Students want deep engagement and genuine partnership

Students want deep engagement and genuine partnership with their university.

It was Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill who said “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and there is nothing quite like a crisis to remind us what is important and help us refocus.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been immensely difficult for universities globally. Universities were forced to confront new challenges swiftly, exposing shortcomings that buoyant times had kept hidden or allowed to be overlooked.

In the face of these challenges, our students and staff showed remarkable resilience. Study and teaching continued remotely in what we know has been a very tough time for everyone.

Students and academics embraced new learning and teaching methods, especially digital technologies that had been underused previously, and explored more flexible ways to engage with one another.

Staff across the sector also rose fantastically to meet the challenge of keeping research going while managing and reforming our institutions in the face of declining revenues and changing public health requirements.

For some Australian universities, online course delivery has long been core business. For them, Covid-19 played into well-developed strengths.

The challenge was far greater for those universities whose on-campus student experience forms the core of their institutional DNA.

Patricia Davidson

Students across Australia made their voices heard in the 2020 Student Experience Survey.

Undergraduate satisfaction dropped by 10 per cent, and postgraduate satisfaction declined by 8 per cent. The greatest fall was in learner engagement, down by 16.7 per cent among undergraduates and 12.7 per cent for postgraduates. Students indicated they valued the flexibility offered by online learning, but the sector-wide rush to pivot online early last year has left a digital learning landscape that varies significantly in quality.

Above all, most students have told us they want to get back on campus. They want to resume interacting with their teachers and peers – in person – while forming enduring, lifelong friendships and professional networks. They want both the campus experience and the flexibility of online.

It is likely that universities won’t be the same, forever changed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Here in Australia, the pandemic has spurred on the long-overdue digital transformation of education and at the same time prompted us to focus on students like never before.

Theo Farrell

We need to take a fresh look at our entire student life cycles to give our students the very best experiences, from their first touchpoint with our universities to the time they embark on enriching careers and lifelong engagement as members of our alumni communities.

In so doing, universities need to engage more deeply with students as trusted partners.

This is why at the University of Wollongong we are refocusing on our students in a big way.

We are looking forward to welcoming them back to our campuses with open arms, starting the new year with a wondrous CampusFest to re-energise campus life and show students how much we have missed them.

We are also ensuring every student who can get to class on campus, and wants to, has a seat waiting for them next year.

For new students, we understand the challenges HSC students faced during Covid-19. We have created more opportunities to access study at UOW via an alternative entry admissions pathway and established one of Australia’s most generous scholarship programs, the Vice-Chancellor’s Leadership Scholarship, to develop a new generation of diverse change leaders.

A new StudentLife@UOW initiative brings an unrelenting student-focus to every aspect of the student life cycle: consolidating and reimagining support services, streamlining and simplifying processes and driving a continuous improvement mindset.

It’s all being done in a genuine partnership with our students, forged in a formal agreement between the vice-chancellor and student advisory council that makes a shared commitment to deep and genuine engagement to ensure the student’s voice is heard in governance and decision-making.

We also have launched a major initiative to enhance the quality of our blended learning across our entire portfolio of subjects to give students the flexibility they want.

Students who completed their studies during the pandemic have not been forgotten.

We are planning a series of mega graduation ceremonies at the 6000-seat Wollongong Entertainment Centre in the heart of Wollongong’s CBD, maximising the number of graduates who can celebrate their achievements in-person and in full view of the community that supported them.

At UOW, we are proud of our record of graduate outcomes, excellence in education and our inclusive student learning community. But we also recognise the need to continuously improve how we support our students for success at university and for life.

Many challenges still lie ahead for higher education in Australia and around the world. We all need to ensure our students graduate not just job-ready but life-ready, resilient and empowered for whatever future they choose.

Patricia M. Davidson is vice-chancellor and president, and Theo Farrell is deputy vice-chancellor (education) of the University of Wollongong.