Data Science is emerging as a field of critical importance in the same way that computer science developed in the 1970s and 1980s to underpin the explosion of information technology. For UTS, this Focus Area includes the ‘science’ of data science and, importantly, the application of data science to all fields of human endeavour.
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Construction is a global industry and impacts our lives in so many ways and at so many levels. It is a precious opportunity to be able to contribute...
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[Music] The strategic design studio provides a unique learning opportunity within the uts executive mba. it enables students to work on real client challenges so we partner with client organizations who have a complex challenge and we put students into teams and they work on addressing these challenges for the clients the experience of going through the moves of applying tools and techniques to innovate and strategically think through towards a new solution is one that we want students to experience outside their own organization or outside their own startup coming out of this experience they are equipped to do that in their own context so can bring this back to their organizations or apply it to the venture for clients coming into the mba program they'll have a chance to really get on board with the projects they can be as involved as they want to be and get the opportunity to while they're working with students have exposure to all the professionals who are advising the students by the very nature of the way that the course is developed so i think it's a really great opportunity for anyone interested to take part we started center rugby about five years ago we just felt like bringing that rugby and therapy together would be a great space for kids to find belonging and to get some great sensory input and become part of a team we reached out to uts business school we were at a point in central rugby where it had grown quite significantly and i felt like we weren't able to keep up with the demand and from there we sort of felt lost within the business it made a really big difference for us in terms of having someone look at it externally and just look at the whole organization look at the business as a whole and talk to all of the stakeholders involved we got such amazing information through all of the work they did that we just never could have gotten ourselves it also just really made us reflect and think about why we started and where we wanted to go with it the sense rugby team did a really great job at really turning the client's problem upside down and going into great depth in terms of what the organization could do the team brought a whole new perspective and really challenged their thinking about what their organisation could become i loved being part of a project that i genuinely cared about we really valued the client and what they their vision was once we knew the business once we met the owners we were immediately engaged and immediately really really passionate to achieve their goal to share their mission their vision we kept that passion every single day the kinds of projects that we're looking for are either startup organizations that want to scale or large corporate organizations government organizations or charities even that have to solve a real juicy complex wicked problem i would recommend other clients to partner with uts because it really saved us so much time and money right now we also just feel so inspired by the road map out that they've created for us they solved a lot of problems in a way that we wouldn't have done it ourselves
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My name is Stephanie and I am studying a master of design at UTS. I think UTS is a great place to gain your hands on skills within a studio setting. Our tutors or professors always encourage us to question everything, critique everything and don’t believe whatever I said the first time, thinking deeply and if you can convince me, then come to convince me. I think that’s great.
If we look at the history of design, a lot of the solutions are the problems we have now. For example, we designed the car now we have also designed car accidents, we didn’t realise that. So we had to design car insurance to adjust it. But UTS teaches students to have that future thinking mindset, so are not thinking about now but also thinking about the future.
I really like the service design program at UTS, it has not only provided the very advanced research masters in analytical thinking, we also gain hands on skills from the real projects. The social aspect of service design teaching is another thing I really enjoyed because it not only covered the business side but also covered the social side so we got this kind of balance, we are not only making profits for corporations but also what we have designed not matter services or products it must be something good for people, something good for the society.
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UTS Future of Fashion catwalk show
Celebrating 25 years and building on their reputation as one of Australia's most innovative fashion courses, The Future of Fashion showcases the next generation of Australia's emerging design talent.Future of Fashion catwalk show
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Music plays for the duration of the video. No spoken words.
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Hi, my name is Sabrina. I started Juris Doctor in 2016, and I'm international student from China. As an international student, I understand finding a place to live is one of the most important steps to settling into a new city. But, there are lots of options to suit your budget and needs.
When I first arrived in Sydney, I found that looking for a place to live is really hard for me because I got limited budget and I don't want to live in a place where it's overcrowded. It's a really helpful to talk to our staff at UTS Housing to get some advice. But before you started to looking for a place, just make sure you consider your budget, needs, transport lengths, and proximity to campus.
UTS Housing is a good option if you want to be close to campus and live with other UTS students. It's about 24% cheaper than the private rental market, and the rental includes bills, furniture, and a range of in-house events to help you make new friends. This takes some stress out of settling into a new city.
