The Higher Education Conference season has begun! I had hoped to attend the Heads of Student Administration (HoSA) conference in Wellington, New Zealand last month, but sadly my father, aged 90, passed away and I had to return to Adelaide. I have heard from several sources that this conference was excellent with interesting case studies of service and process improvement activities at many Australian and New Zealand universities.

The theme of this year’s conference, Capitalising on Connections, explored the opportunities presented through collaborations and partnerships both internally and externally.

He waka eke noa. We are all in this canoe together!

Indeed, we are in this canoe together – often it feels like constantly paddling upstream to reach our destination. Eventually goals are achieved, and we see great examples of this in the sector.  Here is a quick overview of the presentations (thanks to Louise Batchelor, Bond University for sharing her notes with me).

• Lizz Moon, ACU spoke about the Customer Journey and using Service Now as the platform to improve the ACU student enquiry management process. The original topic ‘Customer Experience on a Shoestring – Using the power of storytelling to shift thinking and create maximum value’ translated to ‘How talking to 35 students for over 8 hours resulted in $1M innovation funding!’  Listening to student feedback and then acting on it was a key message of this presentation. DVE has been working with ACU over many years. Reviewing this process with several ACU teams was a great project and the ACU teams continue to deliver high quality service improvement outcomes.
• Kate Williams, UTAS explained their Student Lifecycle mapping project. This extensive journey mapping process identified many improvements that could be made to their students’ journey. This has led to the development of a compelling student portal that has simplified access for university applicants and content for students offering relevant and personalised communication, alerts and guidance.
• Liz Bishara, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) presented on The Role of Disruption in Delivering a Service Revolution, which addressed their project to improve the student journey, identifying it as a ‘movement’, not a ‘change project’. The key learning point from this project was that to deliver effective services, efficient processes are essential! That’s our mantra at DVE Liz!
• Gail White and Nermeen Abraham, Macquarie University spoke about ‘Connect 4’ a bold new approach for Macquarie in developing a Student Success Framework. Macquarie has embarked upon an ambitious journey of transformation to authentically place student success at the heart of all it does. The key to this journey is ‘connection’. Staff connecting with students, staff connecting with each another, students connecting with their peers and educators to share ideas, experiences and information. The key objectives are to enhance growth and belonging through staff, students and community connections to promote partnerships and employability. DVE is excited to be working with Gail and Nermeen and the MQ teams on several related projects.