Five years of taps on shoulders to PATS on backs in ICT

A concern for Information and Communication Technology [1] and Engineering disciplines in many Australian universities is the need to improve a high percentage of courses that students perceive as needing critical attention. Typically, courses in the Physical Sciences disciplines score low on student evaluations and repeatedly have the highest student dropout rates. This paper reports the results of a study investigating five years of changes in course evaluation results in one of Australia s Go8 universities that applied the Peer Assisted Teaching Scheme (PATS). PATS was initially trialed in the Faculty of Information Technology (FIT) at Monash University to improve teaching quality and student satisfaction through building peer assistance capacity. The focus of this study will be on student satisfaction, rather than education quality. PATS has evolved over this period through action research and has been supported by the Australian Government s Office for Learning and Teaching. Multiple changes have been made to the PATS process since its inception, and the quantitative improvements to courses taking part in PATS are reported. The paper concludes by showing that the course areas addressed by the PATS participants are indeed the areas of most concern to students.