Ghostbusters: Using Learning Analytics and Early Assessment Design to identify and support ghost students

Ghosting is a student behaviour characterised by enrolling in a subject but never participating. Hence, a ghost student who remains enrolled receives a zero-fail grade. From 2022, the Job ready Graduates Package will require that only genuine students have access to Commonwealth assistance at Australian Universities and an institution may need to refund the fees of what are referred to as non-genuine students. In 2019 and 2020, 382 first-year subjects were monitored to identify disengaged students in weeks 3 and 4 of the session using learning analytics and nonsubmission of an early assessment item. Disengaged students were contacted via phone and 2-way SMS and offered timely and targeted support pre census. The total number of domestic undergraduate students receiving a zero fail has decreased during this time. To further reduce the number of ghost students, once identified as disengaged, an engagement should be mandatory to remain in the subject.

Improving Student Retention by Providing Targeted Support to University Students who do not Submit an Early Assessment Item

The Charles Sturt University Retention Team has developed, tested, evaluated, and refined a retention model through 14 action-research cycles from 2017-2021. The project has expanded from a small pilot in one faculty to monitoring the engagement and submission of an early assessment item for over 70% of all commencing undergraduate students across the University. The Retention Model synergistically overlays curriculum design and student support and ensures academics embed best practice transition pedagogy and learning engagement activities into key first-year subjects. By monitoring the submission of early assessment items, the team can accurately identify and proactively contact students who are not engaged in their studies prior to their first census date. Every aspect of this program supports equity student groups that are over-represented at our regional university. This work has significantly improved commencing progress rates across the institution.

Investigating high school chemistry teachers’ assessment item generation processes for a solubility lab

Designing high school chemistry assessments is a complex and difficult task. Although prior studies about assessment have offered teachers guidelines and standards as support to generate quality assessment items, little is known about how teachers engage these supports or enact their own beliefs into practice while developing assessments. Presented in this paper are the results from analyzing discourse among five high school chemistry teachers during an assessment item generation activity, including assessment items produced throughout the activity. Results include a detailed description of the role of knowledge bases embedded within high school chemistry teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and the processes used to enact these knowledge bases during planned formative assessment design. Implications for chemistry teacher professional development are posited in light of the findings as well as potential future investigations of high school chemistry teacher generation of assessment items.

The Tracker Producer and Top-Liner Collaborative Music Production Project (Advanced)

This project engages students with the collaborative realities of modern popular music production via an amalgamation of the music programmer, producer, and songwriter roles. Students engage in face-to-face and remote/online communication, composition, and production to manifest an original popular music output that is generated primarily within the DAW. Student learning is encapsulated within the autonomous interaction and workflows associated with the task, and reflected upon within a journal that informs a written assessment item. This activity is designed as a profession-based engagement that bridges student interaction to the realities of the modern music industry. This is intended to promote notions of professional ability within students upon completion.

Peering into the crystal ball of the disengaged: What happens to students that do not submit an early assessment item?

Established first year design principles highlight the need to provide early response systems for students who appear to be disengaging with targeted communication regarding available support services. One thousand, one hundred and s students were identified in session 1 that either: did not submit a pre-census early assessment item; or had limited learning management system activity. These students were then offered timely support, including on-the-spot advice and referral to other pre-existing support structures within the University. Students were identified from 77 subjects offered to commencing students, taught across 182 offerings. Of the students identified, 607 chose to defer or withdraw from their studies while 554 students remained. This raises the question, what became of those remaining students?

THE UNIFORM OF NURSING STUDENTS: A STRATEGY FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY (1950-1960)

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the use of the student uniform as one of the determinants in the establishment of the professional identity of the nurse graduated from Escola de Enfermagem Anna Nery in the 1950-1960. Method: Socio-historical study, using documents of that time and interviews by means of the thematic oral history technique with seven former Escola de Enfermagem Anna Nery students as sources, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Claude Dubar’s concept of identity supported the discussion of the data. Results: the uniform leveled the students, equaled them and set a standard of behavior to be followed. It also distinguished them hierarchically and served as an assessment item during the course. Conclusion: the uniform was a determinant strategy of the professional identity during the daily course reality as, according to the former students, it was an element that distinguished this group’s positions and behaviors, permitting the understanding of the graduated nurse’s possible roles in the society of that time.