Exploring and recording success strategies emerging in Univesity Work Integrated Learning initiatives.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Here's some new research data on what expect from the world of social media in 2017.
Marketing professionals overwhelmingly say that they would like to find a way to produce more Video content in cost effective ways.
This is exactly the problem that we solved in delivering the RMIT WIL System working with groups of really talented Media Communications students.
The data accumulating each day in your university's WIL system may be the richest single source of industry data the university has. Granted, it's mostly low-level data which is hard to access, or to find useful patterns in. What kinds of questions could your WIL data help you answer, if you were able to effectively use it?
Learn more about the International relationships you already have
Many universities have made substantial investment in opening up International relationships. Revenue from International students fees is high. Relationships established in creating those markets presents opportunities for the University to partner with organisations in the countries of origin. Could you find out which countries are already hosting the greatest number of your WIL students outside of Australia? It's likely to be those counties where most of of your international enrolments come from, but could you find out for sure? What about the companies in those countries that are hosting your WIL students. Who are they? Are they in industries your are targeting for growth or research partnerships? Are there opportunities to work directly with those companies to develop more WIL opportunities or other kinds of partnerships with the University? If these questions matter then its worth considering that the answers could well be sitting in your WIL data today - but that doesn't mean you can necessarily find it.
Discover the depth of relationships you may already have (but can't see)
What if you decide that you want to target a particular organisation, to take on more of your WIL students. Could you find out who else at the university already has an established relationship with that organisation? This information will almost certainly be captured somewhere in the university's WIL system (or systems). If you were able to identify which departments, schools or colleges were already connected with an organisation that you want to work with, then you could approach your colleges to discuss your plans. You may be able to enlist their support in making an approach. It's true that it can be difficult to get your peers to collaborate on what they might perceive as you moving in on their contacts. Its also true that doing things this way is way better for the organisation you've targeted, who may otherwise be confused by the disparate groups contacting them from the same university. It is also better for your colleges who have established the current relationship (although they may take a little convincing of this) as a coordinated approach makes the university a more attractive partner for industry - relative to universities who don't internally cooperate.
Measure cross-program benefits from your investment in Alumni or Mentoring programs
Alumni and Mentoring programs provide the opportunity to deepen your industry partnerships. Deeper relationships can be leveraged to foster re-investment in the University by alumni - including increased opportunities for WIL. You might already be trying to achieve this. Investment in these type of programs needs to be tracked and returns that can be measured help to keep the investment flowing. It would be really helpful if you could use WIL data to measure return on the investments in building Alumni and Mentoring relationships.
Fish where the fish are
A lot of the time spent prospecting for more companies to host WIL placements is wasted. Staff cold calling organisations, selected more or less at random yields a very low return on the time spent. This approach is pretty common but could actually be framing the university as a 'telemarketer' of students. Deploying WIL data you already have, alongside other strategic university data-sets such as that from Mentoring and Alumni Programs, is a step towards a much more effective approach. If you can bring in external data sets to round out the picture, you could target organisations more likely to be responsive to participation in WIL programs. Some early case studies are starting to appear in the universities who are beginning to explore ways to fully exploit their WIL data. What is your story?
This short piece from Clay Shirky is from around five years back but I don't see that it's theme has been picked up widely yet within the education sector. Perhaps I am wrong about that and I would love to hear from people who are doing something with this concept in education at the secondary, tertiary or even primary levels.
Its runs for about 5 minutes and he makes the key point right at the end, which is that;
Being really effective at triggering a large group response to a problem, that is loosely but successfully coordinated via social media, is a key 21st century skill.
"The individual power goes down to that one person or small group of people that can offer the plausible promise in a way that gets people not to just be aware that it's possible, but excited about it."
This WIL story about a study tour to the Philippines for a group of of Media students is pretty fantastic.
It made me think about all of the opportunities in our own back yard that we might be overlooking when we look for work scenarios that we think will be inspiring for students.
Most of the video scenes you will see were filmed by students doing WIL on a study tour to Bohol in the Philippines.
Dr Jenny Weight was interviewed for this short WIL-story by another couple of WIL students who were working with our WIL project team - Samantha Lee and Adam Carroll.
We asked Sam and Adam to record their own reflections on their experiences working on the WIL Project Team - which you can check out here.
This page is a temporary posting for the staff at Victoria University only.
We recently invited the suppliers of Sonia and of InPlace to come to VU and present their systems so that staff could see what the two tools could do first-hand. To help staff who were unable to make it to the demonstrations we have asked the Vendors to provide a copy of the presentations.
While we are waiting for an internal Project Site to be opened for us at VU, I have posted the Sonia and InPlace product demonstration videos here so you can easily review the two products that were recently presented to staff at VU.
Please note that this information is shared only for VU use at this time.
If you have any questions about either of these two products' specific capabilities, please use the comments box below to share the questions. I will follow up with the product suppliers to get answers and post them here so that other VU staff can also see the information.
Sonia
Demonstration held at Footscray Park campus on 19th April
Tip: YouTube Videos will automatically adjust to save you bandwidth so presentations like this can initially appear too small or fuzzy to see properly. You can easily correct this by clicking on the picture-frame icon at the bottom right of the Youtube window to expand the Video - then click Settings 'Cog' Icon at the bottom right of the Youtube window and choosing the highest possible setting.
InPlace
Demonstration held at Footscray Park campus on 21st April Note: Quantum advised that they had a problem with the recording made on the day of the demonstration - whilst they are working to rectify the file they have provided us with the following product demonstration videos (made late last year)
