Episode 7: Part-time Student Experiences with Kelly Linden

Part-time students make up 31% of all Australian university students, yet university policies and systems remain designed for full-time school-leavers. Associate Professor Kelly Linden shares preliminary findings from her research with almost 1,000 part-time students about their experiences, needs and the policy barriers they face. Ebe and Kelly talk about:

• Research findings on what supports part-time student success, including access to engaging lecturers and clear expectations
• Policy barriers facing part-time students: extensions, scholarships, work-integrated learning and recognition of prior learning
• The impact of caring responsibilities and work commitments on part-time study without inclusive policies
• Inconsistencies in how universities define and support part-time enrolment
• Public transport and taxation policies that disadvantage part-time students
• Universal facility access: how universities could share resources to support distance and part-time learners
• Policy recommendations for better supporting part-time students
• The role of universal design for learning in improving equity

Guest

Associate Professor Kelly Linden is a 2025 Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) Equity Fellow. Over nine years at Charles Sturt University, she's developed award-winning student retention programs and led research into supporting part-time students and students from equity backgrounds.

Links and resources

• Connect with Kelly
• Kelly's research on part-time students

Transcript

Ebe: Welcome back to Higher Hopes. My name is Ebe, and today we are exploring the experiences of part-time students at university. This is one of those cohorts that experiences university quite differently to the way that we picture the average university student and the way that we design our programmes, our support systems, and our services. And to unpack this, I have a fantastic expert with me who has spent the last year zeroing in on exactly how part-time students think and feel university is and isn't working for them.

Associate Professor Kelly Linden is a 2025 Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success, or ACSES Equity Fellow. Over the last nine years, Kelly has developed and led student retention work across Charles Sturt University, which has resulted in a number of publications and national awards, including an Australian Awards for University Teaching Programme Award.

Her research interests are supporting part-time students, kindness, success and retention, with a particular focus on supporting students from equity backgrounds. Kelly, welcome to Higher Hopes.

Kelly: Hi, thanks Ebe. Thanks for having me.

Ebe: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what drew you to researching the experiences of part-time students?

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. To answer this question, I'll probably have to go back to Kelly at high school. So I was the first in my family to graduate from high school. I went to a low-SES public high school without any careers advice, but I did quite well – I suited sort of the typical education system.

And I ended up enrolling in a Bachelor of Science at Melbourne Uni. Ironically, if I had have had some careers advice, I probably would have selected another course. But I went to university not knowing anything. And Melbourne University in the nineties wasn't sort of set up for a student like myself. I didn't know about university support, scholarships, anything. But luckily I was able to make some friends and sort of adapt and be able to do quite well at university. And I continued on into my PhD because I wasn't quite sure what to do – you just don't know what you don't know. And I think that's really impacted me as an academic and how I try to support my students.

But during my PhD – it was in molecular physiology – I loved it for the first year or so, then... I still loved it, but what I did really enjoy was the teaching I was able to do. So I was able to do some tutorials and some lectures and I absolutely loved that. So at the end of my PhD I was looking for a physiology lecturing role and Charles Sturt University were advertising. At the time I'd never even heard of Charles Sturt University, and I thought, 'Oh, I'll go there for a couple of years and see what... get some experience.' And that was 18 years ago, so I clearly haven't left.

When I went to CSU, it really took me a year or two to realise that we have completely different students. Most of our students are studying part-time, studying online. The most common pathway for undergraduate students is through Vocational Education and Training. Most of our students are over 25. They're more likely to be a member of three equity groups than no equity groups. But then we have really similar policies to the Group of Eight universities, even though we've got completely different students.

I was able to adapt my teaching, but then when I moved into a leadership role, I was able to start to influence some of the policies around how we support our students. And I think that's where I started to realise: why we've got completely different students to a Group of Eight university, but the same set of policies. Why is that the case? And that's probably what led me here.

