These are some questions, thoughts and ideas from Monday. Just some pre-conference ponderings.
1. How does the first year experience for internal students differ from distance students? What are the risk factors that lead to students dropping out or failing? What are the experiences (good and bad) for both groups?
2. How to work with teaching consultants more closely so that lecturers who might benefit from some helpful support and advice (in relation to assignments and Stream use etc) receive that help. Learning Consultants and Student Success Advisers often identity potential problems, but are left to work solely with the student. Rachael takes the direct approach in Auckland: she has a word with a teaching consultant and they have a word with the lecturer. This model relies heavily on networking and relationship building, but appears to be highly effective. 
3.Some thoughts on how lecturers could use Stream discussions more effectively. They could initially decide if Stream discussions are for students to manage and contribute to (similar to private conversations in libraries and cafes). The downside to this approach is that conversation content can be completely wrong. Or lecturers could use Stream discussions more as guided discussion with active participation from them (like a tutorial). The second option would involve having a much more clearly expressed role for the lecturer, but clarifying their role is probably very useful (if a conversation is set up as student-led and open/free, and then the lecturer randomly jumps in to "set the record straight", it can have the result of killing the conversation and as a student there is the potential to feel slightly "spied on"). 

I'm looking forward to the conference!.First up we have Mark's colloquium on distance students which should be really fascinating. Then there's a pre-conference workshop and after that I've opted for the Law interest group session covering when is it a good time to teach ethics (and is first year too early).