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An Equity-First Students as Partners Podcast.
Student Stories in Higher Education.
00:00:01 JAMIE
You're listening to Voices from the Classroom, the podcast that bridges the gap between students and educators. I'm Jamie.
00:00:06 PIERS
And I'm Piers.
00:00:07 JAMIE
And we're your hosts for today's episode. Today we're joined by Alex Keen, a Deakin student studying a Bachelor of Human Resource Management under the School of Psychology. Alex is here to share her experiences with unit content and feedback as an incredibly diligent and passionate student with a lot of life and career building commitments outside of her studies.
If this is your first time tuning in, the Voices from the Classroom podcast is where student stories take center stage. We facilitate honest conversations between students to explore what truly drives engagement, motivation, and success in higher education. We have a long-form explanation of our ethos and origins in our episode section if you'd like to learn more.
Today we're joined by the amazing Alex Keen. Alex, could you start us out by telling us a bit about yourself, your course, and what brought you to Deakin?
00:00:55 ALEX
Yeah, so I'm Alex. I'm studying a Bachelor of Human Resource Management, majoring in psychology in my final year, so I just finished. What brought me to Deakin, essentially, I'm originally from Warrnambool, and I wanted a university that was sort of in the country but still in the city. So I came to Geelong because it's sort of a bit of both and you've also got the beach. And yeah, I just love studying people, love talking to people, engaging with people, learning about people's behaviours and minds and everything. So that's why I chose to do psych in HR at Deakin. Yeah.
00:01:36 PIERS
So would you mind telling us a couple about which elements of your coursework that you find the most time consuming?
00:01:42 ALEX
I think for me personally, the pa rts that I find the most time consuming with my kind of aspects at uni is probably like all the resources that we have available. So like, attending lectures, doing readings, making notes, going to seminars, it can be quite, I think, overwhelming, especially if you're a student new to university life, trying to navigate that and adjust as you go through. I think another part that can be sort of kind of overwhelming is, you get set assignments and they can be quite broad in what they want you to do. A lot of the rubrics that I've had, they kind of give you a rubric and it's like for if you're aiming for a distinction, which I often try to aim for, they're like, oh, good or good use of this. And I'm like, “okay, that's great. But what does that actually look like?” And obviously you've got the assignment briefs, which are separate to the rubric, but it can be sort of similar in that they don't offer a lot of information. So I find that to be quite quite difficult.
And then obviously, for me, being a psych student, I've got the 30 to 40-page reading sometimes plus a video to watch with them as well. And sometimes you're left, I'm often left prioritizing, “well, I'm either going to do the video or I'm going to do the reading because I don't really have the time to do both”. And then just compiling that all into like notes and things like that. So yeah.
00:03:21 PIERS
Have you found any like tips to kind of help you balance everything in your life?
00:03:25 ALEX
Tips...I would say definitely, like to-do lists. Like I think that's probably my go-to thing is doing that kind of like, okay, what's the most important and then breaking it down. That being said, I still really struggle. I find myself kind of like frantically like, oh, this has got to be done, but this has also got to be done. So I kind of like split my time and I'm kind of all over the place. I'm not a perfect student, I'm not going to lie. So I would say probably to do list, which, I don't know how helpful of a tip that is, but yeah.
00:04:02 PIERS
How do you think that like the elements of your coursework could be streamlined to kind of help you maximize your time or assist you in anyway?
00:04:08 ALEX
Yeah, I think one of my, like, particularly with like, okay, so I'm going to sort of split this two ways. In regards to the notes and things like that or doing readings, I think it's helpful to know particularly from a reading what we're meant to get out of it because sometimes I'm like, “am I doing this just to absorb the information or am I meant to take notes?” Sometimes I don't know. Or like sometimes you'll go to the reading list and it says like ‘prescribed’ and then it says like ‘recommended’. And I'm like, “okay, what does that like actually entail? Like what am I picking up from this?”
00:04:41 JA/•1IE
Regarding, like I've only studied at Deakin the past two years and in my psych units I've had like some with past examples and some with like mocks the lecturers have written. And obviously it's very nuanced into what is and isn't okay to provide students with. So it's really interesting to see because obviously that's like amazing as someone who like came out of high school and like relied through myATAR on you know the Queensland published examples of quality work. It was like a really big adjustment to make. Did you find like when you stopped getting those quality examples that really impacted your assessment?
00:05:17 ALEX
Yeah, I think you kind of like, I like to say this a lot, like you're flying blind. Like you kind of just get an assignment and it's like, “well, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to write?” Like I remember, I think not even every unit I had access to, han example. So I would do what we call a lab report, which is pretty stock standard. Like when you're going into psych, you need to know how to do, but they're definitely hard. They're not easy things to do. I'm sure, Jamie, you know. So like having examples of past work is definitely going to aid you in what you need to like. You can be like, “oh, see here, like this is what you need to have in the introduction, like blah, blah, blah”. But even being able to talk through your assignments and stuff like what you're planning to do, like that's also a bit tricky because in high school I feel like you could go up to the teacher and be like, “oh, like, is this okay?
