Tim Beriau
So I just want to thank everyone for joining us today for revolutionising student engagement. A deep dive into transforming student success hosted by Pula. So for all those out there, my name is Tim Barry, I'll be the MC today. So I apologise. You have to listen to my American accent for a little bit. For those of you who are new to Pula. We're heavily invested in student success and student experience and student engagement. We're transforming the way universities can engage with their students at key moments that matter.
Tim Beriau
So our focus is proactively reaching the right students at the right time with the right message in the right channel to provide support, we ensure that engagement fits with their learning experience. So ultimately, Pul is a student engagement platform enabling student success leaders like yourselves to design intelligent conversations with students via channels like SMS, WhatsApp, Wechat, ultimately removing the need for its involvement and ensuring that your support team is able to focus on high value discussions with your students. So, firstly, in the spirit of reconciliation, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land pay my respects to elders, both past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples today. So why are we all here today? We thought it was a great idea to bring together some leaders to share their thoughts on the state of higher education. And what we can do best to support student success.
Tim Beriau
So we're gonna start in just a minute with regards to the university accords and support for students, the sector response and how we think we should be responding. We'll talk a bit about strategies and actionable insights that we need and how technology can play a role and we will save time for A Q and A. I'd like to thank the folks who responded with questions this week via the text message and will aim to answer some of those throughout the session. And if we don't get to them, they'll be the first ones that we get to in the Q and A section.
Tim Beriau
If you do have any questions during the session, please drop them into the Q and A. The panellists will do their best to answer those during the session, whether it's in the chat or while they're speaking, but please use the Q and A if you do have any questions. Thanks. So, really excited to introduce our panel today for exceptional leaders with many years of experience. In the education sector. I'm gonna let these four introduce themselves because they'll, they'll definitely do a better job than I will. But we're gonna start with Samantha Curtis at Ready and then Bruce and James and we'll finish with Michael. So, Sam, if you don't mind kicking us off.
Samantha Curtis
Yeah, thanks, Tim. And, if people have to put up with your US accent, unfortunately, they have to put up with my English accent. And also just to note that yeah, I was formally at KPMG.
Samantha Curtis
So I've transitioned now to ready as a program. So, just by way of introduction, interestingly, my career started in education almost three decades ago working in the word processor era. And now conquering the digital age, like probably many of you in the audience, you know, I've worn multiple hats from being an implementer of student information systems, being an end user, but also being a consumer and in terms of being a student.
Samantha Curtis
But it'd be fair to say with each of those roles, I've cons, you know, gained a considerable experience and insights that span from the green screen to now the cloud. And so I'm excited to be with you all today. Thank you.
Bruce McCarthy
And I'll jump in to introduce myself Bruce McCarthy, I'm the head of future learner experience and services at UTS. I've been with UTS now for six years. My current challenge is really about optimising the future learner experience to optimise conversion of leads through to enrollment.
Bruce McCarthy
But I should also add that. I've spent six years at UTS in various roles, including current student roles and marketing roles.
Bruce McCarthy
And so a lot of the insights that I've, I've worked on involve current students and leveraging current students through to alumni and then back to a current student with that whole lifetime of learning concept. So, look forward to talking more as we go through. Thanks, Bruce Cheers Bruce morning, everyone.
James Hourn
My name is James Horn. I'm the head of Enterprise at Ready. I've been working in education for almost 16 years and of those 16, I've, I've spent 12 of those at Ready. Here at Ready, we are a builder of mission critical software across the entire education space and work with just under 1000 education providers across all different streams of education, higher education universities, Tafes.
James Hourn
And the technology that we build is typically considered the mission critical platform to effectively build on top of and build out that excellent student experience that we're gonna talk about today.
James Hourn
Really pleased to be participating, Tim, thanks for the invitation.
Michael Burgess
Michael Burgess. Up until last June was the Chief student experience officer at Western Sydney University.
Michael Burgess
I'm a bit of an unusual one in the sector, I guess in the prior to that experience, my whole career had been in private enterprise. I was drawn to the sector because having worked on global innovation teams and looking at what's happening in regards to disruption, education stood out as a sector that hadn't been disrupted, but certainly going to be.
Michael Burgess
My experience is in strategy, corporate strategy, customer experience, innovation and that sort of intersection between technology, customer experience and strategy. So I've left Western after 7.5 years and I'm now consulting to the sector because as I'm sure we'll discuss the sector is at a really interesting intersection and needs to substantively change both its proposition and its way of operating to enable us to deliver what's required into the future. Thanks, Tim.
Tim Beriau
Excellent. Thanks everyone.
Tim Beriau
So let's get into it.
Tim Beriau
We've, you know, as, as, as Michael just mentioned, there's been a lot of change going on.
Tim Beriau
A lot of challenges are different for different universities. You know, a lot of issues going on with, you know, visas coming in revenue and profits and our ability to engage students today is making an impact when it comes to resources and a lot of, a lot of other reasons.
Tim Beriau
You know, Michael, we've talked a few times about this and, we'd love to, we're gonna get to everyone's take on the current landscape. We're gonna start with Michael.
Tim Beriau
I mean, you're doing a lot of work with different universities today. You're passionate about the University Accords. We'd love to get and start with your thoughts on higher education today in the University Accords and kind of what's happening out there.
