Stories of the First-Year Experience

Wendy Doube (Lecturer - Faculty of Computing and Information Technology)

Many first year tertiary students struggle while coming to grips with the relatively self-directed learning environment of lectures and tutorials. A large amount of your time will be spent studying outside the classroom, working in libraries or at your own desk. Instead of learning in classes with familiar classmates you may find yourself studying alone. If you are placed in very large classes with no-one you know you may find yourself caught in a spiral of making excuses to skip classes and then getting further and further behind in your studies. As a first year computing student at Monash Gippsland you will not only have to become familiar with the tertiary learning environment but also the computing environment required in your studies. If you are one of the 20% of students who study on-campus, this involves becoming familiar with the computing laboratories and the software on the lab computers. If you are one of the 80% of students who study off-campus, this involves setting up a PC with unfamiliar software, connecting it to the Internet and to the Gippsland School of Computing World Wide Web site, infotech.monash.edu.au/resources/student/offcampus/recommended-hardware

This process, like most new ventures on computers, can be extremely time-consuming and frustrating. Make sure you follow the setting up instructions meticulously. Even if you do, setting up can still be plagued with problems. If that happens make sure you carefully document what goes wrong and then contact the computer centre helpdesk or your Internet Service Provider for help. But whether you are studying on-campus or off-campus, when you finally manage to set up your email and discussion groups and to remember your passwords into the Monash computer systems, the rewards are many. The on-campus laboratories are a great place to get to know your fellow students. And when you get stuck, more advanced students will usually be happy to answer those questions that even the computer centre can't solve so don't spend hours struggling, ask!

On-campus or off-campus, as soon as you are set up you should start using your Internet browser to join the discussion groups. After a couple of weeks your classmates on the discussion groups will start to assume familiar and unique identities even though you probably will never see their faces because they are scattered throughout Australia and all over the world. And just like your school classmates, one of them is likely to ask that question you were wondering about and possibly may not have asked for fear of appearing ignorant. A typical discussion on a GSCIT subject discussion group. The lowest entry is a student query, the central entry is a student response and the top entry is clarification by the subject adviser. If all else fails with your set up you can always phone your subject advisers for help. And once you are set up, if you have a problem that can't be solved on the discussion groups you can always email your subject advisers for help. You will find they are just as accessible as your secondary school teachers and in some cases even more so because they are frequently on-line at night and at weekends.

In summary, if you are studying computing at Monash Gippsland, prompt configuration of your student systems on the computer you will be using for your course will greatly assist your transition to tertiary education. Electronic communication will assist your studies and help you to get to know your fellow students.