Like, am I on the right track?” And then, in sort of in uni, you can't really do that anymore
because of academic integrity. So that's like the fine line of knowing when and when not to.
Yeah.
00:06:31 PIERS
We've definitely spoken about that in previous episodes, like the connection between lecturer and student being like a big thing that's shifted over time. Do you think that
lecturers maybe should try to, you know, talk to their students more or try to understand what they're going through a bit more?
00:06:46 ALEX
I think I have a lot of lecturers that I think that are like willing to make the effort. I think especially I prefer in-person like lectures. I had a lecture last trimester who was absolutely fantastic. I think Emma was her name. I'm trying to remember. And she was fantastic. Like she really took the time to like help us each kind of like lesson. Like she's like, “have you got any questions? Like I know lecturers do, but if you've got any questions, like come up to me like after class” andlike chat to you and like she kind of went through things and broke it down. I think really breaking down those assignment briefs and like really taking the time with students is definitely beneficial, but also students have to want to do that. Like, that's the thing as well. Like, I think some students maybe let their anxieties. .. I know I definitely did in first year. I was like, “I'm not going to ask that. That's a stupid question. Why would I do that?” Like, I know that can get in the way and prevent students. So I don't think it's all on just the lecturers, but I definitely like, it's definitely nice to have a warm, opening, welcoming environment. And I know that's definitely harder online. Like I'm definitely more hesitant to ask questions on a Zoom than I am in person. That's just the kind of person that I am.
00:08:01 JAMIE’4IE
And that goes for cold emailing lectures after Zoom and having to know that you're adding to a very hectic inbox that so many people are.
00:08:10 ALEX
Absolutely. Even posting on the discussion board like gives me a little bit of anxiety because I'm like, I try and ma ke sure like no one's asked the question before, but sometimes you just make a mistake and you're like, I don't know.
00:08:22 JAt•1IE
You can use the search function, but somebody's worded it slightly differently, and that's like the one flaw with that sort of...
00:08:27 ALEX
Yeah.
00:08:28 PIERS
Soina sense, kind of ma king the discussion with a bit more casual, feel a bit more like free and open to talk on.
00:08:34 ALEX
Yeah, no, it's definitely like that. casual, like casualness there can definitely help. But yea h.
00:08:44 JAMIE' IIE
Those are, we've covered some really great insights. So thank you so much. We also wanted to kind of get an idea of what you wish your lecturers understood about like when they're designing resources and responding to student questions like on the discussio n boards, what you think would improve that beyond like that casual environment or like, is there anything else?
00:09:05 ALEX
I think for me, particularly with I spend a lot of time going over assignments and assignment briefs and then often because I'm very type A, I try and get it done ahead of time and then the anxiety creeps into the back of my mind and I'm like go and reread the rubric. And I'm like, “oh, hang on. I didn't talk about this. I need to go and fix it”. Like, and then I'm like panicking last minute because I'm like, “oh, I need to like rewrite this section. Like it's not correct”. So I think having really specific rubrics around, this is what I'm looking for.
Like this is like, I don't know how else to say it, but like having things like in a rubric, like, oh, this is this is deemed good or something. Like, I can't, I wish I had an example off the top of my head and I can't think of one. But like, it just makes it so much easier. I think so many students, because they're so broad, you're like, well, what are you actually saying? Like, what do I actually need to do? So specific like language is definitely going to help like specific use of language. I feel like it's going to make that easier.
00:10:14 JAMIE' IIE
Especially if you're like going back two weeks later and reinterpreting it in a completely different way. There's clea rly some sort of disconnect.
00:10:20 ALEX
So the last minute panic is like, so many times.
00:10:25 PIERS
I think that's really helpful for our audience to hear, especially a lot of people understand or will want to change your rubrics based on what you've said. A final takeaway that
educators and unit chairs in particular probably love to hear is if you could change one element of your course to better support your capacity to engage with units in your coursework, what do you think that would be?
00:10:44 ALEX
I feel like the one thing that I've consistently said to my friends, and I think this is probably the university system, not so much something that maybe lecturers can do is having feedbacks like feedback during an assessment. Like that's the one, like the gold standard, like I know academic integrity, like we can't, they can't do it.
00:1 1:02 JAMIE' IIE
In a perfect ideal world.
00:1 1:03 ALEX
In a perfect ideal world, it would be so good if I could like submit like a draft essay and then get like feedback and be like, like “this needs to be fixed, blah, blah, blah, blah”, and then resubmit it so I can get to a HD because often I like get my assignments back or something and they're like, oh, you've done this, and then I'm like, “okay, for next time I'll try and remember them”, it's like gone. Am I actually improving on my work like for the next time?