Michael Burgess
Yeah, thanks Tim. It's interesting. I spent the first five years at Western prosecuting the case for change and talking about disruption and the need for the sector to really wake up and change and met a lot of resistance. And I think that was, it was due to a mix of maybe ignorance, fear and it just won't happen to us and yet you see what was starting to happen in the UK and the US and is now starting to hit home. You know, no sector is immune to disruption and change. And I think we're now starting to see that hit.
Michael Burgess
Jason Clare, giving full credit who initiated the Accord, saw the need for us to kind of at least do an evaluation of the sector and where it needs to be in the future.
Michael Burgess
My honest opinion is, I think the interim record report was really underwhelming.
Michael Burgess
I think it was a lot of the sector telling itself that nothing needs to change other than we need to double student numbers and by and simplistically just target equity groups. And there you go, there's the answer. I mean, clearly that is way short. And I think part of the issue was there was no deep diagnosis of what the fundamental issues are that we need to address, you know, things like the future of work.
Michael Burgess
how we're going to skill up the nation in rapid ways, how we're going to evolve and be able to respond in a nimble way and how we can improve the experience so that the success outcomes are improved for students and that's not talked about enough. I don't think so. I think where we've landed with the Accord is it's a good start. I don't think it's, I think it's very short on ambition in terms of innovation and true transformative thinking. So I'm hoping that that's where things will now move towards. And it's really interesting to see there's a, there's a, there, there's starting to be an increasing sort of uprising of views and people starting to challenge, you know, have we gone far enough? Are we thinking about this the right way? Head X is a great example of a platform where they're really starting to challenge the sector to think differently. And quickly on the SFS legislation. I think that's a really interesting indication that the government is really holding the sector's feet to the fire over delivering the right outcomes. It's a bit of a blunt tool to have to use compliance based measures. But I think it's a sign that the government does not have a lot of trust in universities in particular to deliver the outcomes unless they put these sorts of initiatives in place. So, whilst it's a blunt tool, I think that's currently what the sector will respond to. So it's a good start. But as I'm sure we'll talk about, I think we need to really push ourselves much harder and to explore the way we can do things differently and then to do things differently.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, I appreciate that. And I'll let any of the panellists kind of jump in whenever they, whenever they like to. But I guess I'll lead to Bruce. I'd love to kind of get your take on how you're seeing that impact in the front end of your world.
Bruce McCarthy
Yeah, I think one of the, one of the rapid changes that the sector is going through at the moment is trying to work through the financial pressures that each institution is under as a result of obviously international students, firstly getting hit by COVID over the last sort of three or four years And now, now we we're saying no yet again through visa restrictions and that has a knock on effect to the sector. And one of the challenges I think the sector has therefore is that they've got to manage the financial pressures but still enhance student experience both at a future learner, future student perspective and also a current student perspective.
Bruce McCarthy
And that costs money or could cost money And therefore, you know, you've got those balancing and competing needs. I think one of the, one of the solutions that we can talk through today is, technology can if used effectively be a win, win where you get enhanced student experience, future learner experience.
Bruce McCarthy
But also manage it in a cost effective way through better, you know, scoring or lead scoring in the future learner space or identifying those with special needs through technology and then applying the resource more selectively to those individuals rather than using a, shotgun approach to say, OK, all students will get counselling full stop, you know, obviously that's not realistic.
Tim Beriau
And I see Sam, I see you shaking, nodding your head in agreement too.
Samantha Curtis
Oh, absolutely. You know, echoing what Bruce said is technology is the enabler. Absolutely. But what we want to avoid is I suppose a splatter gun technique, we need to obviously ensure that our communications and our engagement is individualised based on, you know, the students ethnicity, their culture, information, and their demographics. So, yeah.
Samantha Curtis
And also it's also the businesses and the people, sorry, the process of the people that underpin that technology as well. So yeah I think definitely James probably has a lot more colour as well on this. So might hand it over to James.
James Hourn
Yeah, thanks Sam.
James Hourn
And I think I mentioned in my introduction, we do a lot of the, we build a lot of the platform ecosystem that a lot of the I guess conceptual student success, student engagement, student experience. and I think it's important not to conflate those three things and just talking broadly about student experience can sometimes be quite misleading.
James Hourn
And from a, from a selfishly, from a technology perspective, we're constantly looking for opportunities to flex where tech can actually enable.
James Hourn
And the expectations of students in 2024 are very different to what they expected to Bruce's point pre-covid their expectation around the support, the service, the self-service digitization, accessibility, not from a sort of WCNG perspective. But if I'm a consumer, how accessible is my education experience and how in control am I of that experience? I'm an international domestic student. So we're often talking to our customers and the broader market about how we can empower students to create their own student experience as opposed to relying on the institution or the university or the tafe to take hold of that responsibility. And I think that's a shift in the paradigm and there's a bit of a trust exchange that needs to happen. And because we're so compliant and focused, the trust is not always there. We want as administrators and institutions to control the data flow, we want to control the way information moves through our systems because we're on the hook for downstream. And so therefore, I think relinquishing and opening up a dialogue and again, coming back to that word trust can only help the students curate their own experience, which will ultimately lead to a better student experience anyway.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, definitely. and like Sam, you'd shared a story about starting university or, you know, son and daughter, starting university would love to, I think we talked about the challenges when they first get into it. I'd love to kind of get your story.