You may want to try living outside of Ultimo to know Sydney better. Currently the student accommodation options include Iglu, UniLodge, and Urbanest. Private student accommodation is a great way to meet people, share living expenses, and get to know different parts of Sydney. Alternatively, you can try shared accommodation with houses or apartments and are usually furnished. Websites for shared accommodation include UTS Studystays, Gumtree, and Flatmates.
My advice is if you're looking for accommodation online always visit the place in person before you pay a deposit or sign a contract. Make sure you are fine with the lines of the contract and also get a detailed receipt of any payment before you go ahead with the agreement.
Many private rental options are available close to Sydney. You can visit sites such as Domain or Real Estate to view the options available. It's important to keep in mind that the rental usually does not cover bills like gas and electricity. Often private rental options are unfurnished as well.
Remember, when it comes to renting, international students have the same rights as Australians. It's important that you know what you are entitled to. Visit the Fair Trading website to find out about what rental rights you have in New South Wales.
Don't forget UTS Housing is here to help you with any questions you may have to find about a place to live in Sydney. Visit housing.uts.edu.au to get in touch with us.
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Prize night and student showcase event
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Simon Knight:
Welcome to people just joining us. We're just going to give it a minute or so before we kick off so that people can come into the room.All right. I think we'll get started. Welcome to the Masters of Data Science and Innovation Information Session and thanks for coming along. It's always nice to have people joining us and hearing some of your questions. Just to flag, you should've had a notice about this as you joined. The sessions are recorded and we just do that so that they can be shared afterwards. Mostly, the recording is us, but if you post things into the Q&A, then we may be able to see your name there, so flagging that here. And you can see an email address at the bottom there, innovation@uts.edu.au. If you want to contact us about the recording, you can, but probably more importantly, you can actually send questions after this session to that email address and someone will get back to you if you've got follow-up questions as well.
As we kick off, I want to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon whose ancestral lands the City Campus, which is where I am at the moment, now stands. And pay respects to elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land. And to introduce myself first, I'm Dr. Simon Knight. I'm a senior lecturer in the TD School at UTS and teach on to the Masters of Data Science and Innovation. And the format of today, you'll hear a little bit about the course. So I'll hand over shortly to Tony, who'll give that background. And then we'll break into some frequently asked questions, so things that we've heard from people who come to these sessions a lot and we'll address those with Amy, who's one of our students. And thanks to Amy for coming along.
And we'll also address any questions that you have at that point. And at any point, if you do have questions, you'll see in the Zoom control a Q&A option. And if you post your questions there, I do keep track of them. We may not answer them immediately, but we'll either address them through a text response in the Q&A or verbally at some point. And I can fairly safely say we always manage to address all of the questions asked. Unfortunately, Joe, who's one of our other students who'd kindly volunteered, isn't able to be here today. So what I'm going to do is just ask Amy to very briefly say a bit about her, and then I'll hand over to Tony and Tony can introduce himself and the course. Amy.Amy Yang:
Oh, hi everyone. My name's Amy. I started a program on Master and Data Science and Innovation from last March. Currently, I'm an operation analyst in a startup and also doing data-related works. I'm very happy to join today's session and hopefully I can share some learning experience with you guys. Yeah, that's from me.Simon Knight:
Great, thanks Amy. And yeah, now I'll pass over to Tony and Tony if you want to introduce yourself and then the course. Thanks.Tony Huang:
Thank you, Simon. Hello, everyone. Good evening. So I'm Tony Huang from TD School and I'm also the course director for the Master of Data Science and Innovation Program. So this evening, I will give you a brief overview and emphasize some key features of MDSI.
So first, as you may have already known, nowadays, data is available everywhere in almost every discipline and every industry. And the data scientists are required by almost every industry to process those data for business purpose, ranging from finance, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunication, energy, retail, to name a few. Therefore, there is a very high demand for data scientists in the market for data analytics and the decision-making purpose. And then that is also why data scientists are among the top-paying positions in industry.
Data science is a multidisciplinary field, requiring knowledge and skills from different disciplines. For example, math and statistics, computer science, business intelligence and visualization. Further, in order for data scientists to process data, draw insights from the data and make decisions properly, they were also needed to have a good knowledge of data ethics, security and privacy issues. Just to help you lovely understand the multidisciplinary requirement for data scientists. Before data scientist position was created, if a business wanted to hire someone to do this data scientist job, they would need to hire three professionals, an IT person, a business analyst and a statistician. But now, they just need to have one person, a data scientist.
