1. 2010
APSSA Conference Report
Hong Co Tran
The University of New South Wales
July 2010

2. Table of Contents
Conference overview ........................................................................................................................... 3
APSSA 2010 overall experience ........................................................................................................ 5
APSSA 2010 personal observations ................................................................................................. 6
In UNSW context ................................................................................................................................ 12
Further recommendations ................................................................................................................. 14
Image acknowledgement .................................................................................................................. 14
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3. 1. Conference overview
Event summary
Event name: The 12th International Asia Pacific Student Services Association Conference
APSSA 2010
Theme: Supporting | Engaging | Building capabilities
Date: 6-9 July 2010
Conference organisers: APSSA, Queensland University of Technology
Venue: Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point, Brisbane, Australia
Overview
The 12th International Asia Pacific Student Services Association Conference APSSA 2010
held in Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane on 6-9 July 2010 attracted over 300
international and national delegates with the theme of “Supporting | Engaging | Building
capabilities”. Specifically, the conference program addressed the current delivery of student
support services as well as practice approaches to the development of stronger links
between student support services and academic elements in both academic and career
enhancement.
The parallel Student Conference “Dare to do it – Building capabilities and global cooperation
for a sustainable future” focused on the need of individuals to utilise the available support
resources and provided an opportunity to discuss the future directions towards a sustainable
personal and professional development.
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4. Conference program
APSSA 2010 Student Conference presentations and workshops which based on the
“Supporting | Engaging | Building capabilities” theme, covered a variety of sub-related topics
 Positive psychology
 Social responsibility
 The art of conversation
 Team building and management
 Benefits of volunteering
 Taking the initiatives in self-value enhancement
Keynote speakers included
 Professor Don Markwell – Supporting the best student experience for the 21st
century: Global trends and challenges
 APSSA Conference Steering Committee – World Cafe and Open Village
 Tony Ryan – Realised potential can enhance our creativity
 Dorinda Fung – Partnerships, assessment and e-portfolios
 Jean Madden – Street Swags
 The Big Lift
 Erin Gregor, Brett Smout and Phil Mairu – The Great Debate
 Ehon Chan – Online communities and the social media revolution
 Dr Prinya Tevanaruemitkul - Thailand's reform toward civil cociety: Education and
the roles of university students
Non-conference presentation
 Ehime University (Japan) – Ehime Leader School ELS program
 Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore) – Design Orientation Camp DOC
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5. 2. APSSA 2010 overall experience
From the student’s perspective, APSSA 2010’s primary conference papers have been
successful in raising some key issues regarding the current trends and shortfalls of the
existing student support services. These included the opening plenary speech by professor
Don Markwell, The Great Debate and Ms. Dorinda Fung’s report. Also, the APSSA 2010
Student Conference itself actively provided a supportive venue for interaction and discussion
between university students from around the world.
On the other hand, some conference workshops such as World Cafe or Open Village only
stopped at raising the concerns at personal and society level without being able to grapple
with the optimal resolutions to these problems. Some other demonstrations either too
narrowly focused on a single aspect or failed to convince audiences of the long term
sustainable and effective development practices, from a personal viewpoint. All of these
pitfalls from the Student Conference, however, then encouraged and challenged each
individual to think and strive to resolve the problems in their own way. This post conference
evaluation process could be seen as one of the learning outcomes from a series of
observations and insights during the APSSA 2010 Student Conference.
The two non-conference presentations by international student delegates have as well
brought in the question of projects that might be applicable to UNSW and modification, if
necessary, to suit the local requirements and conditions.
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6. 3. APSSA 2010 personal observations
Professor Don Markwell – Oxford UK
In his speech, professor Markwell placed a great emphasis on the special assistance to
freshmen in their first year at university, which he called “the transitional turn”. The support
provided to students, in general, should not be in the form of advice but to ask questions. In
particular, it brought back to the concept of “Why you do what you do WYDWYD” and guided
students to think what this WYDWYD means to them. This question approach would
eventually encourage them to think about the ultimate things: what they want to do and to be
content and happy.
