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An Equity-First Students as Partners Podcast.
Student Stories in Higher Education.
00:00:01 PIERS
You're listening to Voices from the Classroom, the podcast that bridges the gap between
students and educators.
I'm Piers.
00:00:06 JAMIE
And I'm Jamie.
00:00:07 PIERS
And we're your hosts for today's episode. Thank you for being here.
Today we're joined by Shreya Mattel, a nursing and psychological science student who's
passionate about creating more inclusive learning spaces for international students.
She's here to share a perspective on how cultural context affects classrooms engagement,
why resource organization matters, and what she wishes her lecturers understood about
international student learning needs.
So I think we'll transition over to our big question, our titular question. Shreya, what do you
wish that your lecturers knew?
00:00:34 PIERS
Welcome back to Voices from the Classroom podcast. Our mission is to amplify the lived
experience of students, especially those from equity cohorts who often face challenges
and offer valuable insights into university life.
We aim to spark conversations between students and educators to deepen the
understanding of diverse realities, shaping student engagement, motivation and success.
Please note that while this is a student as partners project supported by the Equity-First
team, that we've shared our own and based on personal experiences and stories from
fellow students, known on behalf of any institution or group.
So today we are joined by the wonderful Shreya. Thank you for coming on, Shreya.
00:01:07 SHREYA
Thank you for having me.
00:01:08 PIERS
Could you start by telling us a little bit about what you're studying at Deakin and what
brought you here?
00:01:12 SHREYA
I'm doing a double degree in nursing and psychology. I'm doing the bachelor's, and it's
been very interesting to study both of the courses because it gives you great insight,
because psychology really pairs nicely with nursing. So it's been great. And yeah, I'm
excited to be on the podcast.
00:01:31 JAMIE
Amazing. We'd love to start off with some of the points that you raised in your preparation
for this podcast and ask you how you think the cultural references that the nursing and
psychology units contain, create barriers to learning.
00:01:44 SHREYA
So I think particularly in nursing, we do have a unit that focuses on understanding the
cultural context, especially with First Nations people and the healthcare that we provide
them. So I am an international student, and for me, that is the part of history that we never
learned in school. And I had an international school that focused majorly on most of the
country's histories, and I didn't know about that. So just based off of that instance, I felt like
a lot of international students also faced that sort of context when going into the unit.
And it was just very difficult to understand some of the points they were trying to make
because they were building on pre-existing knowledge that we didn't have. And they were
expecting us to then understand why doing certain things or things that exist in history are
not okay for us to do. And then the assignments were based on that. So it was a bit difficult
to catch on to that while we just started our seminars. And it was also difficult and
intimidating because I didn't want to say something that was wrong. And I also wanted to
understand the history in its proper depth.
So I think that was something that I needed to go and have a chat with my professors about
and do some extra research to fully understand. But then again, it's something that you
haven't lived with throughout your life. So it becomes a little difficult to understand if I'm
interpreting something correctly or not, or if I'm oversimplifying something as well at the
same time.
00:03:12 JAMIE
Like that cultural context to put it into perspective and those reference points of what is
and isn't okay outside of a healthcare context.
00:03:21 SHREYA
Right.
00:03:21 JAMIE
Like difficult to like teach yourself in such a short trimester.
00:03:25 SHREYA
Exactly, yes.
00:03:26 PIERS
Why do you think that this is important for lecturers to understand?
00:03:32 SHREYA
Because firstly we are being assessed on it. That's a big one. And also because it's not just
students who are from Australia, but we are going to have, especially in healthcare, these
are the people who are going to be treating people from all diverse backgrounds. It's
important that we have that context and then for us to support that learning that's going to
build that context.
00:03:56 JAMIE
There's such a good point that I was trying to think of ways to explore it more, but I think you
summarized it really nicely.
I, as a fellow nursing psych double major, just wanted to ask you a little bit about the
difference in the resource organisation between those two schools within the Faculty of
Health and how you think the clarity across the board could be improved or any barriers
you've found within that as well. Do you have anything to speak on that?
00:04:21 SHREYA
Yes, firstly, I love both the faculties. I love the professors from both of them. But I found
that within psychology, resources are just more organised. And I've seen for a lot of our
units, most of the learning's just what's on the cloud content, and you don't need to access
any other links outside of it. And that just streamlines things a lot better, because with
nursing specifically, as you might have observed, we have a book. And then you go into that
book. And firstly, someone who is just starting at uni, you would think that I have to read
every single word, because it's required reading, right? But when we talk to professors and
when I've done that, I've come to realize that they don't want us to read everything and they
don't want us to go that much in depth with all the information.