Ebe: Your observation of the difference in the student cohorts across those different universities – and particularly university types – is really interesting. And I think something that we talk about in the abstract a lot, but not about the kinds of specifics and what that means for the experience that students have. Did you want to put some detail alongside that, perhaps for students and academics who are from some of those Group of Eight universities or universities that have a really different student cohort to you at Charles Sturt or similar unis?

Kelly: Yeah, and certainly I know that being a student at Melbourne Uni in the nineties was very different to now. But, so for example, in my undergrad I was never allowed an extension on anything. There was absolutely no way. And in my first week at Charles Sturt, I had a student come up to me and say that their dog had just had puppies and they couldn't come to a compulsory class. I just didn't know what to do. She gave me a vet certificate, but even the fact that I wanted some kind of documented evidence was a little bit ridiculous for a prac class that, in hindsight, it didn't really matter.

But our students – they're regional. They've got caring responsibilities. Many of them have to travel to campus for compulsory classes. So if we have one hour of compulsory class that day, the student might have spent three hours driving for that one class. And then they need to be paying for the cars and the petrol. So they're also working more than what I was experiencing at a metropolitan university. I completely understand in the last 20 years that the world has changed and I know that our metro uni students – students at metro unis – are also working a lot now.

Ebe: Yeah, absolutely. Those kinds of students and their experiences that you're talking about are also some of the student cohorts that government are really interested in increasing participation at the moment. And so I think it's really important to get specific and to be really honest about the difference in those experiences. Now, I know your research findings in your fellowship are still preliminary at this point, but from your work so far, what are you hearing from part-time students about their experiences in 2025?

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. And they are preliminary, but we have now finished all thematic analysis. We had almost a thousand students complete the survey. We had just over a thousand students attempt it, and 80 interviews. So we've got quite a lot of rich data from part-time students from across Australia. Almost all universities are represented in the sample. There are only four Australian universities missing.

Now the absolute number one point that students made regarding what helps with success is access to engaging and understanding lecturers. Students feed off our passion. I was a little bit surprised that that was so high on the list. I knew it would be up there, but I wasn't necessarily expecting it to be number one. And I think we do need to, as a sector, sort of step back and reflect on why our students are coming to university and how we can have the most impact on their experience. And they're coming to class – hopefully they're coming to class or at least listening to the recordings – and having engaging lecturers is just so, so important.

This is particularly for part-time students, obviously, but I think many of them will impact all students. So having clear expectations and communications in their subjects – if the assignments are released and then every week there's a small update to what needs to be changed, that doesn't work well for students who are juggling multiple commitments and having to squeeze in their study. They really want clear expectations.

Something that came through really loud and clear was the opportunity to connect with peers and lecturers. Very few of the students we spoke to were saying they were feeling that connection. Most of them were missing that connection. So finding ways that we can better connect part-time students who are busy – adding additional compulsory classes isn't the answer there.

Having content released early is really important. Ideally, all of the key content for the semester will be available at the beginning of semester. So many students mentioned that they try to get ahead so when the inevitable 'life gets in the way' they can sort of absorb that and not get behind.

They really appreciate embedded support across first-year units. Again, as I said, you don't know what you don't know. And many students, particularly equity students coming to university, don't know what support they need. And if we can have that embedded across their units, then hopefully we can have that sort of 'just in time, just for me' access to support.

Compulsory classes is another sort of big issue for part-time students. I've got many part-time students who are working full-time, so can't come to compulsory classes during the day. But then we have many part-time students with caring responsibilities who have trouble going to compulsory classes in the evenings. Scheduling of exams – whilst understandable, sometimes they just cause so much chaos in the life of a part-time student needing to juggle their life and organise their life around that time. So as much notice as possible for compulsory classes, if they do need to be compulsory.

Ebe: I want to pick up on a few things that you said there and go into a bit more detail, but before I do that, you mentioned that a lot of those things are changes in approaches and techniques that would benefit all students. And I want to emphasise that because that is so much of what we do in equity work: things that benefit everybody, but not doing them disproportionately impacts students in these cohorts.

