Challenge

International students come from a variety of different countries and backgrounds, and know little about essential support services that are available to them at Griffith.

In many cases, these students learn about services by word of mouth from fellow students, but as is often the case, "they don't know what they don't know". Even when students become aware of these services, they may not know how to effectively access them.

So the challenge was to engage with these students to develop their awareness of support services, and implement strategies where they could use and benefit from these services.

Approach

Dr Rowan Michael designed SCVNGR activities to support an in-class assessment piece called the University Service Reflection Task. As part of this task, students chose a university service that would benefit them, attended the service, then wrote a 300 word reflection on it.
Before undertaking the reflective task, students participated in a SCVNGR activity, where students answered questions about venues and services in multiple locations. They were able to participate using their smartphones and mobile devices, and these devices guided them to specific locations where they were asked questions. The primary purpose of this activity was for students to become familiar not only with the location of the service, but also how to check in with the specific service.

One of the services that we promoted was EnglishHELP.  For this activity, students scanned a QR Code to open an online booking session. This "in context" method provided a great way to genuinely engage with a service that many of these students find invaluable.

So the SCVNGR activities fulfilled a number of goals that we had around learning and teaching. As well as connecting students to support services, students worked in teams and developed essential collaboration skills.

Outcomes

By facilitating the hunt, we increased engagement and improved the orientation experience for this cohort.  The students enjoyed the SCVNGR hunt and were enthusiastic participants, as evidenced by their feedback:

I found it beneficial, as I got to know the campus better, engage with fellow students and recognize the service that are available to me.

Yes, I will recommend this activity to my friends. It not only provides opportunity to make new friends, but also make students easy to remember the location of the constructions and different services in the campus. In addition, it also can improve the skill of the teamwork.

The SCVNGR activity was fun! It provided me an opportunity to know people in the same class, not only a person who sat by me. It also made me know where the buildings are through this exciting activity, finding the QR code :)

Enabling Technology

This activity was based on the SCVNGR geolocation application which utilised QR Codes.

Next Steps

These tools change rapidly, offering different functionality and ease of use, so there will always be a new tool to investigate and test.

In fact, SCVNGR is longer in development. Comparable tools such as Munzee are available for consideration.

Support Resources

• Learner-Enabling Design (P5). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.

  Module

Contributed by

• Arts, Education and Law
  School of Humanities, Language and Social Sciences
  Dr Rowan Michael
  (07) 373 55132
  r.michael@griffith.edu.au
  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4822-2353
  Griffith Experts profile
• Learning Futures
  

Preferred Citation

Michael, R., & Learning Futures (2020). Connecting students to support services. Retrieved from https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/exlnt/entry/3587/view