Victoria University students will be the first in Australia to graduate with a degree earned under a radical new model.
The university is moving to a Swedish teaching model that scraps multiple semester-long courses in favour of four-week intensive blocks of a single subject.
The model has been trialled with first-year students this year and will roll out to all second-year subjects next year. It will run university-wide from 2020.
While students have identified positives for the learning model, warnings have been sounded over the speed of the introduction and the potential impact on academic research and community links with the western suburbs.
First-year biomedicine student Maddy Carrick said she was attracted to the model while tossing up where she would continue her studies.
“I really like this idea of intensive learning,” she said.
“I wasn’t so sure at the start, it was really full-on, but it has really grown on me and I love it now.”
Ms Carrick, a scholarship student, said each class builds a foundation for the next and the format also helps avoid clashes with assignments.
“Most people I have spoken with really like it, particularly the class sizes, there are no massive lectures,” she said.
“I have friends who go to other unis and they just don’t show up for the lectures, here you get to really know the people you are with.”
One drawback was the changing timetable making work shifts difficult to schedule more than four weeks ahead.
Victoria University introduced the model to improve pass rates and reduce the high number of students dropping out in their first year.
While pass rates, scores and retention are all up, concerns have been raised about the effect of a more teaching-intensive focus on academic research.
National Tertiary Education Union VU branch president Paul Adams said he was one of dozens of academic staff sacked and replaced with teaching staff.
“There is a difference between having a teaching college in the west and having a university,” he said.
“Having a more teaching-intensive model means a lot of these community projects and research projects that have a positive impact in the west will not happen.”
Dr Adams said many staff would also have preferred a more gradual introduction of the new model.