Right? You know, not having all of the complete assessment information from the very start is very, very annoying to everyone. It disproportionately impacts students who may only have one or two days a week where they actually do jump on the LMS and check what's on there, or they may only have one day planned between now and when the assignment is actually due where they need to smash the whole thing out, because that's just reality with all the other things going on.

Are there any other things that you found that are just kind of like good common-sense practice but actually are really, really impactful to part-time students?

Kelly: Yeah, so they're sort of more in the control of university leadership, sort of around that university policy and practice. But certainly access to no-questions-asked extensions. I've done a little bit of a check across the sector – almost half of Australian universities have some form of no-questions-asked automatic extension now. It's a varying length from two to three to five to seven days. And students really appreciate that, particularly if they've not been asked what the reason is. Because I think some universities still ask the reason and decline requests around extensions for work, which is... Our students, they'll have mortgages, they need to work to live, to pay their rent. Sorry, not certainly not all mortgages, but yeah, they need to work.

The other important thing with no-questions-asked extensions is the ability to have an extension to the weekend. When there are two days and an assessment's due on Monday, that won't always help a student. It really feels like a seven-day extension is a good amount of time because it will always include a weekend. Students really appreciate extensions.

We heard of issues with timetabling for internal part-time students. Studying something like a science degree with a lot of face-to-face classes might have three or four days of class. I understand timetabling is a wicked problem, but I think there's things that we can do to address a bad timetable, such as recording classes and trying to avoid what is compulsory.

Providing part-time study patterns – we spoke to students who have had to take one or two semesters off because the subject that they're studying is only available once a year, but no one provided them with a study pattern and so they've studied their subjects out of order. So that's something that's very, very simple but can have so much impact.

Also advice on how many subjects to study. One student commented that two subjects is too many for a beginner. If you're juggling work, caring, life, one subject – which is 10 hours a week – can still be a lot. But then if a university allows a student to study one subject, it might breach their maximum time to complete policy. There might be no way the student can finish the course in time if that's quite strict. So yeah, I think providing the study patterns and advice on load is really important.

And access to scholarships. Many universities, such as my own, include study load – so how many subjects students are enrolled in – as the guidelines to their scholarships. And so it really limits the access of part-time students to scholarships.

And then barriers to work-integrated learning. A lot of courses actually don't allow part-time students to do part-time work placements. And then there's some really sort of strict rules around recognition of prior learning. We spoke to students with 20-plus years' industry experience – any other student in their course could have done that student's job for their placement – and the student wasn't allowed to and had to take three months' service leave to go into a similar role elsewhere. But then this occurred with a number of students that we spoke with, and all of them reflected on the fact that in their placements, they weren't really supervised because they had more experience than the supervisor. So it just doesn't make sense.

Ebe: Yeah, there's lots in there and a lot of it hinges on flexibility. And a lot of it hinges on this idea that we design learning experiences and programmes for this bog-standard student who is full-time, who is living close to campus, who is not working, who doesn't have any caring responsibilities, who doesn't have disability, there's no complexity in their lives, no financial worries. They learn in traditional ways. And it's not fair to characterise part-time students as students with complicated lives because they're actually just lives that reflect reality and aren't this imagined average that actually, when you look at student data, doesn't exist – and potentially are more representative of the diversity of our population.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you found in terms of who part-time students actually are and what their lives look like?

Kelly: So when we look at the national data in 2024, 31% of all Australian university students were studying part-time. So we design our subjects, our courses, our university policies around full-time students, but we're talking about a fairly significant number here. And certainly at regional universities that number's quite a bit higher. So at Charles Sturt Uni, that's 70% of all students are studying part-time.