Professor Markwell then highlighted the fact that each student is distinctive and needs the
sustained support over three stages: Before students arrive, during their study and after
graduation and beyond. In addition, uneven level of support between undergraduate and
postgraduate as well as practices that separate local and international students still remain a
common global problem confronted by many universities.
Dorinda Fung – Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The SPECIAL e-portfolio is a personalised portal to assist students with strategic approach
to achieve personal development:
 Self understanding
 Goal planning & setting
 Getting experience
 Documenting the experiences
 Achievements showcase
The e-portfolio is built as a social platform for students to public part of their profile and CV to
potential employers. Students can control the privacy setting on which information they wish
to share, for example SAARD result or social activities.
Here is an example of a portfolio showcase from Hong Kong Polytechnic website.
http://www.polyu.edu.hk/sao/allround/g1/pages/showcase/589.html
For each activity in which students participate, they would be awarded a specific number of
SPECIAL points, which counted towards the achievements for the SPECIAL All-Round
Award.
The Self-Assessment of All-Round Development SAARD, developed and implemented by
Hong Kong Polytechnic University through the SPECIAL e-portfolio system, aims to help
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7. students understand themselves and to offer a reliable measurement of their generic
competencies.
The SAARD questionnaire asks students to self assess their capabilities and behaviours
with respect to the following 14 generic competencies.
Domain Generic competencies
S – social development Leadership, teamwork, interpersonal
effectiveness, communication
P - Physical & psychological development EQ & Psychological wellness,
Healthy lifestyle
E – ethics Social & national responsibility
C – career development Entrepreneurship
I – intellectual development Problem solving
Critical & creative thinking
A – aesthetics Cultural appreciation
L – learning Global outlook, interest in local &
international affairs, lifelong learning
After completing the SAARD questionnaire, students will then have an opportunity to
compare their scores with the university average, access to suggestions of improvement as
well as resources to the third party for further development. Below is the snapshot of the
individual SAARD profile on the e-portfolio.
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8. Example of the SAARD questionnaire, Hong Kong Polytechnic University website
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9. Ehime Leaders School ELS - Ehime University (Japan)
Ehime University is quite a small institution with about 9,000 current students with less than
5% international. The student leadership development program ELS aims to provide
exclusive training to current and emerging student leaders in expectation of their favourable
influence on other students and the greater society. The expected learning outcomes include
presentation skill, social skill, team work, leadership and critical thinking skills.
The program consists of 3 components: academic courses on leadership, training for club
leaders and ELS seminar, in accordance with beginner, intermediate and advance level.
ELS program opens to all second year students and above, with the limit of 30 participants
per semester. To be eligible to enter the program, students will be required to submit an
expression of interest for further consideration.
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10. Design Orientation Camp DOC - Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore)
While most freshman students give priority to academic studies, at the same time they are
equally anxious about their ability to integrate with the school community at the social level.
Aware of this fact, the Orientation Camp DOC which is specially designed for first year
students, focuses on forming the good relationship between school and students in the first
place.
The measurement of effectiveness of DOC is based on how well the benefits match the
needs of first year students, including academic concerns, ability to fit in and friend network.
The 4-day, 2-night orientation program, undertaken by Temasek juniors and seniors,
specifically addressed these needs through some major activities.
 Welcome function and introduction
 Academic talks
 Mass games and competition
 Mini design projects
 Administrative matters
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11. The benefits delivered include
 Friendship across faculties and disciplines
 The fun element
 Clarification of school and course expectation
 Leadership skills
 Strong relation with alumni
Schedule of the DOC 2008 program for reference.
http://www-des.tp.edu.sg/des_orientation_programme08.pdf
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12. 4. In UNSW context
Dorinda Fung – Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The first factor to consider adopting the e-portfolio is the resources to make it available to
45,000 students at UNSW, whereas in Hong Kong Polytechnic University, this number is
only around 28,000 students. Second, there may be a duplication in case of portfolio
showcase since computer engineering or design students might already have their own
portfolios on university online system, as part of the course requirements. Also, the issue of
whether alumni public profile would still be maintained for a certain time period was not
mentioned in Ms. Fung’s talk.
