Christine Asmar and Tai Peseta

Institute for Teaching and Learning

The University of Sydney

The first year on campus at a large university is a daunting one for many students, a fact acknowledged by many universities in Australia and elsewhere in response to the findings of published research. Definitive studies (McInnis and James, 1995; McInnis et al 2000; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991) have highlighted the fact that the first year experience is crucial to a student’s commitment to learning, and that new students generally feel less positive about university than do students in higher years. In order to mitigate this tendency a number of approaches are suggested by various researchers. They include the encouraging of student interactions inside and out of class, to promote a sense of belonging and to engage students in the active learning known to enhance academic outcomes. This approach is grounded in the student-focused framework of teaching and learning which is overtaking traditionally didactic methods – methods which in the past have located the teacher at the centre and the students on the margins of their own learning situations. This paper will be suggesting that a student-focused approach which fosters academic peer interactions is as applicable and useful for the learning of graduate students as it is for undergraduates. It will also suggest that academic staff themselves can benefit from precisely the same kind of interactions within a community of practice.

In their influential study of how university life affects undergraduate students in the United States, Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) cite findings from a number of studies supporting the theoretical justification that exists for ‘the role of social participation in the educational attainment process’. In these studies, student involvement in social and/or semi-academic activities outside the curriculum was positively related to both persistence (retention) and to educational attainment:

Burmeister and O’Dwyer (1996), call for an approach that ‘allows first year students to draw the two worlds of academic and social together’. This was corroborated by White’s research (1999) into students’ expressed need for an integration of the social and the academic spheres via interactions with new and senior students as well as academic staff.

Pascarella et al (1996) found that first year students who were most engaged with their student peers had significantly higher levels of openness to diversity and challenge. In Beasley and Pearson’s (1999) study they suggest that teaching strategies which promote student interaction benefit all students making the transition to Australian university campuses, particularly international students. Current thinking, based on the research, is therefore convinced that ongoing pedagogic gains are made when student interactions with their peers are integrated into their academic life. Specific strategies suggested for enhancing undergraduate student interactions include informal student networks (including electronic), using senior students as mentors, setting up study groups, and organising collaborative learning tasks, thus fruitfully integrating the academic and the social. The University of Sydney, which in 2001 enrolled 27,609 undergraduates, is among several universities in Australia currently initiating a large-scale project targeting the undergraduate First Year Experience. This project has been described elsewhere (Asmar, 2001) and details can be found on the University’s website. One of the four principles guiding the project is: ‘Students’ engagement with the University, including with their peers, will be promoted and supported’.

The literature on the first year experience of undergraduates is growing every year, spurred by international conferences such as the First Year in Higher Education conference held in July 2001 in Hawaii. Very few studies have been done of the first year experience of graduate students. Within studies of graduate education in general there has tended to be a dichotomy between studies focusing on coursework degrees and those investigating research degrees. To some extent this paper conforms to that dichotomy since our emphasis is mainly on research degrees. However our basic assumption is that there are commonalities between the first year experience of all students. It is interesting that university departments with high research reputations are likely to be rated poorly by undergraduate students (Ramsden, 1992, 239). The question is, how are those departments rated by graduate students? Does a focus on student learning needs match the department’s more pragmatic focus on the need to attract, retain and ensure the completion of graduate students? There may, for example, be an assumption that many graduate students are progressing into higher degree programs directly out of their bachelor’s degree on the same campus (often but not always the case in Australia), and that they are therefore not in need of orientation and transition programs and strategies. There may also be an assumption that because graduate students are generally older and presumably wiser, they may not need the kind of support considered necessary for undergraduates. For research students, institutional familiarity may not in itself help to ease the transition into the new world of a research culture. And there are tendencies to think that what was appropriate supervisory practice in the supervisor’s own student days needs only to be replicated for her current students.

An important study of doctoral education in Australia (Pearson, 1999), has gone a long way to challenge some traditional assumptions. Pearson’s research has revealed the fragmented nature of institutional responses to a whole new culture of doctoral research, including the need to think beyond traditional supervisor-centred relationships with students. Pearson found that 65% of Australian doctoral students were over 30; 41% were female; 36% were enrolled part-time; and 13% were international students. The challenge of meeting the needs of the new breed of doctoral students, Pearson suggests, is not one that individual supervisors alone can deal with. An important aspect of the new, integrated, ‘wholistic’ approach she advocates is the need to ensure students ‘engage with practising researchers and are in conversation with a community of peers, experts and others’. Such research and learning communities, she notes, may not need to be exclusively face-to-face, given contemporary students’ increased need for flexible pathways. In this respect, much of what Pearson suggests is equally applicable to coursework students.

