One school’s response to the first year expectations survey

Abstract

The School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design identified “gap” between their intended provision of a nurturing learning environment for first year students and the data from the 2006 & 2007 “First Year Expectations Survey” (Turnbull et al., 2006; CLPD 2006, 2007). All commencing students at the University of Adelaide in 2006, and 2007, who attended scheduled discipline-based Orientation Week sessions were potential respondents to a “First Year Expectations Survey”. The questionnaire was distributed during Orientation Week by the Centre for Learning and Professional Development (CLPD) in 2006 and by the Schools in 2007. Students’ anonymous responses were collated by CLPD to provide feedback to Schools about the profile, beliefs and expectations of their commencing students as well as benchmarking those local area results with the commencing University student cohort. Our School set about addressing those “gaps” between in-School practice and policy, and students’ expectations, as the School operates from a belief that it is pointless to conduct evaluation if the results are not developed into recommendations, which are acted upon. Gaps were identified in a number of areas – particularly relating to students’ expectations of the amount of time they would study and work in paid employment given the University’s and School’s expectations of hours spent in contact time and studying; of access to staff out of contact hours given the School’s heavy reliance on casual contracted staff; that drafts would be read given resource constraints. This presentation compares national University student data (Krause et al., 2005) with local University data (CLPD, 2006, and 2007) and proposes a School response to the “gaps” identified.