2010

Hong Co Tran

The University of New South Wales

July 2010

APSSA Conference Report

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Table of Contents Conference overview ........................................................................................................................... 3

APSSA 2010 overall experience ........................................................................................................ 5

APSSA 2010 personal observations ................................................................................................. 6

In UNSW context ................................................................................................................................ 12

Further recommendations ................................................................................................................. 14

Image acknowledgement .................................................................................................................. 14

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1. Conference overview

Event summary

Event name: The 12th International Asia Pacific Student Services Association Conference

APSSA 2010

Theme: Supporting | Engaging | Building capabilities Date: 6-9 July 2010 Conference organisers: APSSA, Queensland University of Technology Venue: Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point, Brisbane, Australia

Overview

The 12th International Asia Pacific Student Services Association Conference APSSA 2010

held in Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane on 6-9 July 2010 attracted over 300

international and national delegates with the theme of “Supporting | Engaging | Building

capabilities”. Specifically, the conference program addressed the current delivery of student

support services as well as practice approaches to the development of stronger links

between student support services and academic elements in both academic and career

enhancement.

The parallel Student Conference “Dare to do it – Building capabilities and global cooperation

for a sustainable future” focused on the need of individuals to utilise the available support

resources and provided an opportunity to discuss the future directions towards a sustainable

personal and professional development.

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Conference program

APSSA 2010 Student Conference presentations and workshops which based on the

“Supporting | Engaging | Building capabilities” theme, covered a variety of sub-related topics

Positive psychology

Social responsibility

The art of conversation

Team building and management

Benefits of volunteering

Taking the initiatives in self-value enhancement

Keynote speakers included

Professor Don Markwell – Supporting the best student experience for the 21st

century: Global trends and challenges

APSSA Conference Steering Committee – World Cafe and Open Village

Tony Ryan – Realised potential can enhance our creativity

Dorinda Fung – Partnerships, assessment and e-portfolios

Jean Madden – Street Swags

The Big Lift

Erin Gregor, Brett Smout and Phil Mairu – The Great Debate

Ehon Chan – Online communities and the social media revolution

Dr Prinya Tevanaruemitkul - Thailand's reform toward civil cociety: Education and

the roles of university students

Non-conference presentation

Ehime University (Japan) – Ehime Leader School ELS program

Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore) – Design Orientation Camp DOC

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2. APSSA 2010 overall experience

From the student’s perspective, APSSA 2010’s primary conference papers have been

successful in raising some key issues regarding the current trends and shortfalls of the

existing student support services. These included the opening plenary speech by professor

Don Markwell, The Great Debate and Ms. Dorinda Fung’s report. Also, the APSSA 2010

Student Conference itself actively provided a supportive venue for interaction and discussion

between university students from around the world.

On the other hand, some conference workshops such as World Cafe or Open Village only

stopped at raising the concerns at personal and society level without being able to grapple

with the optimal resolutions to these problems. Some other demonstrations either too

narrowly focused on a single aspect or failed to convince audiences of the long term

sustainable and effective development practices, from a personal viewpoint. All of these

pitfalls from the Student Conference, however, then encouraged and challenged each

individual to think and strive to resolve the problems in their own way. This post conference

evaluation process could be seen as one of the learning outcomes from a series of

observations and insights during the APSSA 2010 Student Conference.

The two non-conference presentations by international student delegates have as well

brought in the question of projects that might be applicable to UNSW and modification, if

necessary, to suit the local requirements and conditions.

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3. APSSA 2010 personal observations

Professor Don Markwell – Oxford UK

In his speech, professor Markwell placed a great emphasis on the special assistance to

freshmen in their first year at university, which he called “the transitional turn”. The support

provided to students, in general, should not be in the form of advice but to ask questions. In

particular, it brought back to the concept of “Why you do what you do WYDWYD” and guided

students to think what this WYDWYD means to them. This question approach would

eventually encourage them to think about the ultimate things: what they want to do and to be

content and happy.

