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The vocational experiences and skills of young adolescents could be infused into formal education by identifying career competencies to be taught within the academic curriculum. Such curriculum practices that embed educational and career pathways must also include the perspectives of students and the community, particularly those from marginalised groups. Drawing on data from 111 teachers, principals, carers and students, this paper presents research undertaken to co-design career education lesson plans within an infused model of the curriculum for early Middle Year students from regional, rural, and remote Australia. The lesson plans and activities were designed to allow for meaningful self-reflection and goal-setting that could be seamlessly infused into the formal curriculum and help embed early-stage career education. The paper concludes by projecting opportunities and challenges for seamless curriculum integration, while pertinent to the Australian context, can also be read with broader relevance to other educational systems and schools.

Previous research has evidenced the importance of student and staff interactions as critical functions to support student success at university. Increasingly, academic advising units support these interactions. However, while common throughout North American contexts, little is known about the implementation of such units internationally. In this paper, we use a case study methodology to discuss the introduction of an academic advising team at an Australian university to explore how staff adjusted to these new roles and their reflections on how others perceived them. We use reflective diaries submitted by the advisors (n = 11) to analyze how their role identities formed over time and suggested recommendations for supporting teams in the future.

A persistent issue in Australia, and globally, is how to improve participation rates in higher education for students from regional and rural areas. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by exploring the idea of a Community Embedded University (CEU). We draw on empirical data from three participatory co-design workshops with university students (n = 15) and staff (n = 6), to provoke discussion on what a CEU model might look like, the activities it might engage in, and how it would collaborate with local communities to create stronger partnerships and support student engagement. Through our study, we identify key value propositions to a CEU, including fostering students' sense of belongingness and opportunities to engage in relationship-rich pedagogy through community-university collaborative teaching. However, we also identify several challenges to enacting a CEU, such as complexities relating to distributed power-sharing and decision-making, and how to situate learning experiences in place while maintaining flexible learning spaces. We propose that, while the idea of a CEU may remain an idealised model, our outlined principles to creating a CEU may be a useful framework for universities to reflect upon and consider how they engage with their local communities.

Disparity in educational and career outcomes between rural, regional and remote (RRR) students and their metropolitan counterparts persists despite successive federal and state government initiatives. In this paper, we will present a study that highlights one important, yet overlooked, avenue to improve outcomes for RRR students: early-stage careers education. Informed by interviews conducted with RRR principals and deputy principals from Victoria and Queensland (n = 10), we present a new approach to the delivery and content of careers education in RRR contexts. The approach advocates for a purposeful programme from Year 7, which includes the engagement of key influencers such as parents/carers, peers and local industry, as well as tailoring activities to also reflect regional job trends and pathways. The broader implications of our findings to curriculum design are also presented and challenge the prevailing approach of Year 9/10 as the optimal period to immerse careers education.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) or university placements are valuable opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in an authentic work setting and help support their transition from university to employment. However, as our study evidenced, students with disability face significant and unique barriers to securing and completing WIL placements. In this study, we surveyed students with disability at an Australian university (n = 132) to explore their experiences and perceptions of WIL placements. Our findings indicate that while many students are motivated to participate in placements, they have concerns about how their disability, medical or mental health condition(s) will be accepted by the organisations and whether their requests for accommodations will be facilitated without judgement from supervisors. The findings from our study are relevant to the fields of disability/inclusion and employability, as the results showcase that current policies and practices do not adequately support diverse students.

Assessment plays an important role in higher education, both guiding student learning and judging student success. However, assessment that treats all students the same is inequitable, since it ignores differences in students' past and present circumstances. A shift to assessment for inclusion is advocated to promote student equity; one that incorporates diverse students' perspectives on and experiences of assessment. A students-as-partners approach was taken to explore diverse students' experiences of assessment, and their suggestions to make assessment more inclusive. A team of six staff and five student partners undertook a co-research project, facilitating workshops with 52 students from diverse backgrounds to understand their assessment experiences. While assessment goals varied, students reported assessment was an emotional experience, citing challenges with assessment design, process and broader university support. These findings can be aligned and incorporated within a previously developed assessment design framework, demonstrating that students can make nuanced judgements about the quality of assessment design in relation to inclusion. Future work on assessment design which seeks to be inclusive can and should therefore routinely involve students.

