Date: Monday 30 June 2025
Time: 9:00am – 10:30am AEST
Venue: Cairns Pullman International
Cost: Please see Registration page
Supporting part-time students to succeed in a full-time world
University processes, support and government funding are skewed towards full-time students. It is therefore not surprising that studying part-time is one of the leading predictors of failure and attrition in higher education. To meet the anticipated future demand for university graduates, it is critical that the sector bring innovation and fresh aspiration for initiatives supporting part-time students as they transition to university, particularly those from non-traditional backgrounds.
How can we work together across the curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular spaces to enhance successful student transition to university? What are our strengths, limitations and opportunities?
Charles Sturt has a high proportion of part-time students. From 2019-2024, the Charles Sturt Retention Team developed a national, award-winning whole of university framework to support students to succeed in first-year. In 2025, Aspro Kelly Linden was awarded an ACSES Fellowship to gain insights into how we can better support part-time students. In this session, we will take a deep dive into novel student data on part-time student engagement including:
- Learning analytics (LMS access, grades, enrolment patterns)
- Use of extensions for assessments
- Assessment submission patterns
- Benefits and challenges of work integrated learning
We will engage the audience with group activities to identify key interventions to help the First-Year Experience of part-time students that policy makers and universities can implement.
Please join us for another fabulous FYE network meeting!
Kelly, Kathy, Neil, Sarah and Noelia
Facilitators
Associate Professor Kelly Linden
2025 ACSES Equity Fellow
Faculty of Science and Health
Charles Sturt University
[email protected]
Kelly is a 2025 ACSES Equity Fellow, investigating how universities and the government can better support part-time student success. Over the last 8 years, Kelly has developed and led retention work across Charles Sturt which has resulted in a number of award-winning initiatives. Her research interests are student engagement, success, retention and feedforward which have informed the new Charles Sturt University Retention Strategy.
Dr Kathy Egea
Senior Lecturer and First & Further Year Experience (FFYE) Coordinator
Institute for Interactive Media and Learning (IML)
University of Technology Sydney
[email protected]
Kathy’s passion is to connect, link, draw on practice, build communities of those passionate about the student transition experience, in both curricular and co-curricular spaces. This is a key part of her role in the UTS Teaching and Learning team. The FFYE program (formerly FYE) engages a huge community of academics, professional staff and some students to share, learn and connect through grants and forums to support. She is a STARS Fellow, for her practice, and was a finalist in 2021 CAULLT Global Good Practice Award. In 2023, She co-authored the inaugural module on First Year Transition for Contemporary Approaches to University Teaching (CAUT) MOOC.
Dr Sarah Teakel
Lecturer, Animal Anatomy and Physiology
School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences
Charles Sturt University
[email protected]
Sarah developed an award-winning program to embed tutors into key first-year undergraduate subjects to increase student engagement. Her research interests include feedforward, initiatives in learning and teaching in higher education, student retention and student success. Sarah is committed to excellence in her teaching, promoting inclusive teaching through implementing universal design for learning (UDL) and a pedagogy of kindness.
Mr Neil van der Ploeg
Academic Lead, Retention Team
Division of Student Success
Charles Sturt University
[email protected]
Neil has been seeking to understand and research student transition and success at Charles Sturt for the past 5 years. He is currently undertaking a PhD in student success while developing and implementing practical interventions to improve student outcomes.
Dr Noelia Roman
Senior Lecturer in Medical Science
School of Dentistry and Medical Sciences
Charles Sturt University
[email protected]
Noelia has over a decade of teaching first-year Medical Science and leading the Work Integrated Learning (WIL) program of the accredited course, as well as holding other WIL leadership roles. Her work has supported university wide change in commencing student and formal staff development to support teaching excellence. Her Research Interests include early assessment design, first year subject design and delivery, and student transition, success and retention.