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Hello! My name is Sebastien
and together with my colleague Peter,
we are broadcasting today from beautiful
Mount Wellington in Tasmania
The title of our presentation is:
"Are universities truly ready for CALD students?"
and we are going to talk about the CALD program at UTAS
in the context of the national widening participation agenda.
Let's start
by giving you a brief introduction to our program.
Firstly we'll define "CALD"
which stands for: Culturally And Linguistically Diverse, in other words
we're talking about Australians who were born overseas
or born in Australia in multicultural households, which is different
to international students.
In practice, almost all the assistance we provide goes to students who
are non-native speakers of English, which highlights the importance of the
"linguistic"
attribute the CALD cohort.
The cohort totals approximately 900 students per year across all our programs and campuses,
and it's interesting to note that out of this number,
close to twenty percent are from former humanitarian backgrounds
this reflects the fact that Tasmania as a region
is seen by the government as a preferred resettlement area for refugees in Australia.
and finally we have two officers
servicing this cohort from the campuses of Hobart and Launceston.
Now let's talk about what we do and a bit about the program's history...
First 2007 two CADl support roles
were created and their main focus was on helping a group of
students from CALD backgrounds who had been struggling in the system
for some time. The aim of the roles was to remedy the students deficits
in order to help them complete
their studies and subsequently the CALD program was created.
At that early stage the CALD program
sought to make mainstream University services aware of the needs of CALD students
by differentiating them from international students
whilst at the same time highlighting their specific needs and
advocating for equal service provision.
Then, very quickly it became apparent
that some of the issues CALD students were encountering such as lack of understanding of
University culture and requirements unsufficient academic
skills and limited pathway advice could be addressed
through earlier or "pre-application" engagement. As a result
we expanded the CALD program and adopted a whole student life cycle model
including a comprehensive outreach program
in collaboration with local High Schools/ Colleges and TAFE providers
which helped to better inform prospective students
their families and the CALD community about university study.
To an extent, we also addressed the issue of
English proficiency and preparation, with the development of
a pre-entry voluntary testing for Academic English
and individual English Assist (now called Student learning)
consultations which occur post commencement
on par with international students, which is central to
the ongoing success and retention of students.
It is also worth noting that
English proficiency testing for CALD students is not mandatory in tertiary education like
it is for international students
such as IELTS requirements. however some Universities are
now moving towards Post Entry Language Assessments
or PELA's so in a sense UTAS is innovating
with a pre-entry English assessment albeit with a voluntary one.
Moving towards the present
whilst we still offer our CALD students support throughout
their student life cycle we are now also focussing on
promoting the value of CALD students at UTAS
and hence a move from a purely deficit model to a
"Valuing Diversity" model.
Another one of our current aims is to improve the student experience
for the CALD cohort
including mentoring, social engagement, leadership opportunities etc.
which seek to empower CALD students and the CALD community more broadly.
Using our experiences in supporting CALD students and recognising their diverse skills sets,
and experiences. We've also been able to promote cross-cultural engagement
across the institution, for example
through the "Global Perspectives Project" which has embedded cross-cultural competence
(including experiences of CALD students) into 1st year
Faculty of Health Science curriculum.
And the Community Friends and Networks Program which actively supports the interactions between local,
international, and CALD students.
What do we have future holds for us?
hopefully, institutional improvements will be made to better value diversity
which will benefit all equity cohorts.
Specifically, we hope that one day a clearer connection between
UTAS Graduate Attributes and the CALD students is realised:
How can one contribute to the other? A two-way process.
Secondly, whilst Enabling Pathways
for University have enormously improved in Tasmania over the years
more flexibility with these pathways in terms of
duration, focus and study mode, would be very beneficial.
And of course, better admission processes and protocols
especially as it relates to English proficiency standards
could be established to empower people to come to university
and ensure that they have acquired the specific language skills needed to succeed
at university. This would also help immensely.
We'll keep exploring the CALD program in a moment but let's first
consider two key attributes of the CALD cohort:
Firstly, from the point of view of academic performance and transition to University,
CALD students are considered an "at risk" cohort
Evidence shows both academic performance and
attrition rates are below average for this group.
Secondly, CALD students as graduates tend to be less successful than the local students
in securing employment that matches their level of qualification.
This is particularly acute in regional areas such as Tasmania.
This is the key for us: in our experience so many CALD students come to university with the hope of securing a better job
yet universities largely fail at making this dream materialise
Hence, this is an area we think a CALD Program can make a difference.
So let's see some examples of that.
Originally we started
connecting CALD students to the career services at UTAS for them
to learn basic job search skills and career literacy skills.
then we moved to developing some specific initiatives
CALD mentoring programs, we also
actively promoted volunteering to CALD students
and also promoted CALD students as volunteers to
local organisations, for some of which it
was a new thing to have CALD students and
a diverse range of volunteers
Also, in our early interactions with students we introduced a focus on
the Australian job market, and the concept of "career"
Nowadays, we have successfully rolled out
a career skills series of workshops targeting CALD students and international students
which interactively delivers career related content
and provides networking opportunities with former students.
In this career space, we've also discovered
the needs of CALD students and international students are
in fact similar, insofar as
understanding the Australian workplace culture.
And in the future, our dream is to develop some joint employment
programs with industries targeting CALD
and international students.
So, this gives you an idea of what we do. But let's go back to our original question:
we were asking whether universities were truly ready for CALD students.
Well, we argue that the National widening agenda
is not doing enough to improve outcomes for the CALD cohort
Simply increasing the number of CALD students coming to university
and improving their academic performance in our opinion
forgoes other opportunities.
Here we've re-organised our various initiatives in a linear way
with the earlier ones at the bottom and the later ones at the top
this group of earlier initiatives we're showing here is what we would classify as
being part of a 'traditional' widening strategy
Moving up,
here you can see the other initiatives, which
combined with the earlier ones, we believe
are putting ourselves in position where we can go "beyond
widening" and deliver what the CALD students
really need, which is integration into the university's
academic culture AND integration into the Australian job market.
But, that's not everything
we have been thinking about HOW we can best
action this model.
Going back to these two features we mentioned earlier,
we asked ourselves: what would be the main contributing factor
to the CALD students' performance in those two areas?
To a great extent, we believe the answer
is: a lack of connections or social capital.
Upon reflection and looking closely at our program, we realised the
importance of of individual connections
both external and internal to the University:
developing the program required us to cultivate and extraordinary amount of
relationships over the years. You can see
each initiative has a number of enablers attached to them
in other words, we had to expand the social capital of
the University, for the benefit of the students.
So we believe here lies the key to helping
CALD students get the most out of their university education:
we need to find better ways for CALD students to leverage these connections
we've established
to expand their own social capital.
This can be done by carefully designing how we deliver our services
for example by maximizing the opportunities for CALD students to
interact with people both inside and outside the university
during their time as students.
"Ensuring CALD students benefit from the University's established connections
is the real widening."
This leads us to our conclusion, which is our vision
for every CALD student coming to University:
and we hope that what they get is a combination of three things.
Academic success, Key to a career and professional integration,
but also some Connections, that will activate
these two things.
Thank you for listening and again we're sorry we can;t answer your questions in person
but we would like to leave you with a few questions.
firstly does your institution actively engage with
CALD students and recognize their specific needs?
If so, do your initiatives go beyond widening
participation?
Please give us some feedback on these ideas.
And finally, in a climate of reduced funding
what other strategies could we use to go beyond widening participation for CALD students?
Thank you.