Despite these going concerns, the SAARD section emerges as a useful tool for students to
identify their weaknesses in the early stage and in turn set goals for further improvement. On
the one hand, post activity feedback alone can help reveal the programs’ shortfalls and
assess student’s learning results. This, nevertheless, only limits to the activity participants
without guiding other non-participant students through the self understanding process to
recognise the necessity of extracurricular activities.
The use of the secondary transcripts, similar as UNSW, has helped motivate students to
engage in extracurricular activities in Hong Kong Polytechnic. Nevertheless, they have gone
far beyond that with the SPECIAL point system to create a competitive environment among
students to strive towards a particular award in the end of each academic year. The SAARD
then reinforces the learning process to ensure that students understand their competencies
acquired from those social activities. UNSW or SDI in particular might wish to combine the
point system and SAARD in their future student projects.
Ehime Leaders School ELS - Ehime University (Japan)
The process involved in the ELS by Ehime University is quite similar as Hong Kong
Polytechnic’s SPECIAL project (self understanding – actual experience – feedback). If
considering applying the ELS, UNSW can include it as a recommendation to students upon
their completion of the SAARD questionnaire, especially to those who need assistance in
leadership area.
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13. Design Orientation Camp DOC - Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore)
Temasek Polytechnic’s DOC program structure and objectives are found similar to UNSW
SDI Step Up program. Based on my own experience as a senior student and an SDI Peer
Mentor, Step Up program has proved useful in equipping new students with essential
psychological, academic and administrative matters. As emphasised by the Temasek DOC
organisers, assisting junior students with the “ice breaking” task and making new friends is
also as important as familiarising them with the university academic environment. SDI Step
Up 2010 program, unfortunately, was not able to facilitate the friend making process in many
freshmen. New students attending the Step Up tended to gather with their national group or
ended up being less active and lack of interest with the group discussion and presentation.
As a result, many of them did not follow the program till the end.
The Temasek DOC has effectively covered this “ice breaking” issue with the camping
environment, where students have the opportunities to mingle and rotate through a variety of
outdoor games and competitions. This is believed to deliver a more positive outcome and
possibly the long lasting friendship rather than mere acquaintance through chatting and
discussion in a formal lecture context.
SDI Step Up could adopt this camping structure with some possible modifications (compress
the program content to less than 3 days, for example) to inject more of the fun element and
engage first year students in a more active multicultural friendship.
Other universities
Under some universities’ requirements, students are required to participate in a certain
number of mandatory co-curricular activities before graduation. These could take in the form
of volunteer work, self development workshops or competitions.
If possible, UNSW can apply this compulsory program forcing students to take the initiative
and proactive attitude to their social development. Some may concern about the final
outcome when students might not voluntarily join the activities in the first place. On the
contrary, according to one APSSA student delegate, the result turned out positive due to the
benefits and friendship acquired from the program.
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14. 5. Further recommendations
As there exists a gap between undergraduate and postgraduate students, SDI might like to
hold more separate activities or info sessions targeting each specific group. As observed
from the Step Up semester 2.2010, many undergraduate students were struggling to make
friends and communicate with postgraduates due to differences in age and maturity.
Also, there is a situation that undergraduate Peer Mentors are more able to help their
undergraduate mentees with questions related to study experience, but not in the case of
postgraduate mentees. This leads to the question of whether SDI should streamline the Peer
Mentor program to address the needs of each particular group of students. Again, proper
consideration should be taken before going ahead with the separation, including number of
students intake in each degree as well as cost versus benefits.
6. Image acknowledgement
APSSA 2010 official website http://www.apssa2010.qut.edu.au/
Hong Kong Polytechnic University website
http://www.bre.polyu.edu.hk/BRE_workshop/pdf/Evidence-
basedImprovement%20(with%20Appendix).pdf
Philip Tan – Nanyang Technological University NTU student, Singapore
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