Professor Markwell then highlighted the fact that each student is distinctive and needs the

sustained support over three stages: Before students arrive, during their study and after

graduation and beyond. In addition, uneven level of support between undergraduate and

postgraduate as well as practices that separate local and international students still remain a

common global problem confronted by many universities.

Dorinda Fung – Hong Kong Polytechnic University

The SPECIAL e-portfolio is a personalised portal to assist students with strategic approach

to achieve personal development:

Self understanding

Goal planning & setting

Getting experience

Documenting the experiences

Achievements showcase

The e-portfolio is built as a social platform for students to public part of their profile and CV to

potential employers. Students can control the privacy setting on which information they wish

to share, for example SAARD result or social activities.

Here is an example of a portfolio showcase from Hong Kong Polytechnic website.

http://www.polyu.edu.hk/sao/allround/g1/pages/showcase/589.html

For each activity in which students participate, they would be awarded a specific number of

SPECIAL points, which counted towards the achievements for the SPECIAL All-Round

Award.

The Self-Assessment of All-Round Development SAARD, developed and implemented by

Hong Kong Polytechnic University through the SPECIAL e-portfolio system, aims to help

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students understand themselves and to offer a reliable measurement of their generic

competencies.

The SAARD questionnaire asks students to self assess their capabilities and behaviours

with respect to the following 14 generic competencies.

After completing the SAARD questionnaire, students will then have an opportunity to

compare their scores with the university average, access to suggestions of improvement as

well as resources to the third party for further development. Below is the snapshot of the

individual SAARD profile on the e-portfolio.

Domain Generic competencies

S – social development Leadership, teamwork, interpersonal effectiveness, communication

P - Physical & psychological development EQ & Psychological wellness, Healthy lifestyle

E – ethics Social & national responsibility

C – career development Entrepreneurship

I – intellectual development Problem solving Critical & creative thinking

A – aesthetics Cultural appreciation

L – learning Global outlook, interest in local & international affairs, lifelong learning

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Example of the SAARD questionnaire, Hong Kong Polytechnic University website

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Ehime Leaders School ELS - Ehime University (Japan)

Ehime University is quite a small institution with about 9,000 current students with less than

5% international. The student leadership development program ELS aims to provide

exclusive training to current and emerging student leaders in expectation of their favourable

influence on other students and the greater society. The expected learning outcomes include

presentation skill, social skill, team work, leadership and critical thinking skills.

The program consists of 3 components: academic courses on leadership, training for club

leaders and ELS seminar, in accordance with beginner, intermediate and advance level.

ELS program opens to all second year students and above, with the limit of 30 participants

per semester. To be eligible to enter the program, students will be required to submit an

expression of interest for further consideration.

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Design Orientation Camp DOC - Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore)

While most freshman students give priority to academic studies, at the same time they are

equally anxious about their ability to integrate with the school community at the social level.

Aware of this fact, the Orientation Camp DOC which is specially designed for first year

students, focuses on forming the good relationship between school and students in the first

place.

The measurement of effectiveness of DOC is based on how well the benefits match the

needs of first year students, including academic concerns, ability to fit in and friend network.

The 4-day, 2-night orientation program, undertaken by Temasek juniors and seniors,

specifically addressed these needs through some major activities.

Welcome function and introduction

Academic talks

Mass games and competition

Mini design projects

Administrative matters

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The benefits delivered include

Friendship across faculties and disciplines

The fun element

Clarification of school and course expectation

Leadership skills

Strong relation with alumni

Schedule of the DOC 2008 program for reference.

http://www-des.tp.edu.sg/des_orientation_programme08.pdf

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4. In UNSW context

Dorinda Fung – Hong Kong Polytechnic University

The first factor to consider adopting the e-portfolio is the resources to make it available to

45,000 students at UNSW, whereas in Hong Kong Polytechnic University, this number is

only around 28,000 students. Second, there may be a duplication in case of portfolio

showcase since computer engineering or design students might already have their own

portfolios on university online system, as part of the course requirements. Also, the issue of

whether alumni public profile would still be maintained for a certain time period was not

mentioned in Ms. Fung’s talk.