The practice of students as partners can be applied to numerous facets of the university, including curriculum design, governance, and co-curricular programs. However, while scholars have also conceptualised that student partnership can occur through co-research, adoption is far from mainstream. In this paper, we seek to go 'under the hood' of students as partners in co-research by exploring and reflecting upon our own recent co-research project. By doing so we aim to understand why the practice of co-research with students has failed to gain widescale traction in higher education. To support our study, we use collective autoethnography which helps to structure our reflections of the co-research process and create dialogue and shared understanding among the research team. Our findings identify two central points of tensions that prohibit partnership in co-research, including how to best support collaborative and reciprocal learning between students and staff in research projects and how students' contributions can be reconceptualised to be different, yet equal, to experienced researchers. Through our findings, we advocate for universities to consider sustainable practices to support students in co-research and for scholarly journals to reflect on how student authors can be appropriately recognised.

Extant literature depicts theoretical territories of student voice and partnership as discrete categories. In this article, we argue that this depiction limits practice. We posit instead that theorisation which advances holistic voice and partnership through an active student participation (ASP) approach is necessary for liberatory higher education informed by practitioners and researchers together. We draw on emergent examples in practice which offer opportunities for further development for theorists and practitioners to create novel research opportunities. Through drawing on conceptions of student partnership pedagogy as a tool to address grand challenges, and an acknowledgement of the power potential in student voice and representation roles, we advance new possibility for transformative higher education for students. Ultimately, we advance an ASP approach which crosses the student voice and partnership partition towards a holistic and integrated active and collective student engagement and responsibility for higher education.

This article will explore usage patterns and perceptions of online learning support among university students. As higher education expands to include increasingly diverse student cohorts, alternative online-supported learning services have gained attention as a mechanism to support student success. However, there is a paucity of research regarding student perceptions and usage patterns for online support and the impact of these services on students' learning experiences. To address this gap, this study explored student usage patterns and perceptions of impact of students enrolled in a large research-intensive university in Australia, using data collected through the third-party provider and a supplementary student survey from July 2018-June 2019. Overall, 90.4% of students considered their interaction with the service to be positive, with 81% reporting that the service assisted their learning. While the service is not aimed at replacing face-to-face tutoring of academic skills support, this study suggests that online-supported learning services may provide an increasingly relevant and useful service to students and ­supplement face-to-face offerings.

Work-based placements, site visits, field trips and embedded industry-informed curriculum are employability strategies frequently applied by universities, and clustered under the umbrella term -- work-integrated learning (WIL). Referring to each of these strategies as WIL can complicate comparisons (e.g. long-term placements vs. field trips) and can lead WIL related research to diverge in multiple directions. To support comparison and help guide institutional decision-making relating to WIL, the positioning of this article aligns with a recent stream of literature that attempts to outline, contrast and differentiate between various activities aimed at enhancing graduate employability. Four distinct WIL case studies from three Australian universities are described in this article: (a) students working in teams with industry partners (n=23), (b) students co-creating learning resources (n=7), (c) a student-staff partnership (n=2), and (d) students acting as peer-learning advisors (n=5). The cases were considered across five key factors: 1) ease of implementation, 2) barriers, 3) scalability, 4) authenticity, and 5) proximity. Using empirical data, the findings within the article contribute an institutional framework that highlights the benefits and drawbacks associated with differences across WIL types, intended to support good WIL practice among administrators, teachers and staff.