So I feel like that, I think a lot of time gets wasted into trying to firstly access the resource
and then trying to understand what parts of it you need for your learning, especially when
with the double, especially the content's quite a lot and when we don't have the same
amount of time to figure and get into depth with all of it. So if we just streamline everything
a bit better so that we can access it and we just know whether, even if we have certain
page numbers that we should access, especially I know with our medicines unit that we
have in nursing. That's quite a lot. And professors themselves say that it's very easy to lose
track and go too much in detail that we as nurses in training don't need to.
And I feel like if that was something that was highlighted and if they could just tell us that
this is what you need to be reading and this is not what you're supposed to be reading, that
would just save a lot of time and mental space.
00:06:04 JAMIE
I definitely agree in that with that unit in particular, I wanted to learn everything possible,
but just simply didn't have the capacity.
And for those like 40-page prescribed readings to only like really need to know three of
them to be a safe, high quality practicing nurse, it would be great to know that ahead of
time so that we could manage our time a bit better and that sort of thing. So I totally hear
you on that one.
00:06:28 PIERS
Along with “give me, like a list of what pages should be reading”, do you have any other
ways of that professors could probably, streamline their rate allocation of like readings?
00:06:38 SHREYA
I mean, one other way is how we have it in psychology where they give out the content that
they want us to read just on the cloud site. So just how we have other resources on the
cloud, they would just have the text on there. I think that would be helpful as well.
And if not, given the vastness that we have to read in nursing, it would just be helpful if we
could have in the seminars professor just talk about it for five or 10 minutes as to what they
expect out of the readings and what they want us to take away. So that would just help us
understand if that's the depth we need to be going into for the readings.
00:07:12 JAMIE
Like manage time around that by being able to prioritize.
00:07:15 SHREYA
Exactly, yes, because when we do give the exams, we realize, “Oh, that was not all that I
needed to read”, and then you're like, “Oh, **** I just was reading so much that was not
needed”, yes.
Something else that I've observed within psychology and nursing is the rubrics and the
clarity within that. So with psychology, they're very clear. Within the rubrics, there would be
dot points that clearly demonstrate what they want in an HD assignment and what they
want in the other ones. And it's not just about saying things are concise as detailed.
So nursing essentially usually has you need to be detailed as well as concise. But within
psychology, they're not using just those words, but they give us bullet points. And we have
seminars that are designed to exactly tell us what they want in the assignment.
But if they're saying they want the assignment to be cohesive, they have a seminar
dedicated to what would that entail and how to get there. And I feel if we would just not,
like obviously we don't have the time within nursing to focus on a seminar just for
cohesiveness. But if we could just help students out with the way they want the structure
to be. Or the type of the depth of information that they want, I feel like that would just save
a lot of time and also...make things a lot clearer for us because half of my time, because I
work by planning, and most of my time just goes into understanding what's the depth of the
material they want from me, what is the structure that they want from me.
And if that was something that was already discussed and talked about more often, it
would just allow us more time to actually focus on the content and trying to get the right
information. So in this one, they're not giving away the answers to the assignment, but just
helping us structure it more and so that we can actually give the right information and
possibly score better.
00:09:03 PIERS
So do you think something like an example or maybe like a recording on Cloud Deakin that
shows what an expect or shows the cases much like a seminar would, do you think that
would be beneficial for you?
00:09:14 SHREYA
Yes, definitely. So we have something like that in psychology, I think, as well, where they
talk about the structuring. And even if they don't want to put it on the cloud, I've had a
professor within one of the units, and she just talked about the structure within the
seminar when she was discussing questions for the assignment. And she just said that
“this is what's needed. You can allocate this many words to this”. And that just allows you
to understand how much depth you can go into. And I think even just doing that would be
great.
00:09:41 JAMIE
It's really valuable. I think like for nursing too, so many, like we have our core units for
clinical skills, but there's also like the primary health unit or meds or like units that need to
exist, but have a very different structure because of the content they have to cover. So even
like an intro within those units to explain like, “this is what the structures of these
assignments that have to cover these specific criteria look like”, just so we understand not
only the content we're learning, but how to demonstrate our understanding of it. Do you
think that would help?
00:10:09 SHREYA
Yes, definitely. Because I feel like a lot of students just struggle to put what they know into
words and having more clarity on that would just help them put forward what they know
and their understanding much better.
00:10:21 PIERS
So on your submission, you were talking about the HNN154 ATSI Cultural Awareness Unit.
00:10:28 SHREYA
Yes.
00:10:28 PIERS
Wanted to ask what your experience of this unit has been like with no prior knowledge of
Australia's First Nations people?
00:10:35 SHREYA
I think it was, as I mentioned, it was a bit intimidating at first and also overwhelming
because it was a lot of new information that was thrown at me that I didn't really
understand at first. And I feel like the first two seminars for that was me just understanding
what was happening because there was a lot of context that students understood and they
were building on it. And that's what professors talked about as well. They were referring to
instances that happened in the history that were monumental and then they were like, so
this happened and they're just building on it and different perspectives from that.
