Q1 2023 – Welcome Back to Di’s Coffee Corner

Posted: 17/03/2023
by: Dianne van Eck

Hello everyone! It’s that time of year again, where we realise three months have passed, students are back on campus on masse and the usual university cycle of activities is underway. Christmas, New Year and summer are over. Where did that time go???

For many of you there are no Dec/Jan breaks as more universities change their timetables to provide more flexible options to students. We see this trend gathering momentum across the sector and expect that it will continue this year.

Many institutions are looking to whole of university process improvements and technology enhancements to improve the student experience and manage a reduced workforce better. Areas that DVE is focusing on this first quarter include student complaints and grievances, student communications, engagement and retention, governance matters including policy improvement and TEQSA reregistration, timetabling and research management system implementation support and clinical placement management for Rural Health Schools.

Training and Development

At DVE we have started implementing our training and development program for 2023. The first session was held 2 March with our ‘Navigating the 8 Wastes in Higher Education’ training. This is great training if you want to help your teams to make change happen from the ground up. It presents the principles of Lean Thinking but in a local work setting. All attendees build their own Action Plan for further improvement work after the training. They all receive a Certificate of Attendance as well as 8 weeks of email tips, video links, templates and support. We are running some free sessions (spaces are limited) over the next 2 months and can offer special prices for group bookings if you would like your team to attend – just email us here and we’ll organise it for you.

We are also developing a ‘DVE Train the Trainer’ training package which provides a series of training sessions (10) over the year to help trainees change their thinking about improvement activities, consider the 8 wastes, learn how to improve a process from end to end and build change from the ground up. The ideal is to change the culture within any area to be one of ‘Yes, we can do that differently’ rather than ‘That’s how we’ve always done it’. If you are interested to know more about this program please reachout .

DVE Events

Other upcoming events include:

  • Fireside Chat – a discussion forum with sector leaders, hosted by Head of Consulting, Ian Thomson

Upcoming webinars include:

  • TEQSA Re-registration
  • Ideas for Delivering First Year Student Success
  • Admissions, Conversion and Scholarship
  • Student Experience
  • Successful Governance
  • System Readiness
  • 3rd Party Compliance and Success

If you’d like to pre register for any of these, feel free to email us so you don’t miss out.

I have just returned from the Universities Australia 2023 Conference. It was a great conference and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with colleagues and friends. I was also pleased that I did not return with COVID (2022 is an experience I do not want to repeat ☹). Read more about my conference feedback.

 I cannot sign off without adding another update about my grandson, Tommy 😊.   He is now 6 months old and growing fast. He is a funny, inquisitive and thoughtful baby who loves his bouncer (where he often bounces so much he falls asleep!), wants to constantly stand and is interested in everything around him. He loves being outside, looking at the trees and he laughs a lot. He has made our lives richer. I was a single mum working full time when raising Jo and rarely had the time with her that I can now spend with Tommy. I’ve very grateful for this wonderful experience.

Kind regards,                                                                                                                                                                          Di