There has been an increase in research and practice exploring how students can gain agency to shape their higher education experiences. Numerous terms evoking certain metaphors have entered the discussions around engaging students, from students as consumers or producers, to students as creators, partners, or change agents. There is scope within the evolving literature to explore the differentiations between these metaphors and the ways that underlying assumptions ultimately shape our practices and research. We unpack the five metaphors frequently used to redefine students' roles in higher education. We then engage in a dialogue across differences, highlighting how our own two distinct perspectives on student engagement-grounded in neoliberalism and social justice-align, overlap, differ, and provide constraints or affordances for student engagement. We offer a critical and reflective commentary questioning the drivers of students' changing roles in higher education in the hope of inviting others into generative dialogue toward expanding the evolving field of student engagement.

The value of technology lies not only with the service or functionality of the tool, but also with its subsequent value to the people who use it. New learning analytics (LA) software and platforms for capturing data and improving student learning are frequently introduced; however, they suffer from issues of adoption and continued usage by stakeholders. Scholars have previously suggested that it is not enough to introduce stakeholders (e.g., teachers and students) to LA technologies; they must also be a part of the LA creation and design process. In this paper, we will continue the ongoing work to clarify and compare different approaches of human-centred design through an overview of participatory frameworks in LA (co-design, co-creation). We will also present a case study using an LA tool used and developed within several Australian universities that was utilized over six years as an example of how LA designers can co-create dynamic platforms with teachers. Implications of participatory design frameworks in LA will also be presented through a discussion of the costs, challenges, and benefits of adopting human-centred design.

Australian higher education participation continues to expand, yet in unequal ways. Regional, rural, and remote (RRR) student participation is stubbornly stalled, despite sustained research and policy initiatives to support these cohorts. To address this complex issue, we interviewed 10 RRR principals in Queensland and Victoria to explore specific challenges that face RRR communities, as well as collate strategies and solutions. Our findings highlighted the importance of leveraging and developing local knowledge and expertise to equip students with careers education, as well as the need to promote a positive narrative about RRR community life. A key theme that emerged from participants was the need to dispel the myth that students needed to leave their communities to achieve their goals or find career success. The findings from this paper point to a need for educational outreach programs to continue to develop context-specific, locally informed programs and support that align with RRR communities' values and ways of life.

Supporting higher education participation across equity groups has long been a directed effort in global higher education practice and policy. However, to date, there has been little improvement in the rates of Australian higher education participation by equity groups such as regional/remote, low socioeconomic, and Indigenous Australian students. In this study, we visited four outer-regional communities in Victoria, Australia to utilise participatory design methods as an approach to explore participants' ideas on the optimal nature of early-stage higher education outreach interventions and how future resources or programmes can be designed. Our case study of four schools showcases how participatory design with students (Year 7 and 8), school staff, and carers (e.g. family, community leaders) (n = 101) helped to elicit participant feedback and ideas as well as support the subsequent co-design of future resources and outputs. Key findings included the need to address information gaps on the daily life of university students and the importance of context-specific advice and interventions.

An increasing amount of scholarly literature exists that examines the relationship between students and universities, and their role in university governance and quality assurance of their higher education experiences. The traditional mechanisms for involving students in university governance -- for example, through representation by student associations -- have been challenged and expanded as part of a broader movement towards students as partners and co-creation of their educational experiences. This paper provides a critical review of student engagement in university governance and quality assurance systems, using the Australian system as a grounding example, and with particular focus on student equity and the increasing diversity of the student body, and its implications for quality assessment and assurance. Our critical review of the literature suggests that there is still progress to be made in integrating the complex roles students can assume within universities, but that considerable opportunities exist in meeting the challenges of massification, student diversity and the structural barriers some students face to success in higher education, provided that the full diversity of the student body can meaningfully engage in student governance.