Unfortunately the outcomes for part-time students are not great. The success rates are considerably lower than those for full-time students, and they're also less likely to be retained. But when we are looking at part-time students, they're more likely to be working. So approximately 90% were working in some capacity. Only 40% were working full-time. And approximately 47% had caring responsibilities as well. So they're often juggling work and caring.

They're more likely to be studying online. They're more likely to be over 25, and they're more likely to be from one or more equity group. And unfortunately, when we look at the data for part-time students from equity groups, the more equity groups that they're from, there's a reduction in success rates and also in retention.

Ebe: A common retort that I hear when we talk about – particularly students who have caring responsibilities or who are balancing part-time study with part- or full-time work – is: these are all facts of life for these students. We, universities, it's not our responsibility to care about them or to design around them. What do you say to that?

Kelly: Absolutely. And this is why I think we really need to be looking at our policies and redeveloping them – essentially put them in the bin and start again. We had students tell us that they've received a failing grade because they weren't given an extension because they've got a sick toddler. They have to look after their child. They can't not look after their child and focus on their assignment. And so they failed. I think that that level of inflexibility might have been okay in the 1970s for full-time students, but yeah, it's just not okay at the moment.

Ebe: When we have these conversations about equity and designing for students in contemporary Australia, another thing that I hear commonly is: it's much harder for students now. You know, there's a lot more going on. Life is harder. The economic conditions are more difficult. And back in the day it was probably easier. You know, we didn't have all of these competing priorities and we could just be full-time students. And I think part of that is certainly true. Certainly the economic conditions now are much more challenging for students and certainly the cost-of-living crisis we're experiencing. And also the policy settings we have around student access to social support payments are shocking and create that pressure.

But I also want to put a little bit of a critical lens on this argument that things used to be easier because I think probably 20, 30 years ago – and certainly the student equity data that we do have would support this argument – a lot of the students who experienced the kinds of barriers that we manage and try to dismantle in equity work now, they just weren't there. They just weren't in universities, they weren't studying. I don't know where they were. I'm sure people can tell us now where they were at that time, but they weren't at universities because we weren't doing any of this work to actually try and make our institutions welcoming or to try and make our policies and programmes work for these communities who experience additional barriers and pressures in their lives. So on one hand, yes, it is harder to be a student in 2025 than it was probably in 1975. But also our institutions were a lot less diverse and inclusive back then. And so we actually, as a sector, need to respond to the fact that our population has diversified and that our systems and policies need to respond to that.

Kelly: Oh, absolutely. Couldn't agree more. And I've really been putting a lot of thought into what policies are really providing barriers to students. So certainly extensions or lack of access to extensions, rules around scholarships, maximum time to complete – a lot of universities have quite a strict maximum time to complete. I would be proposing to just change it to 10 years. Academic progress and the support for students' policy – what are we actually doing when a student fails? Are we just sending them an email? There's so much that we can do to better support students who are not currently succeeding. And then rules around compulsory attendance. That would probably be my top five.

Ebe: I know you and I have spoken before about the sorts of things that in university restructures and financial reprioritisation that tend to suffer the most are: taking away resources from classroom time, taking away a sessional academic here or this particular unit over here. But from what you were saying before about access to compassionate lecturers, access to teaching staff who understand – that's having a really big impact potentially on this cohort. What do you think?

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. I think when we don't provide that compassion, we provide sort of that traditional classroom. Students with complicated lives feel like they don't belong. They're not privileged school-leavers, are they? But I think the students we spoke with, certainly they do have complicated lives and they're juggling multiple responsibilities, but so are most people – they're just not school-leavers.

Ebe: And we do design these programmes for school-leavers. We market them to school-leavers. I've worked with prospective students in the past who have found it really difficult to get information from universities about what completing their programme would look like and feel like, given that they are perhaps mature-age or they are entering without Year 12 completion, or they have a significant amount of work experience but they don't really understand and there's not a lot of transparency around how that is actually assessed for the purpose of entering a university degree and eligibility. What do you think that means for how we should be approaching part-time study, design and policy?

