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Best practice for success
IRU’s National
Innovation Case
Study Collection
goes live as a
resource for all.
Jessica Vanderlelie
interviewed by
Patrick Avenell
18
A
ssociate professor Jessica Vanderlelie,
the Innovative Research Universities
vice‑chancellors’ fellow, based at Griffith
University, has been the driving force behind
establishing the National Innovation Case Study
Collection, which comprises over 100 best-practice
examples for student and graduate success.
The case study collection is based around
20 themes: Alumni, Career Learning Development,
Co-curricular, Community Engagement, Curriculum,
ePortfolios, Employability, Entrepreneurship,
Indigenous, Industry Engagement, International,
Leadership, Learning Analytics, Mentoring,
Postgraduate, Professional Experiences, Student
Support, Technology, Volunteering and Work
Integrated Learning.
Although the brainchild of Vanderlelie, the resource
is available for all on the IRU’s website, and the plan
is for academics from universities far and wide to be
contributing agents.
Vanderlelie sat down with Campus Review to
provide more detail on the new collection and how
it might be used.
CR: Can you give us an overview of this new resource?
JV: A case study collection is a repository of digital
case studies that have been collected from across
the six Innovative Research Universities: Griffith,
Murdoch, La Trobe, Charles Darwin, Flinders and
James Cook. Really, each of the case studies looks at
a different aspect of innovative practices happening
at one of those six member institutions, and those
practices can range from increasing participation in
higher education through to how we engage with
our alumni, how we blend industry knowledges into
the curriculum, support student entrepreneurship,
and volunteering activities, or how we help students
to engage with global mobility in an international
context.
Who was the driving force behind this program?
The case study collection came out of a piece
of work I did as part of the IRU vice-chancellor
fellowship, which was to scope activities that were
happening across the six members, to come up with
themes and projects that the six members might
work on together. What we were looking for in those
projects was to really think about ways that we could