So why should you study MDSI for data science, and what makes MDSI different? MDSI is the only transdisciplinary data science programming in Australia that has creativity and innovation components. This means that we will not only teach you technical data science skills but also train you to have relevant soft skills through a range of in-class learning activities and assessment tasks. As a result, you will be able to approach data problems in creative ways, also from a data perspective and from ethics and a human-centred perspective. Our course subjects are specifically developed for data science and is regularly updated to keep up with the changing needs of our students and the job market. Not only that, the course subjects are developed in collaboration with our industry partners and delivered by current working professionals and our quality academic staff members.
Throughout the learning process, you will have lots of opportunities to work on real-world projects with extra data sets. So when you graduate, you are industry-ready. Also, we understand that our students come from very different background with different learning objectives. So we have a flexible, uncomplicated courses structure with a two-year, one-and-a-half year and a one-year full-time course durations providing flexibility for you to share your own data science path. For example, if you are new to data science, you may take MDSI as a pathway into the industry by starting with fundamental subjects first. But if you already have some data science knowledge or work experience, you may also take MDSI as a next step to develop more advanced and specialised data science skills.
Industry partnership and engagements. Our core part of MDSI program, that is to prepare students to adjust to complex real-world issues. Through the industry partnership program, we developed the course with input from our partners. We invited working professionals to teach and give lectures, and students have opportunities to work on their own projects. Through our partnership program, you can build your professional network and connections with our partners and connect with your fellow students. Many of them are also professionals. You could also have internship opportunities to work at the office of our partners, such as the National Heart Foundation and Origin Energy.
This is a big slice. So MDSI has three admission points, which are for two year, one and a half a year and one year durations. For two year course, students are required to complete 96 credit point to complete the course. This includes 44 credit point, core subjects and 52 electives. So the core subjects are set up subjects for you to learn core data science skills and build their other projects, and students develop freedom-centred perspective and ethical thinking on bigger data at the same time. Electives can be chosen from in-house data science or optional subjects and also from course faculty subjects.
As I mentioned before, we have very flexible, uncomplicated course structure with a total of 36 subjects choice to meet the individual needs of students. With this flexible course structure, students will be able to develop their own data science interests and expertise. Accordingly, for one and a half year course, students are required to complete 72 credit point, where for the one year course, students are required to complete 48 credit point in total for the course. For more details, please check our handbook online. Also for admission requirement, if you have at least a bachelor level degree with a GPA of at least four out of seven, then you'll be eligible for the 96 credit point in 2 year course. And if you do not meet the GPA requirement, a two year relevant work experience will also make you eligible.
For one and a half year entry, if you have a bachelor with a GPA of at least four and if you have either a two year work experience or your qualification is in the relevant field, such as science, engineering, IT, banking, then you are eligible for one year entry. In this case, you will receive recognition of 24 credit point of prior learning, reducing the course duration from two years to one point five years. We have a separate one year course. To be eligible for this one year course, you will need to have at least a bachelor level degree in a relevant field with a GPA of at least four out of seven. You are also required to have a minimum of two year full-time time relevant work experience within the last five years.If you have completed a higher qualifications than UTS in recognized bachelor degree, then the GPA requirement may be waived for this one year course. Next please. So in addition to the three admission points to our MDSI course, we also offer six months Graduate Certificate and a one year Graduate Diploma in Data Science and Innovation. We also have microcredentials. Our range of flexible learning options in data science and innovation allow you to focus on developing the specific skills you need, when you need them. For our two microcredential course, they are Applied Data Science for Innovation and Advanced Data Science for Innovation. Both microcredentials teach fundamental machine learning knowledge, so they are full credit point online short courses and can each completed in six weeks. You may find more information about them from our UTS open website, open.uts.edu.au.The MDSI is delivered via a blended mode, which means that... In blended mode and also designed for working professionals. Classes are usually held after 5:30 PM in weekdays and during the day on Saturdays. If you like, you may check our 2023 time table to see how classes are scheduled with the website we provided here, timetable.uts.edu.au. Next please. Like I just mentioned, our course is delivered via blended mode. So in this mode, there classes held on campus where students get the opportunity to network. And then from our lectures, students are also expected to use online content outside of the class to study either individually or in groups.