And for me, I had to go back to understand the impact that those instances had and why
they matter so much. And also with the terminology within that unit, there's certain things
you can say and certain things you can't. And I personally didn't understand why that is. For
me, these were just terms, and I didn't have the context to understand why would we not
say that. And I remember going up to the professor and asking them about it, and they just
thought that I was asking them because I didn't want my word count to go into certain
words. And I'm like, no, I'm just trying to understand why are we doing this.
So it was just a bit difficult and I had to stray away from my, just the prescribed reading and
to go into more, look at more resources just to understand and get a clarity, a broader
clarity onto what is happening and why it's happening and why we are doing so.
I remember we watched a documentary in class and I think that's where things clicked for
me. So that was First Nations people talking about their experiences within healthcare.
And that is something that actually, regardless of all the readings that I've done, that's what
actually made me understand what's happening and why it's happening and why this unit
exists. And from then on, things became much more clearer and I was able to engage
better with my content.
So if we just had things like the documentary and having more visual aids that could just
help you understand the experience and get some human perspective in, I think that was
something that really helped me and might help other international students as well.
00:12:41 PIERS
So it's kind of like you're playing an unfair game of catch up in a sense, where everyone else
in the room knows what's happening, but you're a little behind in a sense.
00:12:48 SHREYA
Yes, yep.
00:12:49 PIERS
And the documentary was that like you were able to see and hear from First Nations
people. Was that the thing that kind of made everything click?
00:12:55 SHREYA
Yes.
00:12:55 PIERS
Would something like a guest speaker or something on that kind of line help as well?
00:12:59 SHREYA
Yep, that would be great if you could have that, yes. Because that would be very similar to
getting a human to come in and share their experience rather than just reading about it on
a website.
00:13:08 JAMIE
And even having that earlier on in the trimester rather than towards the end when you've
already had to do so much of your own work to catch yourself up for a better way of putting
it on cultural context and history.
00:13:22 PIERS
Do you have any recommendations or support that you wish existed for international
students studying this area?
00:13:28 SHREYA
Just, you mentioned having a guest speaker or having documentaries like that would be
helpful. And if that's not possible, we could just have like a pre-module learning just for
international students to provide that context. And after that, we get into our actual cloud
content and we would just go with a lot more understanding of what's happening and why
it's happening. So I think that might be good to have.
00:13:50 PIERS
Maybe like something in O Week or something just to have like that.
00:13:54 SHREYA
Yeah, definitely we could have that in O Week, yes.
And even if like, because that's a unit that we have in Trimester 2, so I don't know how O
Week might gel with that, but if we have it even before, like during the break, a short
module, just like we have the integrity module, a no credit unit, and we just do it just for our
understanding, I think that would just add a lot of value.
00:14:14 JAMIE
It would be a really good opportunity as well for, I know, for my own seminars in that unit,
they weren't delivered by a First Nations person. It was an amazing lecturer who had done
a lot of work to give us a really good perspective for those of us who had the cultural
context to begin with.
But if there was a pre-designed module like that, was designed with First Nation voices at
the forefront for the entire thing, it would I think be valuable for everyone. Like I was born
on Thursday Island. I'm still learning every day about health disparities and how I, in my
professional career, can improve them. And I think a module like that would be beneficial
for everyone.
00:14:51 SHREYA
Yeah, for sure. I think people have just also grown up with the context. There could be
some discrepancies in their understanding and just to have that sorted and just have them
understand, get more clarity as well as just, I think, revise it would be helpful.
00:15:07 PIERS
So I think we'll transition over to our big question, our titular question.
Shreya, what do you wish your lecturers knew?
00:15:16 SHREYA
I wish my lecturers knew that just helping students and giving them a nudge in the right
direction is something that would help. And also recognising that there are students that
they're teaching who come from different backgrounds and just reaching out to ask if they
are on the same page with everyone.
And then giving them help as required would really help them go a long way and would
make the overall experience a lot better.
00:15:43 JAMIE
Meeting everyone where they're at, essentially.
00:15:45 SHREYA
Exactly, yes.
00:15:46 JAMIE
Thank you, Shreya, for sharing your insights. Your experience really highlights how
important cultural awareness and clear communication and expectations of students and
lecturers are in creating equitable learning environments. And we're really grateful for all of
the insights you've shared. Thank you so much.
00:16:03 SHREYA
Thank you so much for having me. It was so great. And I wish my lecturers knew this.
00:16:08 JAMIE
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Voices from the Classroom.
We hope Shreya's story provided some valuable insights to potentially be considered as
part of your education provision.Could you check how equitable your classwork is for
diverse cohorts? Or think about the delivery of your content for international students?
Have a think, and don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss our next episode.
We always welcome any suggestions of topics you'd like us to delve into or experiences to
be shared. Please share them with us through the link in the podcast notes. Until next time,
keep listening, keep learning, and keep connecting. These aren't just our stories. They're
calls for empathy, understanding, and change.