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This chapter reports on the findings from an Australian study exploring how best to facilitate the success of students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds who are studying at regional universities. Interviews with 69 successful students from low SES backgrounds and with 26 stakeholders experienced in supporting these students were carried out across six regional universities. The chapter focuses on one of the key findings to emerge from the study – the criticality of the technology use in facilitating the success of these particular equity group students. The ways in which the use of technology enables flexibility and facilitates connectedness for students are foregrounded as research-based strategies for improving practice within universities.

This chapter explores a set of principles that underpin ensuring that the learning needs of all students are addressed in next generation learning spaces. With increasingly diverse higher education environments and populations, higher education needs to move from seeing student diversity as problematic and deficit-based, to welcoming, celebrating and recognising diversity for the contributions it makes to enhancing the experience and learning outcomes for all students. The principles of Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2011) provide a framework for high-quality university teaching and learning, as well as guidance on the multiple methods and means by which all students can be engaged and learn in ways that best suit their individual styles and needs. An inclusive approach is important pedagogically and applies to both the physical and virtual environments and spaces inhabited by students. When the design of physical environments does not incorporate universal design principles, the result is that some students can be locked out of participating in campus or university life or, for some, the energy required to participate can be substantial. With the digital education frontier expanding at an exponential rate, there is also a need to ensure that online and virtual environments are accessible for all. This chapter draws on the relevant research and the combined experience of the authors to explore an approach to inclusive practices in higher education next generation learning spaces and beyond.

In 2012, the Department of English at the University of Sydney, Australia, established The LINK Project, a faculty-driven outreach program that builds sustainable partnerships with low socioeconomic status (SES) secondary schools across the state of New South Wales. Focused on discipline-centered engagement, LINK positions pedagogic work as a vital site for the advancement of a social inclusion agenda. However, the operative logic of such programs present a distinct set of pedagogical challenges if they are to negotiate the established scholarly frameworks that resist principles of inclusion and threaten to displace and exclude the cultural knowledges, skills, and capitals of students of low SES backgrounds.

This chapter postulates a framework for productive disciplinary engagement that generates new spaces for “relational equity” (Boaler, 2008) between post-secondary institutions and outreach high schools and within diverse tertiary classrooms. It draws on three LINK learning modules designed to foster new ways of forming attachments and enhancing achievement in outreach contexts. In doing so, it describes an approach that seeks to open higher education institutions to multiple knowledges and ways of knowing (Gale & Mills, 2013) in the pursuit of what Jacques Rancière (1987, p. 2) calls “the minimal link of a thing in common.”

Online learning can present challenges and barriers for students, especially when it comes to self-motivation and discipline. Non-traditional learners and those who may be underprepared are often the students most likely to seek virtual learning options. As a result, methods of supporting online learners must be intentional and robust to stay attentive to students’ needs. The American Women’s College (TAWC) at Bay Path University designed its Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL) model to promote degree completion through a constellation of evidence-based practices that cultivate student engagement in a personalized online learning environment. SOUL employs an innovative adaptive technology approach with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to promote accessibility and affordability. Foundational to these frameworks is a commitment to leveraging technology to gather data that drives action-oriented analytics, triggering interventions by faculty and staff and generating predictive models to inform wrap-around support. SOUL’s high-tech, high-touch attributes give students agency over their unique learning paths and provide instructors and administrators the meaningful insights needed to target efforts in a personalized yet scalable way, to promote and positively impact student success. Lessons learned in the process of developing data-driven “high-tech, high-touch” practices are presented.

This chapter describes an undergraduate peer-to-peer mentoring program, UniMentor, at a regional Australian university, which aims to support students in equity groups. Key benefits identified are: enhanced retention rates; improved academic performance; and strengthened social networks. While the focus is on commencing students (mentees), significant positive outcomes for third-year mentors are also apparent. Internal and external challenges that may influence access to mentoring among students include shifting institutional support and roles and curriculum change. Enablers include training, clarity of purpose, strong support networks, and fostering student sense of ownership. The effect of disciplinary culture on uptake and effectiveness of mentoring is also important. Overall, the program compares well against published frameworks of successful student mentoring. Nevertheless, critical questions remain regarding the effectiveness of general versus targeted mentoring programs for students in equity groups.