Online modes of study are increasingly prevalent in higher education, including university-enabling programs. As student cohorts diversify, access to individualised and holistic support strategies is increasingly important for students to expeditiously transition into higher education. On-campus provision of academic advising, while an effective…

This paper discusses the impact of a series of professional development workshops for peer leaders to enhance the student learning experience at an Australian enabling education institution over the period of three years (2019-2021). It reports the impact of these workshops on peer leaders' professional development and, more importantly, on…

Academic support at Australian universities has become an important aspect of higher education, as student cohorts continue to diversify, and universities need to ensure the students' success and the institutions' reputations. Often, students in need do not access academic support services and little is known about what influences students'…

The dramatic changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have changed the way in which mathematics and statistics support is offered. Students and staff have been presented with new opportunities and challenges. One-on-one interviews were conducted late in 2020 with 23 students and staff who had experience with fully online mathematics and…

Centralised student support such as academic advising, career guidance, and wellbeing services are important elements of the first-year student experience. While some studies have investigated how use of these services relates to student outcomes, there has been little focus on how they might influence student engagement. The current study…

In Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) programmes, students provide academic and social support to fellow students. Recent PAL iterations include drop-in programmes to improve higher education students' general academic literacy in an open, non-judgemental, learning environment led by experienced students. The majority of the PAL literature, however,…

University students frequently use campus Facebook Confessions pages to engage with their peers about their university experiences. This article explores the utility of Confessions pages in providing novel data to aid the development of student services generally, and academic skills support in particular. Through a qualitative thematic analysis…

The Mathematics and Statistics Support Centre (MSSC) at Central Queensland University (CQU), which is part of the Academic Learning Centre (ALC), has been in operation since 1984 as the first MSSC in Australia. The Mathematics Learning Support (MLS) centres have spread to almost every university in Australia currently. The MSSC at CQU offers free…

There remains significant under representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian higher education systems. A number of strategies have been implemented by governments and universities to best support Indigenous students within higher education that have produced varying levels of success in increasing participation,…

While no major change in relation to student attrition and retention data has been recorded over the past 20 years, the increasingly neoliberal agenda imposed on Australian higher education institutions has led to increased scrutiny around such data. In this case study, we explore discourses of attrition and retention to understand better the…

Research suggests that tertiary students with dyslexia are less likely to achieve high or passing marks in their studies than students without dyslexia. The aim of this investigation was to discover the nature of barriers faced by students with dyslexia at an Australian regional university where two thirds of the overall population had a distance…

This study explored the lived expectations of second-year undergraduate science students at a large, government-funded university in Australia. The investigation made use of a mixed methods approach to inform the understanding of the second year of study expectations. Findings identified three key contributors to expected second-year experiences:…

Each year, a significant number of students from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius seek higher education opportunities abroad. Yet, limited research exists on these students' expectations, preferences, and experiences in their academic and non-academic university settings overseas. This quantitative study investigates the experiences of…

The University Australia (UA) 2017-2020 Indigenous Strategy has offered Australian universities a focus that would work to increase Indigenous participation in the higher education sector in Australia. Despite the high-level involvement and detailed monitoring by Universities Australia as the sector's peak body, Australia's universities have not…

This paper investigates computing students' entrepreneurial intentions, motivations, recognisable barriers and encouragements towards entrepreneurship, with a focus on gender. Two universities, one in Australia and one in the UK (n = 247), were used as locations for the research to consider two distinct contexts. In each university there were…