The University of Sydney enrolled a total of 9126 graduate students in 2001, 1366 of whom are international students (14.97%). A 2000 survey of coursework students at the University found that 42% agreed that their course had developed their teamwork abilities; 49% agreed that they benefited from being in contact with active researchers; and only 50% agreed that they felt part of a group of staff and students committed to learning. In another major national study in Australia (Bazeley et al, 1996), a ‘lack of collegial contact’ was reported by 22% of recent PhD graduates as inhibiting publishing and research. Thus, peer and collegial contacts are important not only for enhancing student satisfaction but also for the later career prospects of academic researchers.

The study by Bazeley et al (1996) also found that for those in the social sciences and humanities the lack of collegial contact was much more problematic. Other researchers investigating the research student experience have also found considerable disciplinary differences affecting the quality of graduate students’ experience. Whittle’s (1992) research highlights the fact that the pattern in Arts of individual research, often carried out in relative isolation, was associated with much higher levels of student dissatisfaction than for students enjoying good communication and collaboration with peers and staff in the more integrated research culture of science departments. A particular challenge for the arts and humanities, then, seems to lie with finding ways to replicate or imitate the best elements of such a collegial culture.

The University of Melbourne, site of some of Australia’s most definitive research into the first year experience of undergraduates (McInnis and James, 1995; McInnis et al, 2000), has recently done a study of how graduate students (in both research and coursework degrees) experience their first year at the University (Ross, 2001). The report makes the following points:

- graduate students need a systemic induction;

The University of Melbourne report (Ross, 2001) emphasises the relationship between the individual graduate student and the institution. However, based on the research cited earlier in this article, we would argue for at least an equal emphasis on peer interactions.

The University of Sydney has a historically strong focus on research. In addition to its PhD programs, however, the University enrols increasing numbers of graduate students in coursework degree programs. To illustrate the point made in the preceding paragraph we quote (with permission) from a letter submitted recently to the Faculty of Education by PESA, the Postgraduate Education Students Association. PESA currently faces difficulties in getting members to be interested in assuming leadership roles in the association. PESA cites a number of reasons for this:

The demonstrated need for enhanced academic and personal interactions among graduate as well as undergraduate students comes, ironically, at a time when the increasing diversity of the student body makes the structuring and efficacy of such interactions more problematic for the teaching staff concerned. McInnis et al (2000) have made a strong case for the need to factor into university planning a recognition of the increasing number of hours first year undergraduate students want (and need) to spend working at paid jobs off-campus. There are increasing demands on students’ time, and not only for undergraduates. Graduate students, for example, now include many doing professional doctorates. Time is one of several factors limiting students’ availability for activities they regard as non-essential.

We therefore suggest that opportunities for peer interactions should be neither add-on or ad hoc, nor that they should simply involve more barbecues. Those opportunities should be structured and embedded into their academic programs, for undergraduates and graduate students alike, and particularly in the first, vulnerable year. Moreover, it is not only students who need collegial support, as the following quote will show:

Some examples of interactive good practice that we are personally aware of and/or involved in, for both students and staff, include:

CONCLUSION

In this paper we have tried to argue, on the basis both of published research (including institutional research) and of instances of known good practice, for the enhancement of opportunities for academic interpersonal interactions at all levels in a university. This approach is grounded in a student-centred view of what teaching and learning, including graduate student supervision, is all about. The published research strongly supports the pedagogical benefits of peer interactions, as well as improved satisfaction levels. We suggest that the need for those opportunities is greatest in the first year on campus, and that this is true for graduate as well as undergraduate students. Research students, for example, may well find that a major challenge in their first year is learning to understand a culture of research. In a climate of increasing student (and staff) ‘busy-ness’, integrating peer learning opportunities into students’ academic lives is educationally sound as well as a pragmatic response to the new realities. Some of the models we have proposed for ways of learning from one’s peers apply to students, others to academic staff, but we are confident that all - whether face-to-face or electronic - will contribute to a more dynamic and integrated scholarly community.

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