Reports

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7718

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Start date: 2010End date: 2019

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 110
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    A proposal for student-centred first year teaching
    (Ako Aotearoa, 2018-07-01) Heinrich E; McDonald J
    We present a new proposal for teaching at first year university level that better adjusts to the individual strengths and weaknesses of students as they enter university. We suggest that changes in teaching approaches and student support are urgently required to facilitate successful outcomes that serve individuals, institutions and society well. Students come from diverse backgrounds, many study part-time and have additional responsibilities beyond their studies. Students invest their time and money and may accumulate large financial debts for their years of study. Failure rates are substantial and even students who pass often do not build the strong foundations in subject knowledge and study skills required for successful degree completion. The pressure on students to achieve affects not only the students but also higher education institutions and teaching staff, as pass rates determine funding. Our proposal builds on a large body of literature and strong evidence of effectiveness of the Personalised System of Instruction (PSI) that was popular more than 50 years ago. Combining this with Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and our experience of effective educational practice we provide an outline for how such a proposal might be implemented. Through paying close attention to the design of the learning environment and following the principles of SDT, our proposal advocates explicitly supporting the development of autonomy, competence and relatedness in our students and thus aims to increase both student motivation to succeed and student success. Fundamentally, our proposal is about substantially increasing the opportunity for meaningful pedagogic conversations between students and teachers. How fast and how well a student progresses through the course will be determined not by administrative constraints but by the student themselves. Students at all levels of subject knowledge and learning skills at the start of the course should have a strong chance to pass the course and do so well. Through direct engagement with students, the teaching team can adapt and focus their formative feedback to meet individual student needs as well as inform course design. In effect, we present a way to transform the conventional course from a static set of resources, lectures and activities programmed for administrative convenience to a living, breathing and continually evolving process. Important elements include: flexible semester durations based on individual student needs; opportunity to learn from formative feedback to ensure students cover all learning objectives; mandated, focussed, one-to-one discussions with teachers; scheduled opportunities for student-led problem-solving and discussion; study plans developed by students to match their own circumstances and knowledge; and a well-structured and responsive support network. We ask students to take responsibility for their learning. Through a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, higher education teachers and learning and writing consultants have provided feedback on our proposal. Their feedback echoes the literature reviewed and we have documented their endorsements, cautions and insights with respect to potential implementation. Our interviewees see the potential for assisting students based on their individual needs and for ensuring that students move on with solid knowledge foundations and study skills. What came across strongly is the passion educators have for helping students and the satisfaction they gain from direct contact with students. It is central to our proposal to significantly increase the number of hours invested into student support. The number of casual support hours per student in first year courses in the mathematical and information sciences sits currently at about 1.5 hours per student and semester, lacking well beyond what is offered in other disciplines. We argue that this needs to be lifted substantially to about 8 hours to ensure that students pass first year courses with strong levels of subject knowledge and learning skills. We propose that the additional support would result in substantially higher pass rates and improved retention at higher levels of study, paying back the initial outlay. From the evidence presented in this report, our clear recommendation is that our proposed approach is piloted within one or two institutions with a limited number of courses in order to i) properly determine the costs of implementation and ii) evaluate the degree to which anticipated benefits accrue.
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    Unlocking Transport Innovation: A Sociotechnical Perspective of the Logics of Transport Planning Decision-Making within the Trial of a New Type of Pedestrian Crossing
    (Building Better Homes, Towns, and Cities (BBHTC) National Science Challenge, 2018-06-01) Opit S; Witten K
