UniPASS Report Semester 1 2012 - Unilife - Curtin University

HEPPP Targets (continued)
UniPASS Semester 1 2012 Report
Figure 12
UniPASS Student HEPPP Categories
90
5
47
Total LSES
Total Remote
Total Regional
555
Total Non-HEPPP
Attendees
Low Socio-Economic Status Students
Widening the participation of low Socio-Economic Status (SES) students is an important strategic goal for Curtin and
for HEPPP funded programmes like UniPASS (Student Equity Strategy 2010-2013, 2009) (Review of Australian Higher
Education (Executive Summary), 2008). An essential part of the pedagogical framework of UniPASS is that it is
inclusive and non-remedial (PASS- Guidelines for Best Practice, 2010). Therefore, low SES learners were not targeted
individually in semester one but units that have a significant number of low SES learners are targeted instead. 13.3%
(Figure 12) of UniPASS students were identified as Low SES which is in line with Curtin’s 2008 Low SES numbers of
11.2% (Student Equity Strategy 2010-2013, 2009). This indicates that the proportion of Low SES students in UniPASS
is in proportion with the total student population showing that the program is attracting HEPPP targeted students.
Regional and Remote Students
According to Figure 12, about 7.7% of total UniPASS attendees were Regional or Remote students. Due to the
difficulty in delivering UniPASS to Regional and Remote students not attending Bentley campus, an online UniPASS
pilot was initiated in semester one 2012.
The online pilot was run with external students enrolled in a first year Humanities unit as a means to test the
technological constraints and customise the pedagogy for online facilitation. The online pilot was pedagogically
successful with regular attendees achieving 16.11% higher grades than non-attendees. However, the attendance
rate was lower than expected with only four regular attendees.
Some barriers to attendance were recognised and the delivery of the program further refined for a continuation of
the pilot in semester two 2012. Some of the barriers in semester one included a cumbersome registration system,
unappealing and difficult to use software, and unpopular session times. These barriers were removed for the
semester two pilot. The need for registration was removed, the software was changed from Blackboard Elluminate
to Blackboard Collaborate, and polls were conducted to find the best session times. The results of this pilot will be
available in the semester two 2012 UniPASS report.
Raphael Pereira September 2012 UniLife – START – UniPASS 20