Samantha Curtis
Yeah. You know, I was a late starter at university and have recently finished or completed my MBA.
Samantha Curtis
And it was an interesting story that I wanted to share and it sort of comes around to that whole, I suppose consistency and ensuring that frictionless communication r right throughout their journey from when you know, we're obviously inquiring about courses. But interestingly, my story was about when I first started university. Despite working in the sector for many years, I was like a deer in headlights when I started studying. And interestingly, the provider I studied with were, the application or the admission process, top notch. It was really good.
Samantha Curtis
And then from accepting my offer before I started my studies, I was getting SMS on my phone and they were motivational, you know, who's my biggest supporter, who's gonna help me, what was my motivation for study?
Samantha Curtis
And, you know, they were really enlightening and helpful. And I felt engaged and that the institution really cared about me, but it was interesting because when the rubber really hit the road and I started my studies, all of that communication stopped.
Samantha Curtis
And it was up to me to then contact the institution for assistance. So I think my lesson from that was a set around that whole continuity. But also interestingly, yeah, you know, my daughter's university this year.
Samantha Curtis
And one of the things I'm finding with her is and probably with a lot of, you know, Gen Zers is to meet me where I am, tell me what I need to know and where I need to be on the day. They just want, I suppose, sound bits of information.
Samantha Curtis
So I think that's the challenge for education providers is, how do we enable a student to choose their own journey?
Samantha Curtis
And select, you know, the, basically, what are the platforms that they choose to communicate and engage with. So if my daughter doesn't want to read emails, she spends her time on tiktok on Snapchat, she just wants to know if there are disruptions on the train? Do I need to take an umbrella? Where am I gonna get my lunch? And for her university is just a small part of her life. The rest of her life is around working, earning money and her social group. So I think there as going back to what Michael was saying is I think the sector's ready for another set of disruption around how best to engage with our new generation of students. Yeah, I think I wanna say I've been on a few webinars.
Tim Beriau
I have had the opportunity to listen to a few different universities and consultants like that all been saying the same thing or not making it easy once students get on campus to figure out where they go? What do they do? There's, you know, emails coming from the college and the university and the professor and you know, different port different portal for your timetable, a different portal for your communications and need to find a way to make that as simple as possible because that's, that the very important part once they get right on campus when we can ensure that students are having a good experience. So thanks for that, Sam.
Tim Beriau
Gonna go into the next piece we've talked a bit about, kind of what's happening in the industry. I'd love to kind of chat about what we do, what we think? What do we see the sector doing and what do we think the sector could be doing?
Tim Beriau
In regards to, you know, building out this experience using the technology or just some, some of the outcomes that they should focus on as they move towards this. And I'll start with Michael again.
Tim Beriau
To kind of chat about what we do, what we think the sector could be doing should be doing?
Michael Burgess
Yeah, thanks. and time to be a bit provocative just to build on everything that's been said before. The sector has a woeful history of starting with technology and saying if we implement a new platform and spend eye watering amounts of money on it, job done. And that's absolutely the wrong way to go. And I think one of the biggest challenges I see is there's an absence of strategy, true strategy and a lack of understanding of what strategy truly is to help inform what kind of technology will enable the outcomes you're trying to deliver. And you know, it's interesting m with my time at Western, we actually had a lot of success implementing what became known as Western success and that it lean a little bit off the Georgia state model for any of you who know what Tim Rennicks done over there, which is quite an extraordinary story and it's basically implementing a contemporary business model. It's moving from what I call a sort of mass industrialised delivery model which hasn't changed literally in centuries where everybody's treated the same. Students are sort of thrown in the top of the hopper and you hope they make it through to the bottom, but a whole bunch fall out the sides to a data informed proactive support model using all of the great technology that's now available to us deep insights into each individual student's needs and then using triggers off the back of that to enable us universities to respond in a proactive fashion at that particular point in time that they need support, whether it be because their grades are terrible, they've got financial issues, mental health issues, they're doing their own course or whatever it happens to be. That's, that's the opportunity sitting under all of our noses. And it's very rarely talked about the fact that student success is the big opportunity. Everyone focuses on top line growth if we were to retain more students and our retention rates are way too low.
Michael Burgess
Then we would get much better outcomes which would then obviously build brand equity and you get all the benefits that come with that.
Michael Burgess
It would reduce our cost burden and improve our financial position significantly given how much each of these students is worth to us. So it becomes this beautiful virtual circle. And I can tell you at Western with Western success, starting off a very low base, we've now got a quarter of the students on the program where they've got advisors supporting them. We have an automated platform which does all of these sort of trigger based responses to them. And we've seen a 10% improvement in domestic retention, 10% which is quite extraordinary. And if you work out the sums around that, we're talking significant sums of money.
Michael Burgess
53% improvement in MPS 21% improvement in sense of belongingness, etcetera, etcetera. So you get these key metrics which all add up to increased retention, better satisfaction and better success outcomes. And it's actually, it's hard, they could be wrong, but it's all there ready to be grasped and to be realised. And what it takes though is clarity of strategy vision on where you're heading and then putting in the technologies to enable you to do that. And to Sam's point critically, it's the processors policies in this sector and getting the cultural settings right as well. So I think that's a big opportunity but we have to think and behave very, very differently to the way that we have in the past. Yeah, definitely, we just just launched the poll and some of these kind of topics sharing the results here kind of hit on some of the key things that you spoke about, Michael, about, you know, being proactive, having the right access to data around, demographics and all the different things that need to come into play when we're engaging with certain students.