    This paper considers the proposal to install a novel type of pedestrian crossing, as part of a neighbourhood intervention, to investigate the architecture of decision-making that influences the delivery and outcomes of our urban environments. While political and policy-making directions often signal a movement towards providing better active transport options and safer urban environments for pedestrians and cyclists, delivering projects that achieve such goals can prove challenging, time-consuming and be marred by conflict. Innovative projects can stagnate, diminish in scale or fail to be realised entirely. The exact causes of these less than ideal outcomes are difficult to determine as they involve a complex sociotechnical assemblage of various actors, institutions, resources and logics. The architecture of decision-making that surrounds these projects is created through a myriad of de jure and de facto actors that, in concert, affect the material construction of neighbourhoods and shape our homes, towns and cities In Auckland, the regional Road Controlling Authority (RCA), ‘Auckland Transport’ (AT), dedicates a chapter in its ‘code of practice’ outlining its commitment to enabling innovative solutions where appropriate. Yet, as political demands for a modal shift towards active and public transport have gradually intensified, the organisation has sometimes struggled to adapt from ‘business-as-usual’ practices that prioritise goals associated with the private motor vehicle, such as road network capacity and flow efficiency (particularly, alleviating peak hour congestion problems).
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    Review Report on Tokelau's Clinical Health Services and Patient Referrals Scheme
    (Massey University, 2019-11-21) Mafile'o T; Foliaki S; Koro T; Leslie H; Redman-MacLaren M; West C; Roskruge M
    Improving Tokelau’s clinical health services and the Tokelau Patient Referrals Scheme (TPRS) patient referral scheme is the key purpose of this independent review. The objectives were to: 1. Review the relevance and effectiveness of clinical health services on Tokelau. 2. Review the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the Tokelau patient referral scheme (TPRS). 3. Determine the funding required to deliver adequate levels of health service, and the potential budget impacts of the growing incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). 4. Identify the key changes needed to deliver and sustain improved results from health services delivered on Tokelau, and through its patient referral scheme. Covering the period July 2014 to June 2018, the review focused on services in Tokelau and services received by Tokelau’s referred patients in Tokelau, Apia and New Zealand.
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    Summary report: Developing community: Following the Waimahia Inlet affordable housing initiative
    (Building Better Homes, Towns, and Cities (BBHTC) National Science Challenge, 2019-01-01) Witten K; Opit S; Ferguson E; Kearns R
    This brief report summarises findings of a longitudinal case study of the Waimahia Inlet housing development. A more detailed analysis can be found in Witten, Opit, Fergusson and Kearns (2018). Waimahia Inlet is an affordable housing development located in Weymouth on an estuary of the Manukau Harbour, 23 km south of the Auckland CBD and 5km southwest of Manukau City centre. It was developed by Tāmaki Makaurau Community Housing Limited (TMCHL), an incorporated body comprising the Tāmaki Collective, Te Tumu Kāinga, Community of Refuge Trust (CORT) and the New Zealand Housing Foundation. This consortium of Māori organisations and community housing providers (CHPs) shared a mission to provide affordable, good-quality housing, with a focus on meeting the housing needs of Maori and Pasifika families. Waimahia is an interesting case study of affordable housing provision for a number of reasons: • its 295 dwellings make it Aotearoa’s largest third sector housing development; • the complementary expertise of the consortium partners enabled an innovative organisational structure to be developed to finance and deliver the development; • it is a mixed tenure neighbourhood with 70% of homes either assisted home-ownership (shared equity and rent-to-buy/home saver) or retained by the community housing providers as affordable rentals; and • 50 % of households are Māori and 15% Pasifika.
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    Young New Zealanders Ongoing Personal Finance Journey: A Longitudinal Study – Stage 2
    (Fin-Ed Centre, 2019-01-01) Matthews C; Reyers M; Wood P; Stangl J
    The report presents findings from the second stage of the Fin-Ed Centre’s 20-year longitudinal study, which tracks the financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of a group of New Zealanders through different life stages. The longitudinal study is unique in New Zealand. The first stage occurred in 2012 when the cohort was aged from 18 to 22 years. Now, five years on, the participants are aged from 23 to 27 years. The study will repeat again in 2022, 2027, and conclude in 2032. At study termination, the participants will range in age from 38 to 42 years. Of the original 350 cohort, 232 participated in the second phase of the study – a 66 percent retention rate. The study undertook interim updates in 2014 and 2016, which dealt with the topical issues of economic inclusion and housing affordability. The current focus is to determine how attitudes and behaviours have changed over the past five years as participants move into new life stages. The study finds young New Zealanders still rely on their parents for financial advice, despite many harbouring doubts about parental advice. Nearly half the participants said they had learned “everything” or “almost everything” from their parents. While this was down from two-thirds in 2012, the reliance on parental advice was surprising, given only 35 percent felt that their parents knew what was best for them in terms of their finances. When asked about how they expected to learn about money management in the future, parental advice still featured highly, but the dominant source, at 39 percent, was “life experiences.”
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    Possible Changes to KiwiSaver Act 2006 in relation to members with life-shortening congenital conditions
    (Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation, 2019-07-01) Matthews C; Mitchell D
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    Delivering Urban Wellbeing through Transformative Community Enterprise
    (2019) Dombroski K; Diprose G; Conradson D; Healy S; Watkins A
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