Equity in higher education – An Australian researcher

Ana Larsen – Australian research about enabling programs and equity in higher education

  • Take That!

    I had an extreme case of satisfaction in my PhD meeting today. Despite their concerns about me juggling too many projects I was able to send them a full draft of the first publication for my PhD. For anyone that has forgotten that is a scoping literature review where I personally applied inclusion/exclustion criteria to over 3600 search results. Now the draft was by no means perfect, it was a draft. But it was pretty solid and I had done a lot of the tedious things like putting it into the template for the journal and checking the reference list. My supervisors only had minor things to say about it and were quite happy with the work I had put into it. I just felt like it was a solid output and I could clearly demonstrate the work I had put in. No one could question that – so that equalled satisfaction galore!

    I have feedback from my PhD ethics application. Minor revisions required, which I expected and is totally normal, although there’s some chance my supervisors will view that as a failure on my part.

    In other news, I think I’ll be invovled in another autoethnography with the Wellbeing SIG but I’ll be leading this one. It is still forming now, so nothing is certain. So far only Susan Hopkins has agreed to join me! Liam joined us in the first meeting for the year. I thought it might be awkward because we used to work together but it wasn’t at all. Respect.

    I have neglected the UNESCO project and the Meme project but I’ve put a chunk of time into other things. The self-efficacy book chapter with Trixie is almost ready to go and obvioulsy I finished off the PhD article as well. The covid article with Sue is just waiting on an answer from the journal because their website says Harvard referencing and then provides examples that are clearly APA and not Harvard. I’ve also done a bit on the social innovation article but that is all happening within a weekly meeting, so I’m not sure that counts.

    In the NAEEA project I have had 12 responses to the survey and around 5 of those have agreed to do part two, the email interview. I’d like a few more responses but if that’s all I get I’ll run with it!

    I’ve also had a great time teaching. My Essay Writing group on campus is pretty small but they are engaged. My online group seems to be less engaged but I’m only judging that by the number of emails I have recieved. I haven’t had any issues with the ALC stuff either, including the workshop I did last night. So far, all smooth. All in all, until marking the first assessment hits I would predict smooth sailing in regards to teaching this term. Maybe I shouldn’t have explicitly said that because Murphy’s Law might come into play!

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  • Darn emotions!

    Well I have been struggling lately with emotions and work/study! Just very mixed feelings on a lot of things I think.

    We had orientation today which is always fun! As usual, we had a student panel of past students and not one, but two out of three cried! One had lost a family member right before starting their course and the other has a very long, complicted and tragic story too. When she said that the STEPS program had saved her, I knew she wasn’t exagerating and I before I knew it I was crying too. Luckily I was sitting in the rows, among the students, facing forwards so I doubt anyone but perhaps the panel members saw me. What we do as enabling educators is just SO important. I rarely grumble about my job, but if I ever do… welll I jolly shouldn’t. I love it.

    At the moment I’m preparing for term and feeling a tiny bit stressed. That’s mostly because I’m doing a couple of new things this term. 1. Teaching Essay Writing for the first time. 2. Doing an embedded unit for the Academic Learning Center. And of course, on top of that I’ve done my ethics applicaiton for my PhD and will hopefully be doing a pilot test soon! Most likely I’ll have revisions to do on the ethics application first, we’ll see.

    Anyway not too stressed, just having to plan each day and each week a little more carefully than usual. I might have to do some work into the evenings next week, see how I go. There’s a book chapter I need to review and some thematic analysis for another project. So that’s one side, busy busy as usual but it is countered by all the good stuff!

    I get to meet a whole new group of students in essay writing! The book that was put together primarily by FedUni has come out… The article with Michelle from South Africa has also officially been accepted. Michelle has sent them an email once per month since November (we returned the revised version in October or November – can’t remember which). Well, we finally got a response and it seems they thought they had notified us in November!! These things happen I guess! Sigh. Anyway, that adds another publication to my 2023 list.

    I say list because the two book chapters from the FedUni SJIDE group are now out, that’s 2 publications this year. I’ll no doubt miss the book launch but I’m super happy anyway! The book is here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-5008-7

    So for those at home counting (like I am) that’s 2 publications so far and 3 in press which I can only assume will come out this year. There is three more on top of that submitted and one very close to submission. Not sure how many of those will make it into the 2023 publication list, could be a total of 8.

    On that high note, so long!

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  • Pain, suffering and a citation!