Despite these going concerns, the SAARD section emerges as a useful tool for students to

identify their weaknesses in the early stage and in turn set goals for further improvement. On

the one hand, post activity feedback alone can help reveal the programs’ shortfalls and

assess student’s learning results. This, nevertheless, only limits to the activity participants

without guiding other non-participant students through the self understanding process to

recognise the necessity of extracurricular activities.

The use of the secondary transcripts, similar as UNSW, has helped motivate students to

engage in extracurricular activities in Hong Kong Polytechnic. Nevertheless, they have gone

far beyond that with the SPECIAL point system to create a competitive environment among

students to strive towards a particular award in the end of each academic year. The SAARD

then reinforces the learning process to ensure that students understand their competencies

acquired from those social activities. UNSW or SDI in particular might wish to combine the

point system and SAARD in their future student projects.

Ehime Leaders School ELS - Ehime University (Japan)

The process involved in the ELS by Ehime University is quite similar as Hong Kong

Polytechnic’s SPECIAL project (self understanding – actual experience – feedback). If

considering applying the ELS, UNSW can include it as a recommendation to students upon

their completion of the SAARD questionnaire, especially to those who need assistance in

leadership area.

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Design Orientation Camp DOC - Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore)

Temasek Polytechnic’s DOC program structure and objectives are found similar to UNSW

SDI Step Up program. Based on my own experience as a senior student and an SDI Peer

Mentor, Step Up program has proved useful in equipping new students with essential

psychological, academic and administrative matters. As emphasised by the Temasek DOC

organisers, assisting junior students with the “ice breaking” task and making new friends is

also as important as familiarising them with the university academic environment. SDI Step

Up 2010 program, unfortunately, was not able to facilitate the friend making process in many

freshmen. New students attending the Step Up tended to gather with their national group or

ended up being less active and lack of interest with the group discussion and presentation.

As a result, many of them did not follow the program till the end.

The Temasek DOC has effectively covered this “ice breaking” issue with the camping

environment, where students have the opportunities to mingle and rotate through a variety of

outdoor games and competitions. This is believed to deliver a more positive outcome and

possibly the long lasting friendship rather than mere acquaintance through chatting and

discussion in a formal lecture context.

SDI Step Up could adopt this camping structure with some possible modifications (compress

the program content to less than 3 days, for example) to inject more of the fun element and

engage first year students in a more active multicultural friendship.

Other universities

Under some universities’ requirements, students are required to participate in a certain

number of mandatory co-curricular activities before graduation. These could take in the form

of volunteer work, self development workshops or competitions.

If possible, UNSW can apply this compulsory program forcing students to take the initiative

and proactive attitude to their social development. Some may concern about the final

outcome when students might not voluntarily join the activities in the first place. On the

contrary, according to one APSSA student delegate, the result turned out positive due to the

benefits and friendship acquired from the program.

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5. Further recommendations

As there exists a gap between undergraduate and postgraduate students, SDI might like to

hold more separate activities or info sessions targeting each specific group. As observed

from the Step Up semester 2.2010, many undergraduate students were struggling to make

friends and communicate with postgraduates due to differences in age and maturity.

Also, there is a situation that undergraduate Peer Mentors are more able to help their

undergraduate mentees with questions related to study experience, but not in the case of

postgraduate mentees. This leads to the question of whether SDI should streamline the Peer

Mentor program to address the needs of each particular group of students. Again, proper

consideration should be taken before going ahead with the separation, including number of

students intake in each degree as well as cost versus benefits.

6. Image acknowledgement

APSSA 2010 official website http://www.apssa2010.qut.edu.au/

Hong Kong Polytechnic University website

http://www.bre.polyu.edu.hk/BRE_workshop/pdf/Evidence-

basedImprovement%20(with%20Appendix).pdf

Philip Tan – Nanyang Technological University NTU student, Singapore