Tim Beriau
I'm not sure if a technology colleague is in the audience, but he talks about having that 350 degree view, 360 is really difficult and kind of an interesting term that one company uses. But making sure you can get access to the right data so you can gauge the right students at the right time and being able to scale that is really important.
Tim Beriau
I'm just sorry just to add to that and then I'll hand it over.
Michael Burgess
But the risk is that what we tend to want to do understandably is look at all of these different friction points, all of these different challenges of which we know there's many reasons it's ugly in terms of from an experience perspective and want to tackle them all and want to fix them all. The problem with that is you just can't, we don't have the resources all the time and it's not gonna shift the dial. So, part of the trick here is to be super disciplined in terms of understanding what it is that's going to make a dis dis difference and then working on that, executing that scaling up whatever and then moving on to the next thing if we try and sort of, you know, pick things off across the board, We just don't get very far.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, and Bruce, I think you had chatted about some specifics like that too, around outcomes and how we should focus and definitely discipline, love to love for you to continue those thoughts.
Bruce McCarthy
Yeah, I just wanna echo those, those comments of Michael's that, you know, it's important to get your strategy right? And then think about the technology that will address that strategy and then, and then execute just thinking about student support pre census.
Bruce McCarthy
It's an area which has 44-45,000 students. So an individual phone call to every one of those students is just not feasible from a cost effective point of view.
Bruce McCarthy
But clearly we wanted to make sure that all students that were in need of support at a, at a heightened level. Got that support and so we actually have run using our data analytics team, those institutions that are fortunate enough to have some A I that can be run to model the characteristics of individuals who may withdraw at census. You know, use the last three or four years worth of data to identify those that are likely to withdraw. And then I and then call those individually. Now, yeah, it might cost $15 a phone call. You know, in terms of the cost per interaction.
Bruce McCarthy
But then having that one on one conversation can then lead through to more relevant support services. Be it financial or counselling or careers advice or course advice or you know, whatever it might be and escalate that through and that, combination of strategy of OK, we have to work on, on support for students, especially pre census. So that it's a win, win for both the student and for the institution. But leveraging data in this case, a I to identify those that are at most, at most need that said you know, a phone call at $15 a pop, let's say is still expensive even if it was, just a few 100 or perhaps 1000 students. So what for the next batch of students?
Bruce McCarthy
That's where you need to kind of balance you know, the next technology or the next lower cost per interaction. A smart SMS or emails have proven to be ineffective in the past in terms of email. So, I still need to provide that interactive service which is where something like a smart SMS or or other 1 to 1 engagement is needed. Tim, do you mind if I jump in at the risk of creating some friction amongst the panel?
James Hourn
I think historically, what both Michael and Bruce referred to in terms of the sequencing of, let's say institution creates a strategy that is, you know, an idealistic view of what they want to be able to achieve often times technology is left out of that initial design of the strategy and then it it flows down into then OK, let's go and see what platforms that we can use to implement and deliver tactically on that strategy and then naturally becomes sort of a friction point between the technology that's available and what you've actually spent months or a really long time designing in a, in a strap document. And that actually fundamentally and materially slows down the roll out and implementation of that strategy because you then have to either redesign the strategy or you have to recalibrate some of the technology that may be available. And where we've seen most success in large scale technology or digital change is when that consideration has happened at the top of the funnel, the top of the creative process because it prevents, you know, enormous wastage of time resource thinking where the innovation doesn't yet meet the strategy.
James Hourn
It also offers a junction or an intersection point to legitimately talk about innovation. And you know, there are some phenomenal technology platforms on the market today that aren't being used inside the university because education, broadly speaking, not just universities, tafes private colleges, the adoption rate, Michael, you talked about this is so low, particularly in Australia. The last statistics I saw 12 months ago was where about 4% of top line revenue is spent on technology in Australia. and our next I guess here in that space is closer to 10% we will naturally see an increase in top line revenue increase expenditure and investment on technology slowly. But it will, and it should invoke more discussions with those vendors, those technology supplies into the education market about what's possible and then more collaboration on that. And how can we cosign what great looks like?
James Hourn
There's, there's so many more opportunities, there's so much more influence that either industry or tech or the education market itself could, could leverage to fast track some of these strategy papers that are either sat on a desk right now and can't be rolled out because of the technology, technology hurdles and Bruce you talk about say $15 a call all of a sudden it becomes commercially unviable, right? So you're immediately compromising on, on what your definition of great is and perhaps that conversation could have been, had sooner and a different path could have been taken to expedite that.
James Hourn
So I think, you know, again, selfishly, we have to bring technology into the tent sooner so that we can help you understand what's possible now and then also gear towards a path of innovation, over the longer term, can I just jump in on that and sorry to disappoint you James.
Michael Burgess
But that doesn't create friction. I totally agree with you.
Michael Burgess
But I think, I think what you're, what you've highlighted there, it kind of plays to my earlier point and that is generally, institutions are just dreadful at strategy because if it, if you, if it's true strategy that you're implementing here, of course, it incorporates all of your tech technology capabilities and it's not going through this sort of linear kind of academic exercise of putting together a strategy which sits somewhere that's not how this should work. But, you know, if you're looking at implementing a technology and I'll call some out, CRM, how many institutions are implementing CRM and for what gain, if you're not clear what that future student proposition is going to be, and if it's not distinctively different to what it is today, if you can't articulate that, then how can you make a determination on what sort of technology platforms you're putting in place and for what purpose? So, II I completely agree with you. These are hand in glove.