Changing factors in the higher education context such as expansion and increased marketization have sparked interest in how universities can co-create and partner with students. However, while numerous articles discuss the importance or benefits of collaboration between students and staff, less attention has been placed on the explicit approaches to support partnership. This paper will outline an approach and discuss the benefits of integrating co-design into university service practice. Using a student-staff design thinking workshop model called 'CoLabs', we will outline how co-creation with students can help university staff generate new ideas and solve ongoing issues. Activities to assist co-design with students, including storyboarding, are also summarized as well as authentic case studies of where co-design practices have helped drive change. The aim of this work is to provide the sector with an example of usable techniques to support co-design practices with students and reinforce the benefits of implementation of co-design in higher education.

Amid increasing calls for universities to transition to online learning, there is a need to explore how platforms and technology can provide positive student experiences and support learning. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of an online peer learning and recommender platform in a large, multi-campus, first-year health subject (n = 2095). The Recommendation in Personalised Peer Learning Environments (RiPPLE) platform supports student's co-creation of learning resources and allows for students to provide feedback and rate their peers' submissions. Our results indicated that both student engagement and academic performance were positively impacted for users by the introduction of the RiPPLE platform, but that academic preparedness, in the form of students' ATAR scores, strongly influenced their engagement and the benefits received.

The expectation for universities to support students' employability through work-integrated learning placements demands investigation into how opportunities are inclusive to students from a diversity of backgrounds. In this paper, we explore the experiences of students with disabilities during work placements, drawing on qualitative data collected through six focus groups with students (n = 27). Analysed through the frame of stigma, the results show how students bear an unfair burden of responsibility in their placement experiences, as they shoulder consequential decisions to disclose and/or request accommodations to support their learning. In this study, work placement environments were often somewhat hostile, both in relation to their built environments but also through the bias and/or prejudice of others. The results shed light on the difficulties that students with disabilities face in their placements and underscore how educational equity is multi-layered, requiring scrutiny of the student life-course including access to opportunities in professional fields. Points of interest: Despite work integrated placements often being positioned as opportunities for students to 'try out' authentic work experiences during their time at university, placements are not inclusive to students with disabilities. Students with disabilities shoulder an unfair responsibility in their work placement experiences, where they must negotiate the decision of disclosure and/or request for accommodations. Students reported hostile work placement environments, and cultures of exclusion, demanding more investigation into how universities can ensure safe and appropriate learning environments for students on placement. Students recommend greater education and training for placement teams (i.e., academic unit chairs, professional coordinators) and industry supervisors to reduce stigma and combat entrenched assumptions about disability. Universities themselves must also reflect and act on how to support inclusive cultures, including supporting training and policy that embed a strengths-based lens of disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractHigher education aims to educate diverse professionals to operate in an increasingly complex world. Yet, academic assessment practices still rely upon standardisation, namely, that all students should demonstrate their achievement in ways that are largely comparable, if not identical. In this study, we theorise assessment standardisation as a technology of normalisation upon student diversity and identities. Our study is located in one of the most complex learning settings in higher education: placements. We theorise how diverse students navigate the tensions arising from standardised assessment situations that assess highly personalised forms of learning in complex assessment settings. Our data material consists of longitudinal interviews with 16 disabled university students in Australia before, during, and after a placement. Our findings show that assessment suppresses and normalises students’ diverse identities, calling into question the inclusivity of such assessment practices. We discuss how assessment provides students with narrow ways of forming their professional identities. While this is the case for all students, the social consequences of assessment standardisation might be more crucial for those who do not fit the ‘norm’ set by assessment, such as disabled students in our case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral training continues to grow in scale and scope in Australia, but has been subjected to far less design and improvement compared with other facets of higher education. Governments and universities engage in ongoing change which helps respond to opportunities and challenges but also leads to a proliferation of options and approaches. The current research study was seeded and shaped by the ambitious view that despite such refinement the doctorate remains in need of much bolder and deeper design, and particularly design with an education focus. This paper reports outcomes from a four-year national project which sought to articulate a doctoral design architecture. The paper discusses framing contexts and concepts, design and characteristics of the doctoral architecture, then implications for sectoral, institutional and individual practice. It concludes that this kind of architecture can provide a useful guide for growth.