Most of subject content and assessment tasks are project based with real data, which means that students were very trained to effectively apply those often isolated, low-reaching points for real-world problems. They also have a work integrated learning opportunities through internships and work placement. Authentic assessment has also been used for MDSI. This means that the assessments is mainly based on students performance in applying what they have learned in class into assessment tasks. And there are no exams for in-house data science subjects but for subjects that are offered by other faculties, it is possible you may participate in exams. And this is all from me. Thank you. Simon, over to you.Simon Knight:
Great, thanks Tony. So what we'll do now is I'm actually going to stop sharing my screen and I'm going to put us into a gallery view like this with apologies to people as we start popping up on the screen. There we go. And so you'll see as well that I've just posted some links into the chat as Tony was going through to give some of the detail. And I can see there's a few questions in the Q&A. And so just as I said at the start, we will get to all of those. So don't worry if you've asked a question that's not been responded to yet.
But to kick us off, we're going to have a bit of a conversation. Normally, it's with Amy and Joe who have come along. Today, Amy gets to answer all of the questions, just to give a feel for some of the key things that people tend to be thinking about when they're trying to decide whether to join us in the MDSI. And so the first question is really that. So why, to Amy, did you pick this degree, given that there are lots of other data science degrees out there that you could have chosen?Amy Yang:
Yeah, yeah. To be honest, I actually was a research type of person. I did a lot of research before I pick UTS. And the thing that really attractive to me is the course is really practical. When I check the online, instead of doing the exams, we actually have project work and that's my research and why I really have this course and I find that it stands out. That that's the truth, right, I will never lie. And I really enjoy the coursework that I have done I guess during last year. So for example, I have a subject called machine learning algorithms. In that class, we actually use different algorithms to build a classification model and to predict, it's like predict the default risk for the existing customers for their future payments. You can, based on the customer's... okay, their information, how old, their gender or their historical payments.
Okay. And then to build this model. This is quite popular in finance services as well. So this is just an example that we actually do in our project work in that subject. This is definitely one the main reason. And I think another reason is based on my current learning experience, I find we actually have this opportunity to get explore to a lot of popular tools and programming languages. One of the subjects called data science practice, I actually learned the common languages like Python, R, SQL and also tools, Docker, GitHub and Git, which are quite commonly used in the practice and I really appreciate that. For example, if I learn it all by myself, I think I probably can't get there. But then because I work with other classmates and we have project work so I find it easy to absorb, right, the knowledge that I learned in class and then I applied it.
So I also used that project to build my portfolio as well. I created in my GitHub. And then to present it in the future when I want to get a job interview is proof that I have done that and that I have that skills. I guess on top of that, there's another attractive thing to me is the UTS community, which is I find is really friendly and supportive. For myself, I was accountant before so I don't have coding background and I find it's quite daunting at the beginning. But I find I'm really lucky because I had a lot of people to support me. My first semester was from Simon. I ask a lot of questions, even after the lecture, sometimes may stay half an hour late. I really appreciate your time and even after class, we have these kind words and also have U:PASS sessions, which is like peer assistant sessions that we help each other and learn coding together. So I just want to say we have all these peers together and lecturer to support us. So yeah, I really appreciate. Yeah.Simon Knight:
Great. Thanks Amy. And I mean, you mentioned some things there about the connections to industry and the projects and I think that that kind of setting up a portfolio as well. I know you haven't gone through to some of the later subjects so I can say a little bit about those in a moment. But of your experience so far, what's the connection to industry experiences and then opportunities been so far?Amy Yang:
Oh yes, I think I'm quite lucky. So I got my current job, which is operation analyst. So this job opportunity is actually the one that was posted by one of our peers. So he work in this data Zoomo and then he post this job in our Slack channel. We have a channel for all the MDSI students and we share job opportunities together. So I saw this and actually I chatted with him about the position, how is the manager, and how is the company's culture and try to understand a bit more before I finish my resume stuff. And I am very lucky to get the interview and one of another reasons because I had one of the project which is from data science practice subject, we have this SQL business questions which I use this as a case to prove my SQL skills to the employer and they're quite happy with me.
