Overview
- ACU Thrive is a first-year success model designed to ensure first-year students experience a smooth transition into university.
- The primary focus of ACU Thrive is to build confidence and support the long-term success of students.
- Provides a unique approach to the first-year student experience by offering a mix of independent and collaborative learning opportunities, support from teaching staff and online content delivered in an engaging way.
On this page
What is ACU Thrive?
Why was ACU Thrive developed?
Learning with ACU Thrive
Guiding Principles
What is ACU Thrive?
ACU Thrive is a first-year success model designed to provide a unique commencing student experience. The model focuses on delivering a high-quality and consistent learning experience for students at a course level to help build their confidence and support long-term success in their studies at ACU and beyond.
The model was piloted in thirteen first-year units across a suite of Education courses, Physiotherapy, and Nursing (including Nursing/Paramedicine) on the Ballarat campus in Semester 1, 2023. Endorsement for whole-of-institutional delivery of the model for undergraduate commencing students in 2024 has been obtained.
Why was ACU Thrive developed?
Our uniqueness: Previously, ACU did not have a well-defined first-year experience to assist prospective students in envisioning what to expect when starting their higher education journey at ACU. ACU Thrive provides an opportunity to communicate the unique experience ACU offers to commencing students.
Our mission: Our Mission is central to our work, but how its integrated into our learning and teaching practices isn’t always obvious. We want students to experience our Mission from the first day of their learning journey and a well-designed first-year model can facilitate this.
Our Education Strategy: We have a robust education strategy that’s operationalised in different ways throughout the university, mostly at School and Faculty levels. A first-year model is an opportunity to continue to expand this strategy to a university level.
Read additional ACU Thrive FAQs here
Learning with ACU Thrive
The model is based on a flipped classroom design where the traditional learning environment is reversed, and students are given the opportunity to access their learning content online to prepare for class in advance. This allows students to learn new content at their own pace, in their own time and ensures students can use class time to participate in interactive activities and collaborative discussions with their peers.
Guiding Principles
To learn more about each of the principles that guided the development of ACU Thrive, expand the sections below.
- Supporting the transition into and through university life
- Accommodating and celebrating the diversity of students
- Designing learning-focused environments through intentional integration and sequencing of learning
- Engaging learning environments that are active and collaborative
- Early and frequent formative assessment to help support and guide students
- Influenced by the INSPIRE toolkit
- Other meta-analyses in fields related to higher education
- Rigorous primary research (e.g. controlled trials) in higher education
- Other forms of research evidence (e.g. qualitative research) that elucidates review-level findings
- Student Learning Management System (LMS) and Echo360 analytics
- Early semester student feedback
- Student Evaluation of Learning and Teaching (SELT) surveys and Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) results
- Unit and course success rates
- Longevity data within and across units and courses
Provide multiple means of:
- engagement through recruiting interest, sustained effort and persistence and enhancement of self-regulatory action
- representation by providing alternative presentations, using language and symbols and boosting comprehension
- action and expression by optimising access, varying media and methods and promoting meta-cognition
