Considerable research has been undertaken involving the student experience and depicting undergraduate students as consumers of education. This construction of the relationship between students and universities is based primarily on notions of economic exchange. In this paper, using the construct of the psychological contract, we show that social…

Can extended opportunities for self-assessment over time help students develop the capacity to make better judgements about their work? Using evidence gathered through students' voluntary self-assessment of their performance with respect to assessment tasks in two different disciplines at two Australian universities, the paper focuses on the…

Increases in participation by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education across Australia continue to be promising. However, it is also known that Indigenous students' attrition, retention and completion rates remain areas of concern. In this paper, we report our findings from an analysis of Indigenous student…

This paper describes the development and validation of an item bank designed for students to assess their own achievements across an undergraduate-degree programme in seven generic competences (i.e., problem-solving skills, critical-thinking skills, creative-thinking skills, ethical decision-making skills, effective communication skills, social…

The scope and complexity of the Australian taxation system (as with other tax regimes) is daunting for many accounting students. This paper documents the implementation of new practices that were initiated in an effort to address some of the challenges faced by undergraduate students studying taxation. Based on the principles of cognitive load…

This article discusses the implications of recent income support payment changes for sole-parented families in Australia, and in particular, their capacity to access tertiary education. The government's program to reduce welfare benefit payments to sole-parented families already at high risk of economic disadvantage and social marginalization…

The present study focuses on the design and evaluation of an innovative instructional approach to developing oral presentation skills. The intervention builds on the observational learning theoretical perspective. This perspective is contrasted with the traditional training and practice approach. Two sequencing approaches--learners starting with…

Our study explored undergraduates' experiences of the research culture at a research-intensive university in southern New Zealand. In 2009, 1281 students responded to a survey that probed aspects of the research culture. Data were analysed through descriptive statistics and an inductive analysis of comments. Survey results for final-year…

Existing research has yielded evidence to indicate that the expectancy-value theoretical model predicts students' learning in various achievement contexts. Achievement values and self-efficacy expectations, for example, have been found to exert positive effects on cognitive process and academic achievement outcomes. We tested a conceptual…

Universities are increasingly offering capstone subjects as part of curricula to prepare final-year undergraduates for employment through consolidating and integrating their knowledge and skills while bridging the gap between academic learning and professional work. This study investigates capstone subjects offered by Australian business schools,…

This study reports the development and validation of the Graduate Skills and Attributes Scale which was initially administered to a random sample of 272 third-year-level and postgraduate-level, distance-learning higher education students. The data were analysed using exploratory factor analysis. In a second study, the scale was administered to a…

The objective of this study is to add to the extant literature on graduate attributes by examining the mediating role of global/moral citizenship and lifelong learning attributes in the relation between students' scholarship attributes and their academic self-directedness in a higher-education open distance learning (ODL) environment. The…

One important line of inquiry in educational psychology involves the study of change of individuals' cognitive-motivational processes. The conjunctive use of longitudinal data with latent growth curve modeling procedures has, for example, allowed researchers to identify initial levels and to trace trajectories of theoretical variables such as…

This study aimed to explore the flexible learning needs and preferences of occupational therapy students from a regional Australian university. Participants ("n"?=?170) were surveyed using a quantitative survey tool. Findings were analysed using SPSS to determine significant differences between variable attributes of the student cohort. The survey…

Science history shows us that interdisciplinarity is a spontaneous process that is intrinsic to, and engendered by, research activity. It is an activity that is done rather than an object to be designed and constructed. We examine three vignettes from the history of science that display the interdisciplinary process at work and consider the…