I had three rounds of interview, luckily I got the job. I think that's one of my... I guess the biggest opportunity I had. Another thing is I also had the job opportunity in UTS to lead one of the subject called data science practice. So I'm like a facilitator in this U:PASS session. So I help to run these sessions with the existing students who study this subject every week. I study and practice the coding with them together and also help them to resolve some questions and facilitate everyone to study together because we create this safe environment for everyone to love. So I enjoy these sessions as well. Yeah,Simon Knight:
Yeah. Great. So the iLab subjects that we mentioned, these are innovation labs and in them we have a set of industry partners who come and join some of the sessions and they come with data sets that they can share and real problems that they're facing around those data sets. And then the students work in teams in... It's a capstone subject, so it's a bigger credit point bearing subject, to address those challenges. And the assessment is partly about how they engage with the industry problem and think about how do we understand what this problem is and how we can impact on it? And obviously the solutions that come up with but also the learning that goes into that and the reflection on that learning.
And so we've had lots of different partners come into that innovation lab over a number of years and there are some chances for more research based projects for people who are interested in that pathway as well. I did see that someone had asked about whether or not some of these collaborations with industry are paid and so this is a good time to address that one. For the projects where it's an assessment that you're doing with the industry partner, the idea is that it's not them getting you to do free work. So it's not that they know what they want the output to look like exactly and it's really well defined. It's supposed to be something that's pushing at them doing something new where they're not necessarily sure exactly what that's going to look like. And the focus is really on your learning as a student but actually them potentially learning and thinking with how they can address these kinds of challenges.
And the assessments then are also designed so that sometimes things don't work. You're not expected to deliver a functioning deliverable. Of course it's always nice if you do get kind of products from things at the end of it. So those aren't involve payment, they're not set up in that way. We do have other opportunities through the course, through the connections that we have for internships and for other projects with external industry partners that either, there're things that you set up yourselves or that we facilitate and some of those definitely would be paid. But it's always contingent on what things are available in any semester. Is there anything to add on that, Tony?Tony Huang:
No. So it really depends on the host of organisation.Simon Knight:
Yeah. So hopefully that answered that question. And so Tony, it's a good point probably to ask as well. So you mentioned previously that we teach in blended mode and obviously people are now very familiar with doing things online and Zoom classes. So people might be wondering about how we're teaching online and what the blended actually means in this context. Do you want to speak to that?Tony Huang:
Yeah, the blended mode is a combination of on campus teaching plus learning online. So that's different from deliver online. So basically for blended teaching, you needed to be on campus for class sessions and then you study individually or in group to digest online materials. Now overall MDSI cycle courses are on campus course, so now the COVID 19 is over and then we deliver our course on campus. But we do recognize there are some students for various reasons they want to learn from distance, their online option, some could be in other states or in overseas. In this case, we do require our teaching team to record their sessions when possible, but at least the attending class is not mandatory. So you still could learn yourself in distance by looking at the materials on campus and get a pass for the subjects you do.Simon Knight:
And I think we can say we've taught blended before COVID and so we had lots of teaching approaches and resources that helped to guide people through learning. And then when we're bringing you together, the idea is that that's adding value. And there's lots of resources that we send people to where there's peer learning opportunities as well as Amy described, that are outside of the classroom, whether the classroom is online or face-to-face. So we were in a relatively good position in the sense that we'd been doing lots of online and technology based learning for quite a long time and thinking about how to try and do that while still having that peer learning and the social component as well. Another question that people often ask that's related to that is about how much time people have to devote to studies each week. So Amy do you want to speak to that a little bit?Amy Yang:
Yeah, sure. So normally we spend... If for one subject, we normally spend 10 to 12 hours. So if you are international student you have to study full-time. Then I guess in total you need to study around 35 hours, which is a full-time job. I know a lot of students who enroll this program is actually maybe work full-time or work part-time at least. So it can be a little hard to manage. So how I manage because currently I also work four days and study two subjects. So I was trying to manage my time I guess as well as I can.
