The Benefits of Increased Student Support Through Access to Studiosity

Karen Blakey

嶺東學報

45期（2019 / 12 / 01）

1 - 9

英文

The aim of this paper is to explore the benefits of Studiosity, an on-line learning tool, designed to assist students in their academic learning. Studiosity provides students with twenty-four hour, seven days per week access to subject specialist teachers. Auckland Institute of Studies (AIS) has a large proportion of international students whose first language is not English. These students enrol in programmes of study that can pose some challenges for them, particularly in relation to English language skills, teaching style and plagiarism. Students whose first language is not English often require guidance in grammar and sentence construction in order to be able to produce a good standard of academic writing. Students may also find that the educational pedagogy used in New Zealand is an interactive and facilitative approach to learning rather than being teacher led and didactic. This too may also present some challenges which potentially could become barriers to their learning. Plagiarism is a serious concern in education and students often do not understand what plagiarism is and therefore do not know how to avoid submitting work that has been plagiarised. This can be very true for international students who have been educated in a more didactic approach and where plagiarism may never have been addressed. Students who engage in the use of Studiosity, do progress better in their studies with less reported incidences of plagiarism, and an increase in confidence levels in their abilities to succeed. Extra student support provided at the beginning of the students' academic journey can have these demonstrated benefits. To further explore what type of student support is relevant for the 21century learner AIS is in the process of applying for funding to undertake a research project to investigate what type of student support is appropriate for the student of today. The benefits of students engaging with the learning tool Studiosity are several, ranging from increased confidence levels in their ability to succeed in their academic studies, reduced attrition rates, reduced incidences of plagiarism and achieving higher grades than their peers who do not utilise the services offered by Studiosity. There are also other benefits from engaging in a range of learning support services, such as developing the skills required to enable them to become critical thinkers and problem solvers which employees of today are expecting from their employees, making graduates of today work ready employees.

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