The Pacific Centre is asking for feedback on how our Pacific students have fared in the first half of the semester.
They’re undertaking a two-week data gathering exercise for the Pacific Success Progress Report, tracking attendance for courses that have more than ten Pacific students registered and finding out how those students have done on their first assignment for the year.
Director of Pacific Success Falaniko Tominiko says that the report will help to identify students who haven’t yet turned up to class or handed in their first assignment. The Pacific Academic Development Lecturers can then follow up personally with the individuals to provide relevant support.
The Progress Report is a key step in the Pacific Success Strategy to 2023, which is all about helping our Pacific students to succeed and complete their programmes.
It also supports our Category 1 work, as our monitoring of Pacific student success was one of the areas that came under particular scrutiny in the 2016 EER assessment.
Niko says: “As the Director of Pacific Success, improving our Pacific success rates is central to my role – it’s one of my KPIs! And we can only achieve better results by identifying students who need intervention as early as possible, rather than waiting until the end of the year.”
Another advantage of this early progress report is that it provides a source of evidence for self-assessment, which is one of the requirements that NZQA will be looking for in their November EER.
And of course, student success is best achieved through strong relationships so Niko is inviting Pacific students to join him for a catch-up over crackers and coffee to talk about their Unitec experience so far. He’ll be running three drop-in sessions between 1 and 18 April, so please tell your students and suggest they head along!
Might be good to add the Pacific Centre’s generic contact email address: askpacific@unitec.ac.nz