Dr Sally Ashton-Hay

Student success and retention in higher education are becoming increasingly important and the need for learning support for diverse students is also crucial. This chapter reports on a study investigating whether attendance at Academic Skills consultations over a three-year period made any difference in student performance, success, Grade Point Average (GPA) and attrition within the context of a regional university in Australia. Over 13,000 student consultations with Academic Skills in 2017, 2018 and 2019 were matched in the University Management Information System to allow derivation of metrics. Study findings reveal that students who consulted with Academic Skills performed better than those who did not attend consultations and the difference was greater for those who attended more consultations. Student GPA was also higher and significantly more students were retained and completed their studies as a result of individual academic language and learning support consultations. These results demonstrate a positive and significant impact from individualised assessment consultations, although many other factors may also be influential so the results are interpreted with some caution. This chapter nonetheless supports the positive impact of focused academic language and learning support on student outcomes, especially for new students, via an enhanced learning experience. Although one-on-one consultations can be an effective approach, more collaborative team teaching with content lecturers and language and learning specialists could further contribute to improving teaching practice, student success and retention at the tertiary level of learning.

Student voice provides important feedback on teaching and learning experiences yet is most often used only for the purpose of evaluating units of study for universities. This chapter reports on an investigation of student needs and what matters most in their learning experience. Students responded to three survey questions: What was going well, what was not going so well and what they really wanted in their learning experience. NVivo qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed that the majority of students expressed a high rate of satisfaction with how their studies were progressing, although a small percentage did not. Important concerns relating to teaching and learning materials, lack of sufficient feedback and communication with lecturers, the need for encouragement, motivation drivers and a perceived need for more academic support. This chapter unpacks the steps taken to address these concerns and shows how this process led to developments to better support tertiary students. Overall, this chapter demonstrates how student concerns can be sought, analysed and responded to, in order to improve the teaching and learning that takes place within a university environment. The process of attending to student voice led to major changes in a new model of learning and initial evaluation indicates wide student approval.

This chapter describes the use of collaborative learning as an approach to enhance English language learning by students from non-English speaking backgrounds. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) principles were applied to two case studies, one comprising of undergraduate English as Foreign Language Learners in Turkey and the other involved English as Second Language learners in Australia. Social constructivism inspired communicative language teaching using collaborative learning activities such as team work, interactive peer-based learning, and iterative stages of learning matrix were incorporated to enhance students' learning outcomes. Data collected after the CLT intervention was made up of field notes, reflective logs and focus group interviews which revealed complementarities, as well as subtle differences between the two cases. The findings were summarized as learning dispositions; speaking fluency and confidence; learning diagnostics and completion deficiencies; task engagement, flow theory and higher order thinking skills; in addition to self efficacy and development of student identity. CLT has the potential to provide a more inclusive and dynamic education for diverse learners through vital outcomes and benefits which resonate with the real world

This study is concerned with the learning experiences and strategies of secondary Aboriginal girls from Elcho Island in the Northern Territory as they study in an urban school in the Gold Coast, Queensland. The girls were learning English as their second and third language. The study details how the ESL teacher/author tried to understand how to meet the needs of these girls who came with such different learning strategies and styles. The teacher/author's visit to their homeland in Elcho Island immediately helped her to understand how the grils' different social and learning experiences had influenced them, and how different their lives were at the new school. The account of observations and analysis of their patterns of participation in their new school give important insights into their learning styles.