    When I found out I got the NAEEA grant I was so happy, and surprised, I gasped! I was conscious that my associate supervisor was there and probably wasn’t aware I had even applied for the grant, or that I was doing that side-project. But that project already has ethics approval, so I’ve been working on it for ages, probably a year I would say. Anyway, he did speak to me shortly after and let me know he thought I had too many projects on the go. Now for the record I’m not even saying that he is wrong. I do have lots of things all on the go at once. AND I’m happy to admit that at least a couple of things ALWYAS get negelected. At the moment that is the digital literacy paper (because I keep passing it to my co-authors who also do nothing on it) and the Intersectionality discussion piece which, a year later, is still sitting as a 4000 word rough draft. But neither of those project have any sort of deadlines and clearly my co-authors aren’t too fussed. I cannot honestly say that my PhD is always my number one priority, but I can say with 101% certaintly that it is NEVER the thing that gets neglected completely. I am right on track to complete every single item in the timeline that we (both supervisors and myself) agreed on. So in my mind, there is actually no real need for concern.

    Well that conversation was put to me like it would be my principle supervisor that would be concerned and that she would be talking to me about cutting back projects (she didn’t/hasn’t) and that they both wanted me to finish my PhD early. I argued that I did not see the advantage in finishing early because I needed more time to prepare for being an Early Career Researcher so I could take advantage of that 5 years. I also have opportunities that are only available to PhD students, and I want to take full advantage of those. I have no intention of finishing early, none whatsoever. He seemed to accept that.

    Now I’m not sure when, but at some point during that conference he spoke to my Associate Dean and expressed his concerns about my multiple projects, workload, PhD etc etc. She is wonderful, and supportive and undoubtedly wants the best for me. But I have been building a case over the last two years for MORE work because I want to go from 0.5 FTE to at least 0.7 FTE. Well, my bank account wants my fraction to go up! In one foul swoop he planted a seed that perhaps I wasn’t coping. Considering my PhD is with FedUni and I work for CQUniversity it is REALLY innapropriate for him to be discussing anything related to my PhD with my Dean. If anything did need to be communicated to my Dean it would be through offical FedUni channels and that would probably mean my principle supervisor, not associate, not under any circumstances is it appropriate.

    While I let things settle and contemplate my next move on that front I am trying to focus on the positives. A team from Indonesia cited the paper from Trixie and I on Self-Efficacy. That’s my second citation, but the first one from people I have never met or worked with.

    Outside of work I have been doing yoga all year so far and the pain I was experiencing in my neck and back is much better.

    So indeed there are positive things to note! – My ethics application is all but done, so data collection here I come!

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  • What’s a routine again?

    I don’t want to talk to much about life outside of the university, but Christmas was lonely and New Year’s was sort of ruined when I hurt my toe, requiring 3 stitches!

    Still I got a bunch of PhD stuff done over that holiday break. That includes 150 sources for the second Scoping Literature Review (SLR) and a draft of the first SLR article. It still has a couple of gaps in it but it’s aroun 80% there. I also put quite a lot of work into the ethics application, I’d say it is 3/4 done. I sent all of that to my supervisors. One was on leave and didn’t reply or respond at all. That is of course, A-OK as they are on leave. The other one confirmed for me that the Plain Language Information Sheet (PLIS) is the next thing for ethics and helped me look at the timeline so I get it done. They had read what I had done and made a few comments. But they didn’t get time to look at the article draft, which was a little dissapointing; made moreso because they gave me a copy of some reviwer’s guidelines as a checklist for the article… not knowing themselves if I’d already addressed those things or not. It was fairly obvious and straightforward stuff like :is the purpose of the reivew made clear.

    The Change Fatigue paper is almost ready for submission and the article about pre-service teachers rural placements is just about to be re-submitted. Sue and I are going to mail merge out the surveys for the TAFE project this Friday. I’ve also got a review done for Corrin (American woman I deal with from a group of journals from Common Ground). So if that’s the list of things I have been doing… my list of things I haven’t touched is longer:

    Book chapter with Trixie

    Rurality article

    Rural Placement project

    UNESCO project

    TAFE project

    Intersectionality article

    Cross-school grant team question 4 article.

    Fair to say I have not been very productive so far this year. I’ve been distracted by things in my personal life, including upcoming dance teaching. I guess you could say I’m just not feeling it. I’ve spoken to a couple of others and they are having the same issue. At least two other academics have extended their annual leave because they need a longer break. Good on them for doing what is best for themselves. Then I think maybe I push myself too much like these people? Maybe I need a break too! Maybe my list of things I haven’t worked on is A-OK! I am just trying to get back into a routine, including fitness and dancing (to look after myself).