Michael Burgess
But what's typically missing is a deep diagnosis of the current problems and opportunities and then what that future state looks like and how you deliver it.
Samantha Curtis
And if I can just add to that Michael, and I think I do agree and I think sometimes we take a sledgehammer approach to solving some of these solutions when sometimes they're quite simplistic. And I think again, you know, Bruce, going back to your point about, what's sustained making phone calls, is probably not sustainable from a resource and cost perspective. And in fact, most students probably won't even answer the phone anyway. And I know for myself now, if I see a number I don't recognize, I'm not going to answer it.
Samantha Curtis
But I've got an example whereby in terms of engaging with students and particularly international students, which is always a challenge. And I remember working at a university in a campus and one of the student unions came to see me and said, Sam, could you promote the fact that we've got an international student lounge? We're not getting anyone, no international students are actually visiting.
Samantha Curtis
And I said, ok, so how are you reaching out, how are you engaging with the international students on our campus? And they said posters? Right? Ok. That's great. And what language are those posters in? And they're like English. And I'm like, well, why don't you start putting posters and using language for, you know, the demographics or the cultures on our campus to find out what cultures, what languages are commonly used. Obviously English isn't their first language. They're probably more likely to respond if it's in their language. And I think again, they're just small incremental wins. It's not about technology, it's just being able to communicate. And again, it comes back to my point is we need to meet our students where they are and surface information that is relevant and pertinent to them. And similarly with our front line staff, you know, 360 degree views of students is all well and good, but just surface the information that is relevant to me relevant to the student that I can react on at that point in time.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Tim Beriau
I think, ultimately engaging them at the right time with the right message, right channel is certainly important. And like you said, it could be as simple as being in their language, right? Or, or in the, like I said in the channel that they want to, I wanna transition into some of the things that we do now and you know, spend the next 10 minutes on that.
Tim Beriau
One of the questions that we did have in the chat around providing oversight into the communication touch points at the start of the journey would be helpful.
Tim Beriau
And I guess from our perspective, we definitely wanna reach out to a student and say, hey, this is when we are gonna reach out to you and let you know at the start. This is the channel, this is the number, do you wanna get communicated in any other way? Like we need to listen to them and ask them what they want. And ultimately have that ability to do so, otherwise, they're gonna see a random number from a random phone that comes in and may be a random email and they're not really gonna care about that. So I definitely agree with the question. This is when you're gonna be hearing from us, give them a heads up beforehand. This is the place to go. This is how you need to reach for XY and Z to, you know, to Sam's story earlier.
Tim Beriau
Sam, you know, didn't know the daughter didn't know where to go to get answers. And then there was no one reaching out to help them be proactive to being proactive to help get those answers. So, yeah, I'd love to go around the audience and Bruce may have some specific stuff from UTS. You know, what sort of things do you think we should be doing first? And, how do we get started?
Bruce McCarthy
Yeah, it's a big topic. I'm not sure I can answer it, even in 10 minutes. But, a couple of points, I mean, Sam, Sam pointed out that, with phone calls, people are not answering the phone and it's certainly true. So, if it's a, if it's a number you don't recognize, then, I never answer the phone. So, it's a bit hypocritical for me to expect future learners to do so. But an SMS, giving someone a heads up that this is the number we're going to be calling on, in advance a couple of days ahead of the call has definitely been good practice and improves connection rates. And then of course, the voicemail as a fallback.
Bruce McCarthy
You know, more people will listen to that. Just so from an execution point of view, there's some little tips there to improve the connection rate.
Bruce McCarthy
It's also critical to have a breadth of ways to communicate with either future learners or current students because, no, no, not one size fits all. You know, the idea of a poster is gonna work for some and be effective, especially if it's in the right format or the right language in that case.
Bruce McCarthy
But a blend is really critical. The 11 comment that came through is oversight of the communication touch points.
Bruce McCarthy
One thing that we've really discovered, if you like, in probably the last 12 months is that it probably applies to most universities and educational institutions in Australia, is that the touch points capture the details about that individual in very different ways. So two years ago, registering for a Zoom webinar, registering for an online inquiry, booking a consultation all had completely different registration methodologies which then when you tried to merge that data meant you couldn't.
Bruce McCarthy
And so senior level oversight of all the touch points to make sure that when you know details are captured, they can be stitched together in the CRM is so fundamentally important. And we've taken a fairly brutal approach to say here's the rules. It doesn't matter whether you've got an on campus event or a Zoom webinar or a one on one consultation or an inbound phone call or an outbound phone call or an SMS or an email. It doesn't matter, you have to follow those rules and then you can stitch that data together. Not perfectly. I like the idea of a 350 degree view. You know, it's, you're never gonna get it. Absolutely right. But if you can improve in that space of having, more data points for each individual, than, you know, than the conversion and the selection of those individuals for bespoke communication becomes a lot easier and, Michael, I guess I'd, hopefully you get some, some thoughts there too, but I'd love to just hear what you, what you did, any specifics around Western Sydney with, are you engaging with students that were athletes previously with a little bit of different communication, for example, than, you know, if they weren't an athlete previously.
