Rate My Professor Amanda Richardson

Dr Amanda Richardson serves as Lecturer in Academic Development within Teaching and Learning Innovation at Adelaide University, a position she has held since 2020. In this role, she collaborates with staff across the university on multiple curriculum design initiatives, leads the development of courses for Adelaide University Online across several disciplines, and coordinates the Engaging Learners Online short course, which forms part of the Professional Certificate of University Teaching aimed at enhancing staff's online teaching skills. Previously, between 2010 and 2020, she taught various first-year Health Science courses at the University of South Australia. Amanda earned a double degree Bachelor of Science/Education from UniSA in 2009, followed by an Honours degree in Health Sciences in 2011, and subsequently completed a PhD investigating first-year university students' time use.

Her PhD research specifically examined predictors of first-year student success, with a focus on how students' personal characteristics and time allocation influence their academic performance and health outcomes. Amanda's current research interests include the first-year student experience, embedding transition supports within the taught curriculum, learning technologies for providing student feedback, curriculum design for both online and on-campus delivery, and the health and wellbeing of both students and staff. Notable among her collaborative projects is an exploration of attributional retraining interventions for students facing academic review to adjust their causal attribution styles towards those associated with greater academic success. Key publications encompass "Study and life: how first year university students use their time" (Richardson et al., 2019, Student Success), "Delivering resilience: embedding a resilience building module into first-year curriculum" (Goodchild, Heath & Richardson, 2023, Student Success), "You've got mail: a technology-mediated feedback strategy to support self-regulated learning in first-year university students" (Sauchelli et al., 2023, Student Success), "Fostering psychological literacy and student well-being through the first-year course connecting and working with nature: a case study" (Pearson, Richardson & Le Busque, 2024, Psychology Learning and Teaching), and "Evaluation of an embedded transition support module: bringing academic skills and peers into first-year classrooms" (McCarten et al., 2025, Student Success). She is eligible to co-supervise Masters and PhD students. In 2026, Dr Richardson, along with colleagues Associate Professor Elissa Pearson and Dr Brianna Le Busque, received national recognition for their work in building real-world skills in first-year psychology students.