Retention and Atrium

I’d like to once again urge everyone to maximise their use of Atrium, particularly in these early weeks of T2, with a view to minimise attrition from our units. We know the familiar pattern of students ‘over-enrolling’ in units, and then cutting back just before census date; but we have a pretty good idea of what proportion of students engage in this pattern and we know that, aside from that group,  there remains another large proportion of students who don’t engage in this behaviour and who withdraw prior to census date for a number of other reasons, many of which we can help to address and/or avoid. The students we want to focus our Atrium efforts on are those in the latter group who are struggling to establish the early study and engagement patterns that will enable them to succeed. There is often a barrier to their initial engagement with MyLearn, and they may be bringing past poor patterns into their new T2 units. Helping students identify and establish those patterns is critical at all levels, but it’s particularly important in our 100-level units where many students enrolled in those units are either new to study, or returning to study after a long hiatus. Please ensure, regardless of the unit you’re running/teaching, that you utilise Atrium and work with our students to help them succeed. As I’ve previously discussed, we know that the extended period of study prior to census date is a factor in our increased attrition rates for T1, and we know we’ve just hit record levels of student engagement for T1, which means we really need to maintain our efforts.

ARC, AAUT, AI Successes and MORE!

It’s been a wonderful month for achievements by staff across the Faculty. To highlight just a few: Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Jenny Wise, and Lisa Hackett received word that their application for an ARC Linkage Grant was successful; two HASSE teams – one in HASS comprising Lili Pâquet and Ariella Van Luyn, and the other in EDU led by Ingrid Harrington and her CSSP colleagues – attended the 27th Annual Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) to receive their ‘Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning citations; UNE’s Early Childhood Conference, held in the Arts Building on Friday 13 June, was wonderfully successful; Kyle Mulrooney has been ‘waving the HASSE flag’ in showcasing AI innovation in his role as Senior Research Fellow in AI Innovation and Industry Engagement; the call for papers went out for UNE’s own ‘Against AI?’ conference, to be held in our Arts Building, UNE, on 23 October 2025 [contact against.ai@une.edu.au for more info]; and Taragara’s ‘Looking Through Windows Showcase’ is scheduled for the Dixson Library from 7-11 July, 2025!

I’m confident there’s much more going on, so please don’t hesitate to forward me details.