Tim Beriau
But yeah, I would love to get your take.
Michael Burgess
Yeah.
Michael Burgess
You know, I think all institutions are pretty much the same. It's a nightmare when it comes to communications. We spent seven years trying to crack the nut of how we provide seamless, contextually relevant communications to meet the needs of individual students. That's a hard task. Now, should you try and do it? Yes, that's where the strategy piece comes in. But I think there's another element to this, which is just being highly pragmatic as well. And to give you an example, you know, we had a young student who was working on a project team who was standing up the Adobe marketing cloud.
Michael Burgess
When I first started, she'd just started her course and had 68 emails in the first week from a whole bunch of different places across the institution. Just a nightmare.
Michael Burgess
So you're not gonna fix that in the near term. What you can do though. And this is where we had a lot of success . We said, well, bugger this, we can't, we can't fix this. But what we can do is put in place something relatively quickly and cost effectively, which is going to at least alleviate a lot of the problems and make it easier for them. So we worked with our creative agency, came up with a dynamic PDF which based on different segment types, profiles would deliver. Firstly for that first group going through transition that first month, which is the most problematic for new students and would give them everything they needed. And we called it the get started pack or something. And it's a really simple idea. It gave them all of those basic needs, answers to the questions they'd have or it gave them links to somewhere they could go to. And we said, forget everything else, just use this as your reference guide. It had the highest engagement out of anything. it was extraordinary and remains extraordinary, the level of engagement that it got because it was simple. And students knew that if they went to that it would give them what they needed or it would certainly give them much better outcomes than trying to navigate their way through the complexity of the university. So, you know, II I think at times we just need to kind of think, you know, use a bit of rat cunning and think about what we can put in place, which is at least gonna alleviate short-term problems.
Michael Burgess
Sorry, Tim, the other one is back to Western success where we, you know, we develop profiles on students. We have advisors plus technology platforms to be able to engage with them. That's another way where you can get an understanding of their particular needs. So I'll give you a simple example and this stuff's pretty obvious. But, you know, grades historically, if you did poorly with your grades, we do nothing about it, which is crazy because that's the biggest predictor of attrition now, based on what your grades are and we ingest all the grades. I still say we respond to you in different ways and if you fail two or more units in any particular period, then we reach out to you. We have a conversation, we understand what's going on and guess what quite often. It's, you're just not enjoying the course, so we can correct the course for you.
Michael Burgess
So there's another example of how we can, how we can tackle these communications through actually having conversations.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, definitely. And I just wanted to raise a suggestion that came in through the Q and A was using voice notes in the text as opposed to trying to leave voicemails because ultimately they're in their phone, they're texting back and forth and that's a great tidbit to share. So, appreciate the audience member that shared that James and Sam, a couple more minutes before we hop in the Q and A probably about five or six would love to get your thoughts from a technology standpoint and what you're seeing for sure, I might just expand on, on Michael's Point because it touches on a fundamental challenge that we're, you know, working to try and overcome and that is the effectively the consolidation of that touch point.
James Hourn
So what historically has happened is solutions have been built in silos. So it's not uncommon across education where grades are actually isolated to a, either a team inside of a, of a Tafe or a university, either the teaching or academic divisions and exposing those grades has not been easy, but they e either typically live in the L MS or the student information and student management system. And what that has prevented is from anyone else in the ecosystem, providing support to that individual student or the student cohort because they actually can't see that information. So, the student might raise a concern or an issue. It actually might take them several days, several emails, several phone calls to get access to that information before they can trigger an intervention either automatically or or manually and promote this idea of less vertical and more horizontal access. And culturally, everyone is in student experience, everyone is in student success from finance to executive to teachers to actually operationalize that, that culture, you need the technology to be able to support single viewer students. And so the single viewer student could be an outstanding invoice. And we don't want the machine learning AI data analytics to flag that as a risky student if we've actually made it impossible for them to pay the invoice, right? And sometimes there's a disconnect between the student being at risk or our processes being shit. And we've actually made it impossible for that student to do what we want, really want them to do. And this, this comes back to some really basic customer success methodologies that we haven't necessarily stitched into education because of that reluctance to change and the things we've already talked about. So it's bringing that back to thinking more horizontally about the student because the student moves through your institutions horizontally, it is a timeline and there's gonna be deviations away from the norm and the and the happy path. But there should always be the ability for someone to look at that student's current status and see everything about them. That's what matters. The other thing I'll touch on before Sam, I throw it to you.
James Hourn
We constantly talk about students as if they're individuals. There are many students that are actually surrounded by an additional subnet network. Think, think of an apprentice. Right. So in an apprentice's world there is their tafe or their education institution, there's their employer, their supervisor.
James Hourn
There's potentially a parent or a guardian involved in that. And we don't actually think about how those individuals or those people and the roles that they'll play in helping that individual succeed. And so when we think about creating an experience, we only think about the individual. And I think there's an opportunity to take the technology wrapper and actually expand that out into this individual's network and their community because the data suggests, certainly some stuff that we've been doing in the last 12 months suggests that the amount of influence that those external parties have on the success of that student significantly outweighs some of the predetermined or assumptions that we've made over the last three years, international students. The community that they build as soon as they land in Australia is super important, super influential over whether they'll stay in study an apprentice, the relationship they have with their employer, the distance to work, whether their work site moves after six months has a massive influence over whether they're going to continue on that, that career path of that learning journey. And we have all of those data points and our ability to bring that together and then build a AAA support model that includes the other people involved in that student's life is super critical.
