Dr Cathy Stone

This conceptual article asserts the importance of building and sustaining trust between higher education students and practitioners within the online environment. Instilling trust can construct sustainable learning environments that are abundant with collaborative inquiry and dialogue. In this article, we highlight and investigate the conceptual construct of trust and its antecedents. Considering the nature and purpose of interpersonal trust in student-instructor relationships within online higher education institutions, we explore several factors (in particular, performativity, casualisation of teaching staff, neoliberalism, non-traditional student identities, and the digital divide) which influence the development of trust. We also investigate the role of trust in influencing student engagement and achievement, in terms of attainment of academic goals. Notably, we highlight the importance of further inquiry into methods of rapport-building in higher education. Theoretical foundations have been drawn from Indigenous scholarship as well as organisational and socio-psychological literature. We close by welcoming further discussion and reflection on institutional practices and performance measures in the digital environment, particularly in terms of whether they allow instructors to embed relational aspects and elicit cognitive and affective trust from their students.

For Australian university students living out of reach of a campus and studying online, the growing presence of Regional University Centres (RUCs) is changing their student experience for the better. People from regional areas of Australia are historically under-represented at university. Those who begin university are at higher risk of not completing their qualifications than students from metropolitan areas. COVID-19 restrictions in the past two years have added to the continued growth in regional students studying their degrees online. A recent survey of students attending a Country Universities Centre (CUC) within their local community shows these centres to be highly effective in supporting regional students. The participants overwhelmingly reported improvements not only in their academic progress and results, but also in their motivation, confidence, and likelihood of completing their qualification.

For regional students, going to university frequently involves moving away from important home, family and community connections to forge new connections in unfamiliar environments. This is a daunting prospect discouraging many from considering university as an option. But what if university could come to them, allowing them to stay where they feel most connected, whilst also becoming connected with other students and developing a sense of inclusion within university culture? Recent research with high school students in regional South Australia indicates that the combination of online delivery (increasingly mainstreamed due to COVID-19) and the growing presence of Regional University Centres (RUCs) may provide the opportunity for this to happen. This paper discusses these findings within the context of the challenges for regional students in moving away from their connections. It argues that, instead, important learning connections may be offered within their local communities through the collaboration between universities and RUCs.

Across Australia, students at regional, rural and remote high schools are considerably less likely to go to university than their metropolitan counterparts. One of the ways in which universities try to help to bridge this gap is to organise visits to such schools, with the purpose of familiarising students with the idea of university and encouraging them to consider going on to university after school. These visits range in purpose, from direct marketing to a genuine effort to widen access to university more generally. The key purpose of university visits is not always made explicit to the schools or the students, leading to a mismatch between university intentions and school and student expectations. Recent research with regional high schools in South Australia, using a mixed-methods approach, reveals the impact of this mismatch, with university visits being regarded by students and schools as, at best, disappointing and, at worst, as nothing more than marketing exercises and hence to be treated with suspicion. These research findings are discussed, and recommendations made for ways in which university visits may be more effectively geared towards meeting the needs of students, schools and parents. This paper recommends that universities work more closely with regional schools, parents and communities more broadly, with a greater emphasis on providing useful, practical information about what -going to university' entails. We argue that, through this, more regional students may consider university as a viable post-school option.

To combat high failure and student drop-out rates, universities have developed strategies to monitor online student engagement through measurable activities. In this study, we explore if and how these monitoring activities accurately measure online engagement. We interviewed nine highly engaged online third-year students throughout a semester to find out more about what engagement meant for them and how they enacted it in the online space, both visibly and invisibly. According to students in this study, traditional measures of online engagement were not perceived as valuable to their learning. The students complained about the ¿busy work¿¿tasks that kept them busy or that monitored their engagement through a metrics-based tool. The students reported a number of other activities that prompted their engagement in learning; many of these would not be picked up by the usual ways of measuring engagement. These findings invite educators to move away from having fixed ideas about where and how and when online students should be engaging. They invite critique of the superficial, descriptive, tick-the-box exercises that are usually designed to monitor engagement by computer rather than through human interaction. They offer educators an opportunity to explore other ways of understanding student engagement in the online space.

This paper reports on interviews with 19 senior teacher educators from 18 universities across Australia who offer fully online courses in initial teacher education (ITE). Teacher educators provided insight into four focus areas related to online ITE: 1) institutional practices; 2) affordances; 3) challenges; and 4) research priorities. Analysis revealed teacher educators perceived that online ITE can not only match on campus delivery but is also able to respond to reform agendas in ITE, including attracting students with attributes and characteristics that are likely to see them succeed as teachers, enabling students to experience contemporary approaches to learning, building strong partnerships between schools and universities, and helping address teacher shortages in rural/regional areas.

There is a wealth of both anecdotal and sound research evidence which demonstrates a clear link between a student's engagement with their learning community and their academic outcomes. Having a sense of connection and engagement with the institution, through their contact with lecturers, fellow students, other university staff, can make all the difference between persistence and academic success; and disillusionment, disappointment and abandonment of studies. With the expansion of on-line studies an additional challenge for all of us working with tertiary students, is to develop a better understanding of the needs of those who are studying solely in an on-line environment. We need to learn more about ways in which we can successfully engage and support students whom we may never meet face-to-face. This paper discusses some of those challenges for the Student Experience Unit at Open Universities Australia and the strategies being developed in order to meet them.