00:1 1:31 JAMIE’•1IE
So, And with assignments vary, even for the same insight, like the lab reports you do in first year, the same as second and third, they vary slightly in their structure and it can be hard to apply the same feedback in a different context because it's different structurally.
00:1 1:45 ALEX
Exactly, yeah. And I feel like I kind of like when I, because I always take a break over try 3 and I I forget how to, sometimes I'm like, I have to do a lab before. that was three months ago. Like, how do I write? Like, and, you get back into it. But just like having that feedback is so helpful. And I think a lot of students who, suffer from anxiety and things like that and question themselves and struggle with confidence, like having something that can build your confidence, I think is really important as a student and also as a writing mentor. Like I see a lot of students come to us And they're like, “how do I do this assignment”? And I'm like, trying to read their assignment instructions, but make sure I'm not doing the work for them. And it's like, I think you're on the right track. Like that's how I would tackle it. But they're like, I've spoken to my lecturer and I was like, it's just not making sense. And like, I don't actually know what I need to do. Like, I don't know how to make a start. It's really...I think that's the struggle a lot of students have is making a start and 1...
00:12:49 PIERS
think that's really good because you have a very unique perspective to offer to this. Like in high school, of course, like when you do like an English essay, you'd always have like that chance to ask your teacher, be like, “oh, could I get some feedback on this? What do you think of my ideas?”
And while for me in advertising, we kind of do have a form of that. Like if we're doing a huge assignment, we're doing, making like a campaign, for example, we'll have a chance to ask the teacher, hey, is like this idea, good, like a feed forward session. So maybe the application of like feed forward could go a really long way for you.
00:13:18 ALEX
That would be, I think, so good. I think the other thing to think about too, and I often complain about this to my parents, I'm like, in the real world, when you're working on projects and things like that, you're collaborating, you might have a client or a manager or someone who's overseeing that. And I feel like you're able to go back and forth and be like, is this on the right track? Like, is this what you're looking for? And I feel like, university doesn't really emulate that in the same way. Like it's very like, okay, here's an assignment, go and do it. And then fingers crossed you pass. Like that's the...
00:13:52 JAMIE’•1IE
You hit the marks.
00:13:53 ALEX
Yeah, and that's it. So that's the one thing I wish it more replicated the outside world. Like you were saying with the feed forward, like that is more, I think, applicable to the real world in a lot of instances. Maybe not all the time, but yeah, a lot of instances. I know, like lecturers and unit chairs, they do a lot. And there's a lot that we don't see behind the scenes. And I know that, like, our students, like when they have their eVALUates come on, come through, like things, like often it's quite negative, like for some of them to see that.
And I think, like, they do such a wonderful job, like a lot of them, trying to do the best that they can do and those kinds of things. So I feel like I want them to know if they're listening, like I do appreciate what they do. I've had some really good lectures. I've had som e not so great lectures that that's just uni, you know. But I think, yeah, like, you know, you guys are amazing and you do so much. So yeah, we really appreciate you.
00:15:04 JAMIE'•\IE
That's so sweet.
And now we're going to do an even bigger question to answer. We're really grateful for such a wonderful conversation that we've managed to have. And we just wanted to give you a chance to really summarize like our title topic of what you wish your lectures knew, like the one takeaway.
00:15:20 ALEX
I think a lot of time at uni and one of the skills I think that students learn is learning to prioritize different things, learning where to conserve effort and energy towards certain tasks. And I think clearer direction on where students need to allocate their time. So clearer rubrics, clearer like reading guides, what am I looking for is going to save time and it's going to save stress for students. You know, that said, the balance between how much hands-on do you provide is the other question, but I think definitely like clearer direction and sort of focus can definitely help students to reduce that stress and that anxiety around completing assignments and things like that.
00:16:06 JAMIE'3IE
Yeah. Really well said.
00:16:08 PIERS
Alex, thank you so much for sharing your student experience with us and our audience. You've provided some really useful insights on the value of clarity surrounding unit chair content capacity.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of Voices from the Classroom. We hope Alexandra's experience provided some valuable insights that could potentially be considered as a part of your education provision and resource access. If you found today's discussion engaging, we encourage you to reflect on what you've heard today. Could you find a new way to streamline your course's resource access or commit to familiarizing yourself with the student support resource and promoting it to your student cohorts? Or even have a think about how your unit delivery may sit with students balancing their studies with complex circumstances?
Remember to subscribe so you don't miss our next episode. We also welcome any suggestions of topics you'd like for us to delve into. Please share them with us through the link through the podcast notes. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning, and keep connecting. These aren't just our stories. They're calls for empathy, change, and understanding.