Across the sector, universities are transforming the student experience by reconceptualising the ways in which they partner with students. The academic library is at the heart of the university experience and libraries have a long history of collaboration and engaging with their communities. As such academic libraries are the perfect next frontier within which to embed the 'students-as-partners' approach. This paper proposes a broadening of partnership with students to improve the governance, operations and design of the academic library. Taking La Trobe University Library as a case study, the authors explore a series of examples in action across six domains: space transformation, library governance, service excellence, research, resource design and collection renewal. Within these domains the paper provides insights into how the relationship between the academic library and its community might be shifted to foster critical student/staff partnerships.

The growth of the doctorate in recent decades has spawned concerns about programme quality and external relevance. This article reports findings from research conducted in Australia that was shaped by the view that the doctorate remains in need of educational clarification and design. The research generated insights that can be used to modernise and realign the doctorate. First, this article discusses the development of a doctoral education framework. Next, it presents results from a questionnaire developed using the framework and administered in a national survey to both five-year-out doctoral graduates and to doctoral experts. This identifies the need to design programmes that better orient and align research training with students' professional aspirations, incorporate more real-world forms of learning, enhance traditional aspects of research training and provide structured reports of doctoral outcomes, experiences and preparations. The results underpin the need for more specific analyses of outcomes and assessment, the nature and distribution of doctoral experiences and the design and management of the resources that go into doctoral education.

Conceptualizations of time and work in the higher education context are increasingly atomized, as time is seen as measurable, quantifiable, and limited. This growing phenomenon, seen through the lens of projectification, has the power to reconceptualize how university leaders and the academic workforce consider and utilize their time and work, leading to significant consequences in daily university life. In this article, I will introduce and discuss this dominant and yet infrequently studied lens of projectified time and highlight how it has come to shape academic teaching practices, curriculum design, and university culture. In the second part of the article, I will offer an alternative lens that contests assumptions found within projectification such as that all work can be compartmentalized into specific projects. To exemplify this alternate lens further, I will also use a fictional narrative approach to showcase how an academic may rebuff projectified time in daily work.

Questions such as 'what is value in the student experience?' and 'how do we measure or assess value in higher education?' remain an under-researched area. However, in the context of marketisation and competitive forces in higher education, there is a need to unpack what is value in the student experience. In this article, a conceptualisation of value that can be applied in higher education (known as value-in-use) is introduced and applied to a specific and increasingly important aspect of the student experience -- student-staff partnerships. Qualitative survey data (n = 97) and interviews (n = 35) from ten cases of various manifestations of student-staff partnerships in the Australasian context is presented and assessed in relation to value. The findings highlight that student-staff partnerships may enhance value in the student experience and that value-in-use may be an appropriate lens through which to continue to explore how value is created and measured in the student experience.

Increased marketisation and competition has renewed interest in how universities can partner, or co-create, with students. To address this, and further conceptualise a model of co-creation across inputs, processes, and outcomes, this article summarises the findings from 10 different case studies of student-staff co-creation (e.g., co-producers of learning resources, peer mentors, co-creators of the curriculum) in the Australasian higher education context. Our data include qualitative survey responses (n=97) and interviews (n=35) with students and staff. Based on these data, we present an evidence-informed model of co-creation that elucidates the key considerations in the co-creation process. The model highlights and distinguishes two dual-value creation dimensions that underlie co-creation, co-production, and value-in-use. The result is a model of co-creation in higher education that can help guide administrators, researchers, and higher education stakeholders to better conceptualise, design, implement, and assess co-creation activities.

