March 2020

In this update I’m sharing with you the proposed focus areas for October’s EER, what’s coming up and what you should be focusing on. As Merran often says “we’ve got this” –  a lot of great work has already been done - so refer to your takitahi and actions plans, reach out to your colleagues or APM for input and utilise the champions within your School.

Over 2020 we need to focus our efforts in just a few priority areas – all of which are about continuous improvement: First, we need to know our learner success targets, understand the performance data and our roles in improving it, and be able to speak to that confidently for EER. Second, lifting Māori and Pacific learner success rates is top priority, especially through maintaining our commitment to I See Me initiatives. Third, we need to clearly understand stakeholder needs, especially through industry engagement, so that our programmes and graduates are meeting those needs – some teams already do this very well, so again, it’s about continuous improvement.

Make sure you review this update and if you have any questions about this or anything else, just send me a message. I’m also happy to catch-up with teams to discuss any support, direction or concerns as a group. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Ngā mihi

Simon Nash
Interim Executive Director - Ako
 

Internal Evaluation and Review: 1-10 April 2020

Three external consultants are working with us on EER preparation; Shane Edwards, who was on the last EER panel, Judith Brown who has worked closely with Social Practice; and Debra Robertson-Welsh who will be known to many of you as a former Unitec staff member.

In the first two weeks of April, Shane, Judith and Debra will undertake an ‘Internal Evaluation and Review’ (IER) with all the focus areas listed above. They will run sessions exactly modelling the actual EER visit that’s coming up on October. This will help us to see where our strengths and weaknesses are, and what to focus on in preparation.

If you are involved in a focus area, you’ll be invited to preparatory sessions. Prior to your session you’ll receive a range of resources to help with knowing what to do in the IER.

Being effective self-assessors

Key to a successful EER, and to academic quality and learner success, is being able to accurately self-assess your work and its impact. At the last EER, we let ourselves down on this in quite a few areas.

Here are some valuable tips on what you should be focusing on:

• Know how you contribute to your action plan and Takitahi, and how it contributes to Manaakitia te Rito, our Unitec Renewal Strategy
• Use all available data and information effectively to understand the impact of your work on academic quality and learner success – the Tertiary Evaluation Indicators are a good way to judge where your work fits in
• Focus on better outcomes for learners – NZQA aren’t interested in activity that doesn’t contribute to better outcomes
• Know what to do for continuous improvement and know what the impact of those improvements are
• Be able to speak confidently about all of the above, and practice doing so with your team

Power BI for staff

In the next few weeks, most academic staff and many professional staff will be given access to Power BI. This is our in-house source of data on Educational Performance Indicators and is the best way to keep track of data on learner outcomes and a lot of related information. If you don’t have access but need some data, contact your Academic Administrator Quality from Te Korowai Kahurangi.

“We’ve got this”

Our key message is that Manaakitia te Rito and our action plans are designed to address the work we need to do for EER. We not going to be asking for a lot of additional mahi to prepare; we just need to do our business-as-usual work well, focus on continuous improvement and the best possible outcomes for our learners.

There’s a lot of great work going on around Unitec with current initiatives like I See Me and the Learner Outreach Project, which are directly aimed at improving learner retention and success. If we keep focused on those outcomes for learners, we’ll be on track for achieving at least a strong Category 2 result.
 

For updates on all the work that’s underway, have a look at the latest versions of our Academic Quality Action Plan – our EER plan. This provides a high-level view of our response to the 13 NZQA recommendations from the 2018 EER. Overall we are doing well – we certainly have lots of work ahead of us, but our progress is sound.

Click on the image below to see an overview of our Academic Quality Action Plan

You can also see the full Academic Quality Action Plan - Project Plan, with details of all activities.