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  • So many firsts for me!

    Wow life has been a whirlwind since my last post! I’ll start with the little bits and pieces and go from there.

    First there was the autoethnography peice that was accepted with minor revisions. Well they have been done and it has been resubmitted.

    I have done some work on the ethics application for my PhD. Not a lot, but maybe a couple of hours. At least it’s a start.

    I resubmitted my confirmation of candidature report. Neither of my supervisors read it from top to bottom in the last couple of weeks. I guess that was a little disapointing and worrisome but also a compliment because they obviously trust me to edit it well. I had to cut around 10% of the word limit out, so again, they obviously trust that I didn’t cut out anything important etc. Their attitude was a little blasé and I think that sort of stuck with me a bit.

    Then there was the conferences! I travelled on my own for the first time ever which is slightly more complex as I am a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump. But that part was pretty smooth. The first conference was the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) which went from a pre-conference day on Sunday to Thursday last week. One of the first things I learnt was that I was unsuccessful with the voting to get on the committee. But other than that the first day was excellent. I spend most of this conference with Amy C and Karen from FedUni. We have different interests and often attended different sessions but also met up for meals most days. Amy was in the hotel room right next to mine. We had some super good chats, about life, research, work, well about pretty much anything and everything.

    Ondine didn’t arrive until the Tuesday and we were presenting Wednesday just after lunch. Fair to say I missed most of the sessions from Tuesday afternoon until then. We were not prepared. I had done everything I was asked to do. But I guess that was the issue… I sat back and waiting for Tim and Ondine to give me instructions for whatever was next. I mean, they are the first 2 authors so it made sense… but it also spoke a LOT about my confidence. I’m determined to be more on top of things next time. Anyway, we shared a couple of meals together as well. It was very excellent meeting them in person.

    In the end our presentation was great. Tim mumbles a bit when he’s nervous but I think he spoke so that all could hear and understand him. Ondine speaks very smoothly and confidently and I did as well. We got lots of nods from the audience and about 5 questions. Natalie Downes was there too which was pretty nice! I reflected on it later and there was no cringe moments that I recalled, so WIN!

    What else might one want to know about the conference? Uni SA was a wonderful location because it was close to shops and food and coffee and just lovely. All the technology worked perfectly and I would love to work there! The food was pretty good. It’s too hard to pick a favorite speaker, many were excellent. My accomodation was great until I had to move for the National Association of Enabling Educators, Australia (NAEEA) conference. The best contact I made was Amy Robinson who is the enabling program leader at The University of Adelaide. She is inspirational and bubbly and we are very like-minded (at least so far). I really enjoyed the Social Justice SIG meeting as well. Tim is stepping back a bit in 2023 so there could be some good opportunities there too.

    Next year AARE is in Melbourne and I’m already hoping to go. I’ll work out what I can present on later! Now I might just leave it there and talk about the NAEEA conference in another post… I don’t want this one to be thesis length!

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  • Confirmation and Conferences

    I can’t deny it, things are getting exciting! I leave in 8 days to fly to Adelaide for not one, but TWO conferences!

    First is the AARE – Australian Association for Research in Education – https://www.aare.edu.au/events/2022-conference/

    I have one presenatation in the program which is associated with the team including Tim Fish, Ondine Bradbury and Rickard O’Donovan. It’s not always the most productive team but it’s one of the most fun. Good people make all the difference. I’m not feeling entirely prepared for this presentation… yet and I think this is the one where we are also going to publish a conference paper through AARE. The paper hasn’t been written yet but I could be mistaken – perhaps the plan is to publish elsewhere. Anyway, this will be my first ever conference presentation, my first ever face-to-face conference and I am rather excited.

    After AARE finishes on Friday I will have the weekend to hang out in Adelaide and then NAEEA on Monday!

    Second conference is NAEEA – National Association for Enabling Educators, Australia – https://naeeaconference.com.au/

    I am part of two presentations in this conference. The first is the team from the Mental health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group (from NAEEA). We are also working on a submission for a special issue of the Student Success journal which is due on the 30th. Another great team! I’m one of the last authors on the paper we are presenting on, just so happened that I got funding to go to the conference. There’s 2 out of 8 (Juliette and I) of us that are actually attending and therefore presenting. This one we ARE quite prepared for. Juliette and I have met together a few times already and the slides are basically done.

