There are so many amazing aspects to being a university student. Studying fascinating subjects that catch our breath and make us wonder at the world. Living in new cities with new people. Developing as a person as we grow and change with the experiences around us. And coming across all kinds of world views and lifestyles. However, studying, moving out of home, and encountering new places and new people can also have its struggles. Sometimes when we’re thrown into a new environment like this, we have no safety net to catch us. No one to look to to be a friend or even a friendly face.
This semester my course has held a core subject called “BCM 212 Understanding Research Practice” (or BCM 212 for short). This subject centres around my favourite topic and hobby: Curiosity.
Within this subject we weren’t chocked with content and force fed the ideas or formulas of age-old wise men with grey beards. Instead we were encouraged to feed the little flame in all of us. We were encouraged to ask ourselves what fascinates us, what inspires us, and what do we want to know answers to.
This is a huge task. Because for every one of us there are hundreds of ideas and questions floating around, that’s why we are here. So, to help us pick one curiosity to focus on and develop our BCM 212 tutors gave us a topic and asked us to research within our class our curiosity related to this topic.
The topic they gave us was “The Student Experience”.
As I touched on before, there is so much to the student experience. There are amazing benefits and freedoms to the student experience, but there is also challenges that come with it. Particularly the discovery that even whilst surrounded by people, we can feel like were alone in our challenges.
For almost 2 years now I have been a volunteer for an incredible organisation called Red Frogs. Red Frogs exist to “safeguard a generation”. What that means is that we are there to look after students when they study and when they party, challenging the culture of alcohol and other substances. We do that by supporting students all across Australia at their universities.
At Wollongong this looks like visiting the Uni’s student accommodation fortnightly and checking in with students, giving them free pancakes, playing games, and being a friend who can listen.
This year I was curious, does Red Frogs make an impact on the student experience? Do they support students in the way they aim?
My experience has told me yes, but I wanted to see if any BCM 212 students had any stories.
So, I initiated this project in hopes that I would find stories about how Red Frogs was helping students in their journey.
The bottom line from my research was that Red Frogs help students feel like they are being supported.
Where did I get this from?
I conducted 2 surveys from the BCM 212 community reaching out to students through twitter, discord, email, and in tutorials. These surveys helped look at the differences in students living at UOW accommodations, especially the campus’s Red Frogs visit, and how supported they felt.
When asked how supported students felt at their respective accommodations, the majority placed within a neutral to somewhat range. However, every student from accommodation that received regular Red Frogs visits indicated that they felt either supported or very supported.
In my second study, 85% of students that didn’t get visits from Red Frogs voted neutrally, a stark difference from the students at accommodation with Red Frog visitors.
Curious to see how well-known Red Frogs was within the BCM 212 community I asked students if they had heard of Red Frogs and if so where from.
86% of participants had some contact with Red Frogs in the past. However, only 29% had seen Red Frogs at their campus and experienced their support.
Red Frogs do some incredible things to help support young people. On campus this looks like visiting every fortnight, checking in with how students are traveling, being a listening ear, and referring students to any help they need. We do this by handing out free food, playing games, providing alcohol free events, and checking in with how students are going.
One participant described this as “Make the student integration from high school to Uni better” which perfectly captures how we want to be helping students.
Although this mini research project is limited through the research pool available, even in this pool we can see the impact Red Frogs has in helping students settle and find themselves in the turmoil that is Uni life.
The best part is that Wollongong isn’t the only University! Red Frogs support over 300 000 students in in over 140 residential colleges across 24 universities. All with the same goal in mind. To safeguard a generation.
Life as a student can have its challenges. But students don’t have to tackle them alone. We stand with them in the highs and the lows as “Best friends since 1997”.
Resources:
Red Frogs Australia (2019), <https://redfrogs.com.au/>.
Red Frogs Australia (2019), <https://redfrogs.com.au/programs/universities>.
Red Frogs Australia (2020), What Red Frogs do at Uni, online video, 15 January, Red Frogs Australia, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-vLwGBG3sE>.
Tymms, M. & Peters, J. (2020), ‘Losing oneself: tutorial innovations as potential drivers of extrinsic motivation and poor wellbeing in university students’, Pastoral Care in Education, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 42-63.
Watkins, D. C., Hunt, J. B. & Eisenberg, D. (2012) ‘Increased demand for mental health services on college campuses: Perspectives from administrators’, Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 319–337.
Wyatt, T. J., Oswalt, S. B. & Ochoa, Y. (2017) ‘Mental Health and Academic Performance of First-Year College Students’ International Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 178-187.
Boswell's Brain 
1 thought on “Research Recap”