Focus: Student engagement and retention is an important topic of higher education research. Researchers suggest that the more hopeful students are in achieving their academic goals, the more probable they are to succeed and stay retained.
Background: According to Snyder and colleagues’ hope theory, hope is conceptualised as a cognitive, goal-oriented phenomenon where student hope focuses on the beliefs that they have the capacity to achieve their goals. Strategies to increase agency and pathway thinking include goal setting.
Description: The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate research pertaining to the impact hope has on student academic achievement in the higher education learning environment and how student learning experiences influence hope. With 30-years of research in this area, there is yet to be a systematic account of hope’s influence on academic achievement in higher education.
Methods: A systematic search for eligible research was undertaken in five relevant databases that mentioned hope in the context of undergraduate university student learning outcomes. This review included 52 studies, 20 countries and 16043 students. Fifty studies employed quantitative research methods and two used qualitative methods.
Evidence: The findings of this review suggests that students who have high trait hope are more likely to experience hope regardless of hope strategies, however, students with medium to low hope are more likely to benefit from hope strategies, experiencing increases in academic performance.
Contribution: Findings suggest students who have hope are motivated to set clear academic goals, view goals as attainable, engage in positive study behaviours and achieve set goals, impacting academic achievement, performance, success, and retention.
Engagement:
Beginning question - What do you know about Hope theory?
Mid presentation – Do you think you can impact a student’s hopefulness?
End reflection – What strategies might you use in your teaching practices to promote student hope?

Focus – Student engagement and experiences within a distributed learning model (DLM)

Background – Australian universities are increasingly expanding onshore and offshore campuses to broaden their student base (Cunningham et al., 2000). The University of New England (UNE), with its main campus in Armidale, NSW, has followed this path by expanding its physical presence in Sydney and Adelaide. The UNE Business School (UNEBS) currently offers Master of Business-International (MBA-I) programs in Armidale, Adelaide, and Sydney campuses.

Initiative – The flexible teaching and learning possibilities associated with the DLM will likely be a mainstay in the post-COVID-19 era (Lockee, 2021). This study adopts Kyei-Blankson et al.'s (2016) characterisation of DLM as "any learning that allows instructor, students, and content to be located in different locations so that instruction and learning occur independent of time and place" (p. 493). This study examines the challenges and opportunities of MBA-I delivery in three locations and asks: what transferable lessons can be learned from the UNEBS model of DLM?

Method —The study adopts an exploratory qualitative research approach (Parida et al., 2023) to interview students and academics. This paper reports on the first phase of the research, in which semi-structured interviews were carried out with academics (n=3) and a diverse cohort of international students (n=21) across three campuses. Adherence to the protocols of the ethics approval ensured the psychological safety of respondents.

Evidence —The findings indicate students preferred smaller class sizes and offline engagement with academics outside office hours and valued face-to-face inter-campus interactions/engagement opportunities with academics/students to broaden their horizons. Academics highlighted the need for continuous professional development initiatives and meaningful collaboration in standardising pedagogical approaches across locations. These findings highlight the utility of distributed leadership (Jones et al., 2012) through collaborative initiatives that can be beneficial in improving student engagement and learning outcomes.

Focus
This showcase presentation reports how six researchers working in different higher education settings in four different countries, started with the 3Rs of partnership (Cook-Sather et al. 2014) gradually applied the Six Rs (Tsosie et al. 2022) as guiding principles for their engagement and for establishing mutual trust as co-researchers in their collaborative research project. It also discusses the importance of trust development within a team to ensure everyone’s research interests and perspectives are respected, heard, and incorporated.
Background
In 2023, these researchers were brought together to develop a collaborative project through an international research seminar program hosted by a US University. With a shared interest in conducting research in teaching and learning practices in higher education, this team of six gathered from four countries (Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States), where they each hold different roles, are rooted in different disciplines, and have different experiences and expertise in methodological designs, theoretical, and conceptual frameworks, and research practice.
Description
Like any collaborative team, finding a common ground is vital yet challenging for this team. They needed to seek a balance between the local relationships within which each of the team members’ day-to-day work is grounded and the multi-institutional, international contexts in which the team members are collaborating with other colleagues from their own, and diverse local contexts.
Methods
As a spontaneous process of team trust building, at the very beginning, they discussed their respective positionalities and individual social, personal, and scholarly identities.
Contribution
Sharing knowledge and experiences and valuing each other’s’ different voices and perspectives built trust among them. In the process, a sense of belonging to group emerged.
Engagement
This showcase presentation will use reflective questions and conversation prompts to connect with the audience and incorporate their perspectives on trust building in collaboration.

ocus
Practical application related to research.

Background/context

The negative effects of cognitive biases on medical reasoning are well documented--cognitive biases are linked to between 36.5% to 77% of diagnostic errors and 71% of therapeutic errors. However, there is no consensus on how reasoning deficits are to be addressed in the profession.

Description

An intervention was developed to induct 486 incoming Year 1 Medical students into methods of reasoning that lie at the core of Critical Thinking training. This four-week bridging course alerted students to prevalent biases in diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making and reasoning strategies tailored to clinical contexts. The course helped students to understand the skills of identification, analysis, construction and evaluation of arguments and of formal reasoning as a mechanism of collaborative, social reasoning to mitigate bias and noise. Key biases include the confirmation bias and the availability heuristic, both of which contribute to premature closure of investigation. Students were made aware of the need to explicitly evaluate reasoning as well as evidence in arriving at a diagnosis.

Method(s)

This study follows a pre and post-test study design, with survey data analysed using a cross comparison method via Nvivo.

Evidence

Findings suggest that participation in this course assists students to recognise the influence of cognitive biases in diagnostic practice. Changes in survey response indicate that exposure to reasoning skills in a clinical context increased students’ awareness and willingness to address case ambiguity while consciously avoiding premature closure of inquiry by exploring alternative hypotheses and engaging in collaborative reasoning.


Contribution

Results suggest that training MD students in critical thinking is a promising antidote to biases that plague diagnostic decision-making and should be a feature of medical programs.


Engagement

What constitutes a 'good' doctor?

Who should teach doctors and what should they teach? Why?

Could a doctor be replaced by AI?