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VC ’ s corner
new challenges for myself , I discovered was deeply important to me .
I ’ m a person that needs to be inspired and feel that I ’ m developing as a result of the challenges that I ’ m asked to address or contribute to the resolution of . Who would have thought that I ’ d be sitting on Easter Island during my bucket-list holiday and would commit to going back to full-time employment instead of just sitting in the sun with a martini ?
It could be argued there ’ s never been a tougher time to lead a university . What ’ s the transition through those three years felt like to you given the way you came into the role ? I think the way we ’ re all feeling at the moment is a little bit of survival , plus survivor guilt as well as the excitement of having survived and seeing my institution through the worst of it , hopefully . A large part of the first year of this job was actually about reminding the university to exercise the muscles , which are about emotional , psychological and physical support to communities under challenge , and to be able to stand tall and firm and be clear about what support we could offer , how we were going to manage that and how we were going to be part of a community that was severely challenged in each of those situations .
Like many other universities , we had a large number of international students who could not go home , who lost their casual employment and were essentially rendered financially bereft and homeless ; and we accommodated those . We ’ ve had food parcels , we ’ ve had respite care for the international students and their families that were here in our community .
It was a difficult time , but one that we worked on together . It was me being a leading part of a team that worked collaboratively to continue to offer education . We were already largely distance , but we moved completely online for everybody in the space of about two weeks , both our domestic and our international students .
We sent all our staff home like everybody else did , but geared up to be able to support those staff while working at home from a very small core team that remained here on the Armidale campus . If I had to say which bit I disliked the most , it was spending nearly seven months sitting on my own in my office looking at Zoom 12 hours a day . I probably did that for about six months and then I hit the infamous Zoom brick wall , I was fed up with looking at myself and I was fed up with looking at other people .
You got on with it because that ’ s what you ’ re expected to do and it ’ s the right thing to do . I think we ’ ve all learned to make sure that we take care of our emotional souls , and that we look out for our own mental health and wellbeing using a slightly different set of guidelines than perhaps we would have used in our quasi-normal pre-COVID environment .
How much do you think the student experience is rising as something at the heart of strategic thinking for universities generally , and for UNE in particular ? I guess for those of us who ’ ve lived in the sphere of education , we ’ ve talked about this concept of personalised learning for a long time now . The question is , what does it mean for UNE in the context of Future-Fit – our new strategic plan – and to place it in context .
Students are demanding a stronger voice in the way that learning is structured , and for it to be self-directed .
We currently support about 25,000 students . Two-thirds of those will pursue their studies as part-time distance , external students in Australia and they ’ ll be over the age of 30 . Many of them will already have an initial qualification or have been 10 , 15 years in the world of work and what they ’ re now looking to do is formalise their experiences and gain qualifications that will see them progressing to a new career , or see them go forward within the career track that they ’ re already on .
What they don ’ t want is to be required to study a formalised degree program that says , you ’ ve got to do Maths 101 , you ’ ve got to do Finance 101 and you ’ ve got to do English Language 101 . They might already be doing numeracy , literacy , communication ; they may already be working with competencies that have seen them successfully employed .
The idea of personalised learning is that we engage in a conversation with our students about the learning that they need so they can secure the qualification that ’ s important for their life plan .
The Australian Qualifications Framework sets out a series of learning outcomes and it says at AQF five , AQF six or AQF nine , these are the learning outcomes that you have to demonstrate you ’ ve achieved . Our current modality is that we put people through a series of lectures , tutorials , workshops , practicums and so on , and then we examine them to determine that they ’ ve met those learning outcomes . Our model is that there are different ways of assessing whether students can demonstrate that they ’ ve achieved those learning outcomes , and then the model of engagement does not have to be through the process of formal lectures with prerequisites .
We can set structures that allow students to explore and to demonstrate that they ’ ve met the learning outcomes by different processes of self-directed learning , by experiential learning and by the acquisition of micro-credentials , which when blended all together say , ‘ Well , actually , you ’ ve met the graduate outcomes of AQF 5 and 6 ,
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