
unravelling it.”
What are universities for? Geoffrey Boulton and Colin
Lucas September 2008
http://www.leru.org/?cGFnZT00
Unravelling Complexity
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• Course has had “field
trips” to the PM’s
office and final
assessment piece
involves groups of
students developing a
solution to a key
problem facing
Australia and to
deliver a brief to the
“PM”
Unravelling Complexity
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Student responses to the course
• Very ready to step outside the disciplinary boxes
• Very conscious that many will soon be working in
the “real-world”
• One student described the course as a “think tank”
and “Everything else I am studying is making more
sense in the light of the mode of thinking we are
engaging in”.
• Students putting together ideas in novel ways
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Extract from Cathryn
Stephen’s learning journal
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Google “ANU Vice-Chancellor’s
Courses” for lots of other examples
of work from this course
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What is it that our students
value about ANU?
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Students clearly value:
• Our small size and flexibility
• Maintaining an ANU identity and networks post
ANU – our students see the necessity of life long
learning and are keen to assist us in this task
• Opportunities for real application of learning - our
students have a hunger to apply their knowledge in
practical ways
• multidisciplinary approaches and feeling
welcomed across the arts-science bridge
• Research opportunities
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ANU’s strengths
• Small human scale and opportunities this presents
• Interdisciplinary options – eg joint degrees
• Our academics are research leaders and our
students are leaders often before they get and even
more after they leave here
• Teaching in a research intensive environment
• Residential colleges
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Unravelling Complexity
“Universities serve to make students
think: to resolve problems by
argument supported by evidence; not
to be dismayed by complexity, but
bold in unravelling it.”
What are universities for? Geoffrey Boulton and Colin Lucas
September 2008 http://www.leru.org/?cGFnZT00
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Student responses to the course
• Very ready to step outside the disciplinary boxes
• Very conscious that many will soon be working in
the “real-world”
• One student described the course as a “think tank”
and “Everything else I am studying is making more
sense in the light of the mode of thinking we are
engaging in”.
• Students putting together ideas in novel ways
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Conclusions – we need to:
define the “student experience” broadly
include both what happens in the class room and
what happens outside it by focusing on the
connections between the two
facilitate pathways for students
Acknowledge and maximize the transformative
power of university education
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Thank you for your attention
• Google “Richard Baker ANU” for my personal webpage
• Do email me if you ever have any questions
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My role to facilitate the building
of bridges between:
1. Domestic and international students
2. Residential and non residential students
3. Students in different degrees
4. Current and former students
5. Research and education foci of ANU
6. Groups traditionally poorly represented at
universities and the ANU