Keynote presentation: Understanding the student experience in the 2020s: The need for an integrated approach
| Friday, July 7, 2023 |
| 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM |
| Plaza Auditorium |
|
Sponsored By:
The University of Queensland ITaLI
|
Overview
Dr Mollie Dollinger, Deakin University
Details
If it feels like the higher education sector lurches from one crisis to the next, imagine what it must be like for our students. Global forces of COVID and artificial intelligence, to environmental disasters, and localised policy shifts such as the Australian Job Ready Graduates Package, send often disjointed and contradictory signals to students about the purpose and value of a university degree. It is now pertinent for us as a sector, leaders, policymakers, teachers, and staff, to recommit ourselves to the importance of evidence-informed approaches to understanding an increasingly complex, and diversified, student experience. In this keynote, she will discuss the need for an integrated approach to learning about students’ behaviours, preferences, and experiences. Drawing on research from learning analytics and Students as Partners (SaP), she will critique how we ‘capture’ student voices and challenge how we might conceptualise the student experience moving forward.
Speaker
Dr Mollie Dollinger
Deakin University
Keynote: Understanding the Student Experience in the 2020s: The need for an integrated approach
Biography
Dr Mollie Dollinger is an early-career higher education researcher and educator with a focus to improve equity and inclusion in our classrooms, campuses, and systems. Central to her approach is a commitment to participatory design methodology, including Students as Partners (SaP) and co-design methods which recognise and embed the lived experiences of participants to generate new ideas and solutions. She has previously led the creation of two university-wide SaP programs and has applied her passion for inclusion and co-design towards research on a range of higher education topics, including learning analytics, student governance, and graduate employability.
Mollie is currently a Senior Lecturer with the Learning Futures team at Deakin University. She previously completed her PhD with the Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) at The University of Melbourne in December 2018, and has previously held an academic position at La Trobe University. With colleagues, Mollie has been awarded over $700,000 AUD in competitive research funding, including as the Chief Investigator of a National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) grant exploring regional and rural student pathways into higher education. More recently, Mollie has been part of a team led by Professor Sarah O’Shea (Curtin University) and funded by the National Careers Institute (NCI) to establish a National Career Disability Learning Hub for Students with Disabilities. Mollie is a member of the Deakin’s School of Education Research for Educational Impact (REDI) and Deakin’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE).
Mollie’s latest publications are available through GoogleScholar and follow her on Twitter at @molliedollin
Chair
Jason Lodge
Deputy Associate Dean (academic)
The University of Queensland
