Mature-specific preparation

Reconnaissance for this research included a survey of university websites to ascertain what interventions were available for mature-aged students. That search confirmed that

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one New Zealand university has side-stepped the issue of open entry with its perhaps concomitant problems of student failure and attrition. It has raised entry-level standards for all students and instituted selective entry for many courses, and now directs most potential mature-aged students to academic preparation which they must complete and pass before enrolling in first-year courses.

The semester-long university-taster preparation course is held over one or two evenings

each week and managed by that university’s Centre for Continuing Education. Two

options are offered, one for business students, and one for intending arts and humanities students. This reconnaissance explored the arts and humanities option as that reflected the context of this research.

On the course, participants are immersed in aspects of university culture, or, we could say, in an academic Discourse. They are introduced through lectures to 10 different disciplines. They encounter university ways of being and doing through lectures, tutorials and workshops. They access the library and learn to negotiate databases as they prepare assignments; they become familiar with the campus. Finally, they complete the course by sitting a written examination. The Programme Director emphasised that the focus of the programme is to prepare students to succeed, and that it has, over the years,

“delivered some exceptional students” (personal communication (PC), July 5, 2011) into various university programmes.

The preparation course involves a similar cost to one university course and has a similar workload and pressure. Because students must pass in order to enrol in first-year courses, they develop some familiarity with university demands in terms of meeting assignment deadlines and with managing time and possible disruptions to their households during those times of pressure before they arrive on campus.

The Programme Director emphasised that participation on the course reduces the culture shock many mature students experience when they arrive at university with expectations that university will be similar to their experiences of schooling: “When they come, at

least it’s not foreign” (PC, July 5, 2011). She cited multiple benefits for mature-aged participants from the course, among them, particularly, that participants are introduced to new ways of thinking. She explained how tutors involved observe a regular phenomenon as students learn to write:

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Every semester, there’s a recurring pattern. . .. It’s making them think differently. . .. It’s trying to teach them to learn a new way of writing and thinking, which [they find] challenging, especially if they’re not used to it – the analysis part. (PC, July 5, 2011, her emphasis)

In terms of learning to write for university, the Programme Director suggested that participants did not learn by following instructions or by being told about assuming a

different mindset. They learn to write as “they get to practise it: I think they can only do it by experimenting” (PC, July 5, 2011). Students get that practice as they complete three assignments, including a researched essay, through a highly-scaffolded process. They work through multiple drafts which they revise in response to substantive, formative assessment.

Potential mature-aged students for that university are usually aware of the course before they need to be directed there at enrolment. It is advertised each semester in suburban newspapers, targeting students with a gap in their education. The Programme Director, however, suggested that as it is now very well known in the community, most participants learn about it “by word of mouth”. That publicity and awareness was in contrast to the practice at the university in this study, where the university did not sponsor preparation courses and its website had no clear advice about preparation or links to such courses. Short courses such as any sort of preparation that might have been available were not advertised in local papers.

Other mature-student-specific provision

An interview with a Director of Bridging at another university seemed to confirm the value of specific preparation for mature students, particularly its value in introducing them to a way of thinking required for academic writing. She emphasised that participants on that course had to enter into a

whole new way of thinking . . . critical thinking. . .. It’s a fundamental thing of

any university, what the whole thing’s about. (Bridging Director, PC, July 4, 2011)

Despite the considerable documented academic, cultural, and attitudinal benefits to mature students offered by academic preparation programmes like these, mature students intending to study at other New Zealand universities may not be explicitly

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directed to them. Kahu (2014) found in her research with mature-aged (although distance-mode) students that they had not been made aware of any need to prepare academically:

When asked before the semester what skills and experiences were needed for success at university, only a few participants mentioned academic skills, focusing instead on time management and self-motivation. (p. 136)

If mature students arrive at university without academic preparation, unfamiliar with the epistemology and approaches to teaching and learning of a university, and with no experience of preparing an assignment within time while attending to all their possible other commitments, they may not be adequately equipped for the pressures and intensity of full-time study that these pre-university interventions each go some way towards providing. Students must then rely on generic supports afforded by universities. These supports, however, may not have been designed specifically for their particular needs; nor may they afford the holistic introduction to academia that would seem to benefit mature-aged students.

Generic support is usually provided during orientation week (the week immediately preceding the first week of the semester) from Student Learning Centres. (These are denoted differently at different universities; for clarity, and anonymity, in this thesis

they are referred to generically as ‘Student Learning’.) In addition, most universities offer credit-bearing writing courses.

The following sections of this chapter draw on a further stage in the reconnaissance process of the AR, a survey of existing writing and academic literacy support offered at New Zealand universities to students of any age. Data for these sections derive from an investigation undertaken in 2011 of seven of our eight university websites. One rural university, focusing on applied science courses, was not included in the 2011 survey. A follow-up survey in 2014 confirmed that most interventions available in 2011 continued, although perhaps in different forms. In 2014 the rural university offered writing courses solely for students whose first languages were not English.