James Hourn
10.
Samantha Curtis
Yeah.
Samantha Curtis
It's a very complex puzzle to solve. And I think just wrapping up for me, again, it comes back to that technology should be the enabler. And for me personally, I think it, we should allow the student to choose their own journey from that sort of engagement perspective. And again, I know that's a challenging thing for education providers. And when I say about choosing their own journey, it might be what's their preferred method of communication, what is their preferred language? What is their preferred one zone?
Samantha Curtis
So their communications, digital preferences are very different. you speak a lot about one stop shop for students to go where they can communicate and engage where they can do their studies where they enrol. But I'm actually wondering what students want these days? Because again, I think they want us to serve up information that they need for today.
Samantha Curtis
So again, I really feel that we're at that sort of Uber student generation where perhaps again, it's ready for a major disruption.
Samantha Curtis
So, yeah, it's an interesting time. Always an exciting time in education, which is why we're all here.
Tim Beriau
Excellent. Thanks. Thanks for that Sam. And hopefully she was breaking up a little bit on my end. Not sure if that was the same for everyone else. But I think we, I think we got through it too. Still, so thanks for that Sam.
Tim Beriau
I know we could, we could talk about the dissection and what we could do all day. I do wanna save some time for Q and A.
Tim Beriau
So thanks the panels for your thoughts on, on, on those initial topics. So a couple of the questions that we had through the, through the texting earlier this week was around LGBT Q. And, ultimately light of the current political climate commentary from students, I would love to chat about kind of how we adjust, adapt around equality and its inclusivity and those, those really important topics that that are that are coming up today.
Tim Beriau
Don't let anyone, anyone go for it.
Bruce McCarthy
Yeah, I'll jump in Tim.
Bruce McCarthy
One of the observations I've got about the sector having had 20 odd years in the commercial sector before I joined the education sector is that you know, and we see it today and a lot of the questions we are, very much focused on providing the best student experience and allowing for, improving diversity, improving equity. And these are all, really noble objectives they do in my view anyway, cost money. And therefore, as I said at the outset of this session, a lot of institutions are wrangling the challenges of the financial climate that the sector's in with the need to provide a better student experience and improve diversity and so on.
Bruce McCarthy
And I do think there is a win, win. If you use technology and the question comes through is, well, what if you can't afford it?
Bruce McCarthy
The challenge here is to really and do that number crunching to analyse.
Bruce McCarthy
You know, what is your technology delivering from a financial point of view? And you know, take a more commercial lens which can be a little bit selective. But then if that delivers increased revenue, increased margin, then you're in a position to reinvest that back into other objectives like improving diversity, improving access.
Bruce McCarthy
You know, all of those other objectives, which we, we're all striving to do but don't necessarily have the resources to deliver. So I see a correlation between institutions that have got good commercial practice in finding the most cost effective ways to interact with future learners learning, which of those interactions deliver the best outcomes in terms of enrollment to deliver the revenue that's needed to then fund the more, the more social justice agenda that we are all striving to achieve as well. And so I do see that those two objectives might sound conflicting, but actually, I think they complement each other.
Michael Burgess
Jim, I'll just jump in as well. Firstly, Bruce's one of his last points, we can't afford not to do this.
Michael Burgess
And this whole sort of narrative that there aren't any resources available is rubbish. There's a lot of resources available. It's how we apply it.
Michael Burgess
You know, if we were to start with a clean sheet and create a university of the future today, it would look very, very different and it would behave very, very differently to the way we operate. And I understand it's hard to transform existing institutions, but we absolutely have to do it on the point of equity and diversity.
Michael Burgess
Totally agree. Absolutely. It's noble and we should do it. But I think there's something quite often missed around this. And that is if we talk about equity, quite often, special equity groups are highlighted as needing support and they do. But that's true of every other profile of individuals or groups of individuals who need support. And Laurel put in a great, great question asking how we cater for students who are across the board in age and demographics in terms of technology and experience, meaning not all Gen Z for example. And that's a good example. And you know, we did quite a bit of work when I was at Western looking at analysing risk and risk scoring, different profiles. Now, the highest profile of students in terms of risk of trading was females 40 to 49.
Michael Burgess
And that's probably no surprise to anyone why? Because quite often these women have busy lives and family and everything else. So they're trying to fit in study and we make it as hard as we possibly can for them. Now us not delivering the solutions to enable them to successfully complete their studies is inequity. So I think, you know, we need to be looking at equity in a broader context. And then the question is, well, how do you actually deliver solutions and, and address some of these issues? My experience is if we try to top down an institution and say we're gonna do these particular things across the entire institution that's gonna lead to improvements across the board. That's too hard, a task, it's too complex and everything else.
Michael Burgess
Once again to the point around pragmatism, identify the opportunities, right, the highest risk the highest attracting cohorts for example and say, what can we do to improve their lot and you work on that, then you work on the next one or you scale it up so you pick off the opportunities based on your understanding of, either need or opportunity and you work through them that way because as I said, I think trying to tackle it all across the board, across an institution for everybody is just too difficult.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, I agree. There's a lot of, a lot of different variables that come in, right?
