FFYE Forum – Towards inclusive education@UTS – diving deeper into transition practices | 14 February

About the Event

In the upcoming Forum, and across 2023, we are focusing on the UTS Inclusive Education Principles to highlight and showcase practice that supports students’ transition into, through and out of university study, both in the classroom and the (co-)curricula space.   

The 2021 Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) requires universities to ensure students are provided with ‘equivalent opportunities for successful transition… irrespective of their educational background, entry pathway, mode or place of study’ (HESF 1.3.6, 2021). This includes designing courses to ‘accommodate student diversity, including the under-representation and/or disadvantage experienced by identified groups’ (HESF 2.2.1, 2021).  

The Transition Pedagogy – Principle of Diversity takes a strengths-based lens to student diversity, but putting this Principle into practice remains a key challenge in course design and classroom practice. The UTS Inclusive Education Principles helps to alert us to a range of considerations that support us in making sense of how we might place diversity at the centre of our design and facilitation of student learning.  

We warmly invite you to register for the February FFYE Forum, where we will:  

• take a closer look at UTS Inclusive Education Principles, hearing from 2022 UTS T&L awards and citation winners, including a presentation from Dr Annabel Sheehy on first year course approaches to enhance student transition and success.  
• showcase a staff panel discussing inclusive practices within their roles, offering activities to reflect on how your practice aligns with the UTS Inclusive Education Principles.   
• give you opportunities to share and network.  

The forum will be in hybrid mode, ie online and f-t-f.   

We encourage you to join us on campus, to experience, once again, person to person connection, enjoy a tempting afternoon tea, and to share ideas and network with others from other academic areas and professional student support areas.   

What is the UTS FFYE Program?

The UTS FFYE (First and Further Year Experience) Program is an institutional wide program, designed to support the successful transition of students in their journey through their degrees and into the workplace. The program has three foci: curriculum, people and the university infrastructure, drawing from community and connection in collaboration with academic and professional staff.

One key element of the program is community building. FFYE Forums (regular meetings) and FFYE community (MSTeams) provide spaces for sharing, learning and ongoing collaborations connecting research, practice and student experience. Contact Kathy Egea (FFYE coordinator) to join.