Joanne Lisciandro

In recent years, the impact of mental health issues on university students’ ability to successfully access, transition and participate in university has gained increasing attention. Mental wellbeing is of particular concern in pre-university enabling programs which often specifically target educationally-disadvantaged equity groups. It has become increasingly clear that in addition to ‘academic skills’, these students also need to be equipped with social and emotional skills that support their transition to university, as well as promote resilience, sustained motivation and academic self- efficacy. In response to this, we reviewed and revised the curricula of two of Murdoch University’s key enabling programs to incorporate material which focused on developing these skills. This paper presents our rationale and examples of our diverse approaches to addressing social and emotional learning in curricula which aims to support and enable the transition of educationally disadvantaged students into undergraduate studies.

In recent years, enrolments in ‘OnTrack’ - Murdoch University’s pre-university enabling program - have substantially increased; and the study choices of these students diversified, with many students choosing to commence undergraduate science programs. Concurrently, the university’s commitment to developing an ‘interdisciplinary perspective’ in undergraduates has strengthened. These changes necessitated the inclusion of a curriculum module focused on developing scientific literacy to be undertaken by all ‘OnTrack’ students. However, the nature of this module required careful thought as the ‘OnTrack’ student cohort is characterised by diverse interests, aspirations, attitudes and past educational experiences related to science learning. In this session, the authors discuss their rationale for using an “everyday science” approach, rather than the traditional “pipeline” science approach in designing this module. There is ongoing research into the success of this approach in facilitating both student engagement in learning about science and opportunities for transformative learning.

Type I IFN subtypes have been shown to exhibit differential efficacies in the immune response to virus infections. Recent efforts in vaccine developments have focused on new strategies to improve immunity, including the interaction of dendritic cells (DC) with IFNs. In this study, we assess the immunomodulating capacity of a panel of mouse IFN proteins to enhance DC activation and immune stimulating potential, providing a link between innate and adaptive immunity. Individual or combinatorial murine IFN-alpha and -beta subtypes were used to stimulate BALB/c bone marrow-derived DC (BMDC), which were then analysed for activation marker expression, antigen uptake and processing, and antigen-specific CD4_ T cell stimulatory capacity. Murine IFN-alpha 1, -4, -6 and beta subtypes displayed differential efficacies in BMDC activation, antigen processing and presentation to naïve antigen-specific CD4_ T cells. IFN-beta was the most efficient stimulator of BMDC activation and antigen processing of all the subtypes tested, followed by IFN-alpha 4. Additionally, IFN-alpha 4/beta was found to be superior to all other IFNs in enhancing antigen processing. However, IFN treatment appeared to inhibit DC-mediated CD4_ T cell activation in an ovalbumin model system. Differences in mRNA expression profiles of TLR-3, -4, -9, OAS1, PKR and RIG-I after BMDC stimulation with IFN subtypes were noted. These data confirm the adjuvant potential of select IFN subtypes in DC-mediated immunity and propose their application for vaccine development.