Author: mborschman

The article: The role of student–university value alignment in international student acculturation in Australia

The recording: https://charlessturt.zoom.us/rec/play/Jp4rJ244d91ZPVYQW5YN_YSHb88XbuH0hAPYhwuZpJ2wcbayyGK23cBJIil1E0-9sLF8P2gSIh2urHE-.rL7b1fJOvaNDXXDJ?continueMode=true

In today’s session we discussed how university values and student values impact each other and what bearing that has on a student’s acculturation into the university community.

Some interesting discussions arose, such as the fact that very few of us actually knew the CSU values, and how the values that we transmit to students most explicitly are more around academic integrity rather than the mission or goal of the institution itself.

Luke mentioned, that as a CSU student he was not aware of CSU values playing a core role in his studies, but all members acknowledged that there is a large emphasis on championing indigenous students and knowledge. These seemed to be less broadly disseminated amongst the Study Centres, which have their own set of Study Group values.

Another point was raised that in fact we do not know the intrinsic values held by the students, nor do we have a firm grasp on their understanding of the values we espouse.

Belinda mentioned that students often understand ‘values’ in the same light as ‘conditions’ in as much as it impacts their VISA and study rights. For example, doing the wrong thing may be seen as a moral trespass but more importantly it can lead to the invalidation of their study rights. She also mentioned that students’ values are often threatened due to the pressures of maintaining a steady income. They may feel pressured to do things that they cannot unequivocally state aligns with their values, but still puts food on their own table, as well as providing for relatives overseas.

This ties in to the perceived transactional nature of education, where students see universities as offering a product that they buy that helps them attain a goal, as opposed to a goal in itself. Education for education’s sake is perhaps a luxury that only those who are financially stable can afford – most of our students do not fall within this category and pursue education as a means to an extrinsic goal – not for self-betterment in itself.

The take-away is that we as staff do not know what students value, and they do not know what the institutions values are either. If students can be engaged in a discussion about where these two meet they may feel a stronger sense of connection to the institution and feel less inclined to see it as a purely transactional engagement.

This week we looked at the article published in the conversation titled “Students are told not to use Wikipedia for research. But it’s a trustworthy source”.

The article discuss is how Wikipedia is often seen as a source that is untrustworthy and ill-suited for academic purposes due to the ambiguity of its publishing date and authorship. Wikipedia pages are edited by multiple authors and undergo constant revision. they may also be authored by people who are not research experts in the topic area.

The article argues that despite the above-mentioned facts about Wikipedia articles, that due to both algorithmic and person-driven reviews of articles, that misinformation hardly ever remains on Wikipedia pages for long, and that peer reviewed articles are actually more in danger of misinformation due  to small panels of reviewers and it’s static nature once published.

The team discussed how discouraging students from using particular tools completely often has a counterproductive effect. these tools fulfil very specific purpose for the students, and if they do not know of any replacements that can be easily implemented that does meet the requirements of the university, they are likely to keep using the tool anyway or resort to academic misconduct. similar conversations could be had about writing and editing tools like Grammarly or paraphrasing websites.

Instead the emphasis should be on judicious usage of available tools. In Wikipedia’s case, this might be encouraging students to do their background reading through Wikipedia articles so that they might gain some familiarity with the topic before they use academic articles for the actual research purposes.

Both studies support and library teams agreed that workshops could be developed focusing on tools available to students and how to incorporate them into their study habits whilst still maintaining academic integrity.

On the 1st of May we discussed Virtual Rotation Stations as per Skolastika (2020)

The recording is linked here.

The article focuses on dividing classes into segments called ‘stations’:

1. Teacher-led station
2. Online Station
3. Offline Station
4. Extension Activity

These stations have been found to increase student engagement and independence.

For the online environment, these rotation stations can be facilitated through break-out rooms in zoom.

The main takeaways for our session were:

• these techniques can be trialled in online classes, with the explicit introduction of the model to students before hand.
• This model caters for “various types of students to achieve better learning results within a single classroom” (p. 54)
• engaging students can be very difficult when there is no previously established rapport. In the case of embedded support, reaching out to lecturers ahead of class and ascertaining which students might be amenable to facilitating peer engagement can be advantageous.
• The rotation models also hold the potential to be used in a simultaneous online/offline classroom, which can be explored further when the students return to campus.
• Structuring sections of class time around collaboration is encouraged, although it must be scaffolded to afford students the comfort and confidence to participate.
• Ice breakers play a crucial role, and must be based on low risk questions, with binary questions being most favourable, and open-ended questions to be avoided or used with more experienced/confident students

A trial of this station rotation is most likely to work in longer classes, such as a three hour lecture.

Overall it was good food for thought in terms of changing the norm of a classroom and how that might impact the student engagement and shake up some participation.

– Madelle