    The second presentation in with the Social Innovation group here at CQU, led by Trixie. I’m certain it will come together but it’s not quite ready yet. We’ve just worked out the main points we will cover and planned an activity in the presentation too (always risky!). I created some slides but didn’t add any real content yet, so I guess we’ll see how that comes together in the next few days. I will remind Trixie and Anne (who I am presenting with) that I wont be here in the days leading up to NAEEA because I’ll be at AARE!

    Now, back to my PhD, well my confirmation report. I want to, well need to, hand it in before I head off to these conferences, so that gives me about a week. BUT, I had a meeting with my supervisors yesterday and they are pretty happy with where it is at. “It reads well” I think was the compliment I managed to pry out of them. I have a to-do list which fits on an A5 page (see picture below)…. they ONLY thing NOT on that list is that I will then have to cut it down under the word limit. At the moment it is about 760 words over. But sadly there are no decent sized sections I can cut out, so it is sentence by sentence editing.

    I didn’t actually count that list before… but just realised it’s 10 things! 10 minor things and cutting around 800 words, then I’m done with confirmation! My supervisors seem to be happy that I will pass it. I mean officially it has already been confirmed, pending minor edits, so it would be difficult to not pass confirmation at this point. I’m just really happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, it’s not that exciting because the moment, and I do mean the very moment, confirmation is done I need to start on the ethics application. And FedUni does not have the amazing, easy to work with ethics team that we have here at CQU. I am not looking forward to it. Even just the fact that they have 1 large Word document/template for ethics instead of an online form that can be done (and saved) in sections. Their whole system is clunky in comparison. Sigh.

    And Stuart (associated supervisor) is worried that I’ll then need another month to get ethics approval from CQU. I informed him that last time I got CQU ethics after I already had FedUni ethics, it took 2 days. From the moment I hit that “submit” button on the online form, to the moment I had email confirmation I could go ahead with the project… 2 days! I love it when things are smooth. So I expect that will be the case again regarding CQU ethics… it’s just the FedUni side that will be nightmarish.

    Not much other news to report. I’ve done chunks of literature reivews for various projects, worked on Confirmation, Powerpoint slides, the survey for the Preparedness project and editing of the social innovation paper. I need to get back to the covid article, UNESCO coding and probably 100 other things. But I’m too busy feeling excited about confirmation and conferences at the moment! 🙂

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  • Chip, chip chipping away!

    My motivation, just in general, has gone up and down a little in the last little while. I have not been lazy, no not at all. I’ve just spent more time doing random things, replying to emails, reading, contemplating and so on, rather than really getting focused on one task. I guess it is a symptom of my overall strategy – have too many projects and bounce from one to the next as soon as I hit a brick wall.

    Sue and I have made some progress on the various projects we are working on. Firstly, we still havent’ heard back from the WPLL journal about our typology discussion piece but I have had some communication from them and I am now officially a rewiever for them. Ann-Marie gave me some feedback on our COVID article and now I’ve shared that with Sue we are going to take a slightly different direction. I’ve updated the abstract and the first small section, so again, progress. We have also had one good shut-up and write-type session working on the TAFE project article AND Sue FINALLY has made some progress getting access to the list of student details we need to send out the surveys. We have also made some progress on coding the UNESCO report. Slow and steady in that case.

    I have 2 sections of literature reviews to write. One is about the government incentives for teachers to relocate to Rural, Regional and Remote (RRR) areas and the other is around change fatigue. I’ve read quite a few things on RRR incentives and made a lot of notes but they are very much just spewed onto the document and not well written at all. Same sort of thing with change fatigue except I haven’t done quite as much reading. Those two things should be 2nd and 3rd priority for me at the moment as they both have due dates before the end of this year. The other thing is rehearsing for the 3 different presentations I have at conferences Nov/Dec!

    Then of course my confirmation report should be my number 1 priority at the moment, and I just haven’t been able to make it so! I spent an hour or so this morning looking at the interventions (my findings bascially) in the first scoping literature review. I added a column to the spreadsheet, classified them all and made a table in the draft of the article. That counts as PhD progress, just it should have been on the confirmation report. I did go through it on the weekend, at least up to the method section. I’m adding in better signposting and more clarity around the link to research questions and things like that. I’m around 1500 words over the limit at the moment but I will worry about that later. I still have a lot of work to do on the method section. THAT is the main thing I am putting off. Sigh.