Tim Beriau
Makes it, makes it quite difficult. One of the, one of the questions that came in is around, folks with neuros spicy brains or fast brains. So, rather than, so rather than, you know, folks that, that don't, you know, how do we, how do we engage with folks that have, you know, neuros spicy brains or fast brains to make sure that they're staying engaged and staying along the journey and is it, is it different, do we think too?
Bruce McCarthy
Yeah, Tim. I don't have a sort of silver bullet Tron here. It's not something that we've explored in depth.
Bruce McCarthy
The only thing I would say is that, you know, especially in the kind of 6 to 8 weeks prior to enrollment deadlines, you know, we analyse your questions coming in.
Bruce McCarthy
and try and make sure that you're catering for those questions in your communication.
Bruce McCarthy
So close fulfil that loop of working out what the questions are and then making sure the outbound communication is addressing that.
Bruce McCarthy
Yes, absolutely. Everyone thinks differently, but the core process is similar.
Bruce McCarthy
And so if you're sending out messages, saying you know, ABC and the questions are coming in, I want answers to, XYZ, then you've got it wrong. So, go around that loop as many times as is needed to make sure your communications, especially during the admissions process, is as relevant and as concise and as simple as it can be.
Bruce McCarthy
You know, we find, we often think in the future, learn a contact centre sort of area that we want to answer questions about careers or course choices and those types of questions. And the reality is that especially in sort of Jan Feb, or immediately before a session, 70% of the questions are about, how do I accept my offer? How do I enrol, how do I get my timetable? Right.
Bruce McCarthy
It shouldn't be that way because the process should be a lot simpler and easier for all, regardless of how that learner thinks.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, definitely. And, just a, you know, probably less than a minute left any 15 2nd closing thoughts from anyone I think, I just wanna, I suppose, reiterate that addressing all these different, diverse groups.
Samantha Curtis
And again, notwithstanding, we have the digital divide, which we haven't even really touched on because we're talking about technology, but we know there'll be students in remote areas or from certain socio economic groups that don't have access to the internet. But, again, I think it's about enabling students to choose their own journey and that's where they can say I fit into this group or groups and how we can engage with them. And again, it's easier said than done. But that's probably my key thought. We need to get to that point. Tim , my parting point is we haven't really touched on it today.
Michael Burgess
But culture, for anyone who's worked in private enterprise, you typically don't have to worry about getting the organisation to focus on the customers because it's just, it's just ingrained in the DNA of the organisation. That's not true in Higher Ed. And that's part of the challenge. And whilst we'll come out and say we're student focused and so on and so forth. The reality is most institutions aren't or certainly not to the extent they need to be. So, what I would ask of everybody on this webinar today is, ask yourself the question is your institution Do they have clearly identified student success metrics? If so, what are they? And to what degree are they inculcated across the institution and if they're not, then I think it's, you can do your bit to help ensure that they are instilled in the institution. Because if that's not the case, then there's absolutely no way you're gonna deliver on the student outcomes, you need to.
Tim Beriau
Definitely, definitely, Bruce James.
Bruce McCarthy
Yeah, just I guess reiterating that utilising those technologies to either retain students or recruit more students, sounds like a very commercial approach. But if you apply the commercial gains that can be achieved through those strategies and reinvest that back into improving diversity and improving equity, then you can have a win, win.
Bruce McCarthy
and for those that say, well, they can't afford it. Well, just look at the return on investment. It's a concept that's very old and very well used in most industries and not well used in the sector. But if the return on investment is there, then then think of it as an investment rather than an expense and reinvest the gains back into what the university is trying to achieve.
James Hourn
I mean, Tim, ironically, Michael and Bruce just basically took my pitch.
James Hourn
So that was fantastic. I would just, I would implore everyone on the call to spend more time with your existing technology vendor supplier partner.
James Hourn
He helps them understand what it is that you are ultimately trying to achieve and brings them into the tent.
James Hourn
I think there is still a fear that there's an enormous invoice attached to that conversation and we've got to really break that expectation apart and treat this as a true collaboration. We're a very narrow industry.
James Hourn
And we're all ultimately trying to do something that's socially beneficial and impactful.
James Hourn
So we're actually all motivated by the same thing and to Bruce's point that self fulfilling prophecy of reinvestment should breed better, you know, student experience, student outcome and, I think Michael touched on this, this low hanging fruit, the better we can retain and convert and the existing student base, the less we have to rely on on the top of the funnel stuff. So, that would be my cause for your remarks too.
Tim Beriau
Yeah, I appreciate it everyone.
Tim Beriau
Thanks so much for your time and even going a couple minutes over. I know there's some questions that we didn't get to. I know there are definitely some things that we, we are, learning as panellists too that maybe things we need to focus on. But I'd like to say thank you to everyone that joined.
Tim Beriau
Thanks again to our panelists very much. We will be sending out a questionnaire via text shortly. If you would like to speak with any of our panellists, they're more than welcome. To chat with you. Please let us know in that conversation and if you would like to speak with anyone at Pula, you can reach out to sales at pula.com. We will make sure to get everyone out of the recording as soon as possible. And thanks again and hope you all have a great day.
Tim Beriau
Thanks Tim. Thanks everyone.
James Hourn
Thanks everyone.
Bruce McCarthy
Thanks guys.
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