International health science students face many challenges at the beginning of their courses, including a lack of awareness of cultural differences, adjusting to academic expectations, communication difficulties, clinical placement challenges, financial pressures, maintaining cultural and religious practices, discrimination, and emotions such as…

Tertiary institutions are experiencing an increased number of enrolments, with students varying in their demographics, previous education, and academic achievement. This relative increase in undergraduate enrolments in Australia has not translated to an increase in student retention or graduate numbers. This prompts the need to explore predictors…

Promoting student engagement and academic achievement in first-year anatomy and physiology courses. "Adv Physiol Educ" 43: 443-450, 2019; doi:10.1152/advan.00205.2018. Students from three undergraduate programs at James Cook University, Queensland, Australia, studying combined first-year anatomy and physiology courses, showed different…

With an increasing number of students enrolling into Australian universities, developing an understanding of the variables underlying academic success, is growing in importance. In the present study, three first-year cohorts (2013-2015) studying towards five allied health or science degrees (n = 1,676 students) were examined to ascertain the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer-assisted study session (PASS) program for a large class of Bachelor of Health Science (Paramedic) students. This cohort was made up predominantly of mature aged students who have not undertaken any study for many years. Within a bioscience first-year core subject, student…

In 2011, the Department of Human Biosciences introduced two physiology capstone subjects as part of the Design for Learning Project at La Trobe University. Consistent with the project, the aims of these subjects were to provide an effective culmination point for the Bachelor of Health Science course and to offer students orientation to…