Kelly: Absolutely. So I see that a little bit... Where universal design for learning fits – having that sort of clarity, that clear expectations. We want that in our subjects, but also in the admissions, in the admin systems. And they didn't come up as main themes, but certainly they were very, very important for some students. For example, the most difficult part of their study so far was completing the admissions form. So I think there's still a long way to go for really simplifying those and removing jargon.

Ebe: I want to come back to scholarships in a minute, and you are going to have to hold me back from crashing out on that particular policy issue. So we'll approach it together. But before I do, we've spoken in the past about how universities could be working together as an ecosystem to better support distance and part-time learners. And there's quite a lot of crossover between part-time study modes and distance or online study modes, which is why I sort of consider those together. Can you tell us about what you are proposing around universal facility access?

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. Some students will be fortunate and live close to the university campus they're enrolled in. I live in a small town in north-east Victoria called Chiltern, which is quite close to Albury, the campus I work at. That's fine. But if I was studying at another university, I would have great facilities in Albury but wouldn't be able to access them. And so what we're proposing is: universities consider sharing some of their facilities with students who are enrolled at another Australian university.

If you're lucky enough to live in a town with a regional study hub, you have some access to somewhat similar to what I'm proposing here – so some great resources. But for example, if you live in Darwin and want to study a course that's not offered at Charles Darwin University, there's no regional study hub because there's a university. But they have limitations on who can access the library, certainly out of hours, for example. And certainly speaking with part-time students, many of them don't have a place to study at home. And so if they're not living near the university that they're enrolled in, they're missing out on those facilities.

Ebe: It makes so much sense and would be so impactful across so many different student cohorts. Thinking about my own experience studying my masters, mostly part-time, I was studying online via Deakin University. I live in Canberra. I'm surrounded by university campuses, and yet I can't go and walk 15 minutes up the road to ANU and press 'print' on something. And these are all publicly funded institutions that are all working towards very similar policy goals around higher education. We're looking for efficiencies across the sector – this seems like a really, really obvious one: to be able to join up the different facilities across this national network of incredible infrastructure that we have that would tick so many boxes from a higher education policy perspective to support student engagement, participation, reduce duplication. You know, I'm sure there are ways to use student data and postcode data to work out kind of where the heat maps would start to be in terms of reciprocal access, but it just has so much potential.

Kelly: Absolutely. And certainly in the post-COVID world, our Albury campus isn't as vibrant as we'd like. I think everyone would like more students on campus, even if they're enrolled at another university.

Ebe: Absolutely. There are clearly a lot of policy and government levers that influence the experiences of part-time students. If you were minister for education for a day, what would you change straight away based on what you've heard from part-time students?

Kelly: I think I'd very much enjoy being minister for the day. Now the very first thing I would do: work with the state governments to change the legislation for public transport discounts to be based on mode, not load. States provide free public transport to the football yet part-time on-campus students pay full fare. And it's not fair. We spoke to students who were studying on campus three or four days a week that don't qualify for public transport discounts that in Sydney and Perth are paying approximately $300 a month. In Sydney, that would be half-price if they were studying full-time, and in Perth, that would be free. So just, I think that would be the absolute first thing that I'd do.

The next thing is: stop taxing part-time scholarships. At the moment, I think a lot of people aren't aware that all university scholarships as well as PhD stipends need to be declared on the tax return of part-time students, but not full-time students. It just doesn't seem to be fair. You're earning such a small amount of money, but having so much impact on lives, particularly a part-time PhD student. There's reasons that a student's going to be studying part-time and it's probably not because they're earning a six-figure salary. And yeah, you're just sort of taking away that access to study from students.