Australia has been very successful in recruiting international students. The Australian government regularly reports students' high levels of satisfaction with their educational experiences; however, there is also evidence of some dissatisfaction with regard to social and educational experiences. This paper explores the extent to which universities are meeting the social and educational needs of international students by analysing their experiences through the two dominate rationales in international education, namely neoliberal and cosmopolitan rationales. It discusses findings from a project examining the perceptions and experiences of international students at a large metropolitan Australian university. The study was conducted in two phases: an online questionnaire, followed by focus group interviews. The findings indicate that while international students might rate their overall satisfaction as high on questionnaires, deeper analysis through focus groups highlights the lack of social integration and belongingness that international students perceive. These results challenge universities to innovate their practices in order to develop and integrate cosmopolitan experiences that not only may benefit students but also assist in sustaining the neoliberal rationale of the sector.

The growing practice of students as partners (SaP) has sparked numerous conversations in higher education about the roles students do and should play in shaping the future. SaP scholars contend that by engaging with students in meaningful partnership, underpinned by values such reciprocity, students can have deeper and more meaningful learning experiences. Similar in this goal, the field of learning analytics also strives to create deeper and more meaningful learning experiences for students, however, the current approach differs. Students and other stakeholders such as teachers are rarely part of the process in learning analytics, and this divide, and lack of communication, between designers and users, has led to several critical issues in the area. Therefore, this paper will discuss three ongoing issues within learning analytics and draw on SaP values and guiding principles, such as reciprocity, emphasis on the process, and shared responsibility to question the current way learning analytics perceives students. By arguing for a change in perspective and the adoption of SaP in learning analytics, we will further add on growing literature about the importance of universities to become transparent and collaborative communities.

Alumni-student mentoring programs have become commonplace at many universities, and yet, scholarly research has rarely explored the impact of these programs on participating students and alumni. To address this, we investigated three alumni mentoring programs at a large research-intensive university in Australia. Using a mixed methods approach (a web based survey and interviews), we sought both students' and mentors' perceptions of their alumni mentoring program and how their involvement may have impacted their perceptions of the university (n=197). The findings highlight that alumni mentoring programs provide distinct benefits to both students and alumni and may result in improved university engagement. Our results also indicate new revelations about alumni mentoring programs, including the challenges associated with mentoring postgraduate students and recommended best practice to ensure the success of alumni mentoring programs.

For over 30 years, the notion of authentic assessment in higher education has been adopted in academic practice, but it has managed to escape substantial critique. Although there have been multiple definitions and operationalisations of authentic assessment, current practice tends to foreground mimicking of work tasks. Authenticity cannot be completely unmoored from the reality of workplaces, the demands of the discipline, and the overall intended learning outcomes, however, a restricted view of how these aspects are represented in assessment can limit the sector's ability to prepare graduates who can engage with and shape the changing world. This paper elaborates the multiple challenges that some conceptualisations of authentic assessment contribute to assessment planning, recognising that assessment design always requires compromise. Three theoretical perspectives on authenticity are introduced to open new possibilities for authenticity in assessment. These are (1) psychological authenticity; (2) ontological fidelity; and (3) practice theory perspectives. The final section discusses how learning design might offer a means to operationalise theory. The paper concludes by suggesting that authenticity in assessment continues to hold value for the sector beyond its current uses through stronger theoretical conceptualisation and operationalisation of authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definitions of disability are changing, shifting from a narrow medical diagnosis to a biopsychosocial model of disability, where disability is conceptualised as a series of relational conditions that can potentially disadvantage individuals within environments. Implications of this new understanding of disability will have significant effects in the higher education sector, where there is increasing participation of disabled students. In this paper, we discuss one aspect of these implications through the topic of graduate employability. In doing so, we generate a new concept 'Employability for Inclusion' that can be utilised as an equity-focused lens for universities to consider how employability initiatives are inclusive to disabled and/or diverse students. To unpack this concept, we further illustrate how a biopsychosocial model of disability would impact key employability activities (e.g., work-integrated learning) and provide valuable insights into how the higher education sector can adopt emerging conceptualisations of disability and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]