    In other news, my solo project around enabling educators views on equity discourses is moving along. I should have ethics approval very very soon. I have actually met all the requirements, I’m just waiting for Sue Evans to go into the system and change the status to approved. THEN I will write something for the NAEEA newsletter and the data collection will begin! It’s nice to focus on this as a postive thing. It’s exciting. The method section of my confirmation report is not. I just keep reminding myself of how much I have learnt and telling myself that if getting a PhD was easy, everyone would have one!

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  • Progress everywhere!

    I have certainly had my moments over the last little while. I’ve been terribly frustrated at a number of things, I’ve been confused and overwhelmed. I’ve been mistaken and I’ve been right. Well now I know what I have to do regarding my confirmation, I’m just fuzzy on a few things. The scary one of those things is wondering whether or not the two scoping reviews I have worked on still align with my new and improved research questions. I’m also just not sure what level of detail is needed for various things and I’m hoping (probably in vain) for my supervisors guidance in that area. But I have things I can be working on in the mean time and so I’m plodding along. The big breakthrough was getting my supervisors to agree that I should send participants the interview questions before doing the focus groups. That will allow them some time to reflect and then hopefully I will get the sorts of in-depth answers I’m looking for.

    In other news, I’ve resubmitted ethics for the staff project where I’ll be asking enabling staff about their views on equity discourses in higher education. It is going to be my first solo project and I am determined to NOT recruit a co-author at the last minute. So I can already say that I have done the ethics applilcation on my own and that is an achievement…. or it will be once it is approved. One step closer now!

    I handed off another article to a team member today as well. That is the one about digital literacy and COVID. Hopefully the other two team members will get the findings/disucssion section done before it gets back to me.

    Susan and I had a sort of a shut up and write session for the TAFE project and between us got around 800 words written which was excellent! Happy with that indeed.

    So when I look at my whiteboard now there are quite a few projects where I have nothing to do because I’m waiting for peer-review, team members or simlar. Then again there is a lso a few which just say I need to write them! Typical for an academic I guess.

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  • Just a quick post!

    My Facebook post

    Just wanted to share the Facebook post above which I put in a Facebook group called “Reviewer 2 must be stopped” which I follow just for laughs. I’ve never had over 1000 likes on a post before! I’m Facebook famous!! Of course I haven’t actaully got to the point in my PhD where all that failure has occured… yet! And I’m not actually as worried about it as this post would imply. I am just drowning in confirmation re-writing, I’m still annoyed that I have to use focus groups when I cannot see the advantage of them as a method for this particular study and my supervisors recently made some negative comments about my writing, which is usually my strength.

    Guess I’m just feeling a bit flat.

    On the bright side – no more hours for the Academic Learning Centre until March. I did 90 jolly assignments this term…90!!! No wonder I feel like I have had enough. My marking is also finished and I look forward to teaching essay writing next year as one of my coworkers has relocated to another campus. So they are likely to reshuffle everything and have me teach essay writing instead of the core/basic preparation skills. I do like a bit of variety in my teaching/marking. I think it looks good on the resume too.

  • Reflexivity

    Now that I know I actually have 16 weeks and not just 8 to do the revisions for confirmation I have relaxed, a LOT! But the next part I need to write does require more thinking and less reading and writing I guess. I have to add a section to the ethical considerations about reflexivity and my role in the project. My biggest challenge is knowing how much detail to go into and of course, what to share and what not to share. So this post is going to be more personal I guess – you’ve been warned! 🙂

    I’m also going to attempt to talk about behaviour, situational factors and cognitive factors, in line with Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). Just to add another layer of challenge.

    So I know that I need to talk about how both my parents passed away while I was a student – my dad during undergraduate and mum a couple of years ago. This allows me to empathise well with students experiencing grief very well but can also trigger my own grief. I also went through a divorce and that probably warrants a mention too!

    I’m not sure how I will talk about my move from FedUni to Mackay. Ultimately it was not my desire or wish to relocate and leave behind the beautiful area I had spent most of my life in. I didn’t want to leave behind my friends and support group. However financially I HAD to find work and this position was my best and only option at the time. It links to COVID for sure and so I could talk about how this impacted me and how students sharing similar troubles may also trigger me.

    So those are probably the big situational factors in my life that are likely to impact my project. I should also talk about my values and how they impact my teaching. I can talk about my own self-efficacy. Then I’m not sure exactly where I go from there. I would like to talk about how by using email interviews instead of LIVE interviews I will have more time to reflect and ensure that my responses are not being impacted to greatly by my own bias and emotions. But I’m still not sure what methodology I will be using. Reviewing the research questions and method wont come until later. Sigh.

    I think I’m just going to write it and then submit it to my supervisors and if they don’t like it, they can say so!

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