Ebe: It comes from such an outdated assumption about why people study part-time. Like traditionally you would be studying part-time because you're working full-time – or who knows if that was ever really the case, but certainly the way that that policy setting seems to have been designed. It seems to be, 'Well, you're earning money, you are also getting a scholarship, so we want to make sure that you're not double-dipping and we want to make sure that that is taxable.' But in reality, the vast majority of students studying part-time are not working full-time and have significant other demands on both their time and their finances. And the taxation setting just makes literally no sense.

Kelly: Absolutely. That's what we found. 60% of part-time students who completed our survey are working less than full-time.

If I'm still minister for the day, I would then also define what part-time is. So depending on which university you are enrolled at, you might be doing the same subject loads but have a different classification of full-time versus part-time. So if you were studying at my university, Charles Sturt, we offer three semesters but only count your part-time or full-time status against study in the first two semesters. So you could have an EFTSL equivalent full-time student load over 0.75, which would classify you as full-time as far as the government is concerned. But it won't qualify you as being a full-time student if one or two of those subjects were studied over the summer semester.

And so the impacts on students is: you qualify for fewer scholarships. Your scholarships are taxed, you don't qualify for Youth Allowance or Austudy, you don't qualify for public transport discounts. There's so many impacts on a student as to how that part-time is calculated. Other universities, such as – I really like the way the policy of the University of Southern Queensland, it's so simple. It's purely based on EFTSL. If a student's studying 0.75 or higher in any configuration of subjects across that calendar year, then they're classed as full-time. So I think if I was minister I'd make that calculation very, very simple.

I would also make changes to regulations around the way that work-integrated learning is run. I'd insist that students with vast experience were provided with recognition of prior learning. I would insist that part-time placements were available where possible. Sometimes it's set by the university. So for example, different universities will allow students to study social work part-time versus full-time, whereas I believe in certain disciplines such as nursing and education, it's actually set by the accrediting body. And I would stop that.

I'd use compacts to fund universities and insist that they focus on quality teaching so that they can fund their academics to take the time it takes to prepare, to teach and to teach well, and to be available for consultation time with their students and to have the energy to be empathetic and flexible to the needs of their students.

Ebe: It seems like such an obvious one, but something that seems to be missing from so many of the conversations happening around reform in this space. The Universities Accord – teaching quality was so conspicuously absent from that conversation, aside from I think there was a recommendation around increased training for early-career or sessional academics. There was a little point in that with very little detail. And certainly, the way that the de-casualisation agenda has progressed in universities has helped a little with employment certainty, but has also created a lot of other barriers to progressing that teaching quality piece. We've really removed a kind of key pipeline for early-career teachers in removing some of those casual sessional positions.

That's a crash-out for another day, but certainly it's so conspicuously absent from so many of these conversations, and I think we need to have a really, really hard look at what we mean when we're talking about teaching quality and what would be required. Because at the end of the day, removing access to staffing and resourcing to support the delivery of courses, removing marking capacity, removing tutoring capacity has a direct flow-on effect to what is ultimately the core of every student's experience at university. We can create lovely programmes to support students. We can create nice services. We can run events. But at the end of the day, every single student who is there is accessing their course content in some way. Hopefully – if they're not, something's gone wrong – but at the very barest minimum, we can't lose sight of optimising and improving and iterating on what that core experience is supposed to be in learning and teaching. And that was your pathway into this whole research area, right? Was that experience in the classroom?

Kelly: Absolutely.

Ebe: Lastly, I often notice that student engagement activities – so some of those programmes that I was just talking about, as well as research. So research that we conduct to engage with students about what their experience is or how we could improve things, certainly consultation activities that universities will run with students – they're usually being undertaken during working hours, without compensation, or in other ways that really don't work for part-time students. As you've said, based on your experience with this research and what you've found from it, do you have any insights around how other researchers and university decision-makers can better accommodate and support part-time perspectives in their work?

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm really pleased with how the recruitment for this study went. We probably still had a slight bias towards more engaged students. We did ask students a question about their grades and there weren't very many – probably less than 10% – who have received a failing grade, so slight bias there. But overall, the engagement – people were thanking me for being able to share their experience, which really warmed my heart.

But certainly I was able to have everything run online, which adds an instant level of flexibility. And had interview time slots after hours, three or four days a week. So it was – there was quite a variety of times available. And I think that was really important. We would have captured a very different group if I only provided interview times during the day.

I also, yeah, really strongly believe where possible we should be providing compensation for students' time. Now ideally, the only thing I would have loved to have changed with my study design was to include an option for either a second interview or focus group or workshop to bring students I met with back together to discuss the project findings. I think that would have really improved the richness, but I've only thought of that in the last month, and my project ends in February, so there's no chance of that happening. But just for future considerations.

But certainly if it's a study at your own university, organising some food – for example, pizzas before or after compulsory classes on campus – can be really successful. And also scheduling some focus groups before or after compulsory classes that are online, when students are already sort of engaged in their studies and they're just being asked to stay for a little bit longer. I think you can capture part-time students. They definitely want to be heard. They just want to be asked.

Ebe: Any part-time students who are listening at the moment, or anyone who knows a part-time student who you can send this conversation to, I'm sure Kelly would be keen to hear your reflections on some of those findings, so you can send them through via the podcast contacts. I'll also make sure that Kelly's details are in the show notes, because I think this is one of those conversations that we really need to continue having, continue reminding university decision-makers as well as policy decision-makers that part-time students exist and that this way of characterising their experience as 'half a student', as '0.5 EFTSL' doesn't make any sense and doesn't serve students, doesn't give them access to the kind of supports and services that they should be entitled to.

The question that I ask everyone at the end, Kelly: what is making you feel hopeful for the higher education sector at the moment?

Kelly: Yeah, I'm really excited about the Disability Support Fund that's recently been announced to fund universal design for learning – so UDL – into subjects, courses, into the university. I really like the way this funding's being quite tightly regulated, so hopefully it won't be misused and we'll see some really exciting ways to improve how we can embed UDL.

Ebe: It doesn't matter what topic I talk to guests about on this podcast, UDL always comes up in some way or another. And I suppose just a little reminder that UDL is more than just something that can be applied in a learning context to increase accessibility. It's actually cultural and systemic changes to the way that we design all aspects of our institutions and the cultures within them. So you can start with those learning design frameworks and assessment design frameworks, and then extend those principles beyond the classroom to create much more inclusive learning experiences.

Kelly, thanks so much for being so generous with your time today. I am really looking forward to seeing the impact that your research has in this space.

Kelly: Great. Thank you so much for your time, Ebe.

Ebe: I was so excited to be able to get Kelly in to talk about this very new and very current research and the findings so far. I hope that you found this really interesting and useful, and it's getting you thinking about some of the assumptions that we make about how students are engaging with our institutions and their learning. And maybe you have some reflections about a course or a programme that you're responsible for, maybe some systems or some policies that you look after, or perhaps even student programmes or student-led initiatives that you are part of that might be able to do things a little bit differently to think about and cater for the experiences of part-time students.

In the show notes, you'll find some links to Kelly's work as well as ways to get in touch about some of the things that you have heard today. And I'm always keen to hear your thoughts on all of the things that we discuss on the podcast. So head on over to higherhopespod.com if you have anything to share. You can leave a comment on Substack, you can get in touch using the contact form.

If you're keen to back this project, please head over to Higher Hopes by Ebe Ganon on Substack, which you can find via higherhopespod.com. There are various paid and free ways you can support this work, including by leaving a rating and review to help other people discover this platform.

Until next time, keep dreaming bigger, keep building better, and stay hopeful.

Series outro

The Higher Hopes podcast is produced on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Sovereignty was never ceded, and this acknowledgement extends to wherever you are listening from. I encourage you to learn about the traditional custodians of your own country. It's our job to support First Nations perspectives and knowledge in the higher education sector, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the original teachers, learners and researchers on this land.