So how I manage it, I normally split my time into the morning session or evening session. Like in the morning I will try to... Because I find in the morning maybe my memory is better, so I will try to read the slides, try to review some study points or read some blog related to data science. And then during the day I will just fully engage in the work and get things done as quickly as possible. And after work, because some of the class are normally after work. Also mainly afterward, I will study, have the lecture or sometimes we have group meetings for some group projects work as well. And then on weekends, I'll block my time to do the assignment so that I can make big progress and I guess, yeah, so I can finish all the commitment for the assignment. And yeah, do some personal project as well. Yeah.Simon Knight:
Thanks Amy. Tony, you unmuted. Do you want to add anything to...Tony Huang:
I don't have anything to add.Simon Knight:
Okay.Tony Huang:
Yeah.Simon Knight:
And yeah, I think how much people study always varies, of course. And we'd say you get out of things what you put in, but people are aiming for different things as well and so there is some variation. I guess one of the things that people sometimes worry about is whether they'll have to spend lots of time upskilling on things like coding or statistics and how we can... Or whether we expect you to come in with all of those skills as well. And so I can address part of that because I've taught one of the first subjects that people normally do and we try really hard to make sure that we support you to build those basic skills.
So you do have to come in with some quantitative knowledge certainly. And you can have a look at the taster courses on Open that we posted earlier to get you up to speed on some of that. So there's one called, "Data Journeys" that I wrote, for example. And for things like R or Python and SQL, it's useful if you have a little bit of knowledge but we also recognize that one of the values of the course and one of the things that makes it really fun to teach on is that we actually have students from a lot of different backgrounds enrolling. And not all of them do have technical backgrounds at all.
My background is in philosophy and psychology and then education. I am a competent-ish R coder, my Python is not very good. And so I have been through many of the kinds of challenges that people are facing. And I think that's quite an exciting thing because we're seeing the role that data can play in all of these different kinds of contexts. One of the resources that we often recommend, I'll post into the chat. Here is this course, "RYouWithMe?" From the R-Ladies Sydney chapter. And it's a really nice just walkthrough of setting up with R and getting familiar with some of the basics and that that's actually from a community in Sydney. It's a great group because they're also very supportive as well. Amy, do you want to add anything to that?Amy Yang:
Yeah, sure. Yeah I think I can kind of associate with that. I'm from accounting background, I don't have coding experience at all. And my first subject is to using R and RStudio and I find one of... There's also one of textbook called, "R for Data Science", which is really nice. You can go the PDF as well. So we actually can follow the instructions and then doing the project work which you know you use the knowledge as well.
And I also find once I actually have this UTS student account, we have free access to LinkedIn learning. There are a lot of free resources that you can learn, R, Python, SQL, this stuff. And there's also a good website which you can register with UTS student email, which is called O'Reilly, I think. So it has a lot of eBooks for data science and reviews and videos. So I actually learned a bit of Python and R from there as well. Plus there are some platforms if you're interested in DataCamp, Dataquest, they're all good platforms. I think this is help us to study and do a project work as well. Yeah.Simon Knight:
Yeah, great. And sometimes people also ask us whether we use Python or R or something else and why. And I think our answer to that is that of course the tools you use do matter and there are sometimes expectations that you'll be able to work with particular tools and languages, but actually it's more about the skills of how you break down problems and thinking about how you code and that once you've got the principles you can apply those to other languages as well. Of course there is a learning curve and that lots of people are now working across multiple different environments as well. I'm actually doing a project that involves both R and Python at the moment, just for example. Tony, would you say anything else on that?Tony Huang:
Yes. So if you are not confident about your program skills or you will come from a background that has nothing to do with IT, you should be fine. As just some [inaudible 00:44:43], we do have students who come from those background and they did very well with our course. Even you are very worried, you still can prepare yourself for data science study. We have to connected a number of fundamental subjects for you to start from, depends on your background. If you are not a very confident with your data skills, you can choose subjects from other faculty about fundamental techniques. If you are worried about your coding and if you are not comfortable with learning data science subjects while doing your program, you can also choose a program subject first before you start with your data science study. So you have lots of options based on your background, based on your learning habit so that you can complete your degree in time.Simon Knight:
Great, thanks Tony. And I guess that really feeds into just the last question and this is a good segue because we'll start going through more of the questions in the Q&A as well, which is around people sometimes question whether they have the right background for data science and whether they'll be able to succeed in the course. Amy, I guess what would you say to that kind of question?Amy Yang:
Yeah, so actually based on what I see from MDSI, so my classmates actually from a diverse background. Yeah, some from computer science, engineer, some of them are teachers, accountant like me or marketing professionals, they from different background. And I think that's also part of the great value of this program because everyone bring different ideas, different experience. And then when we do the project we actually find it... You don't only need one skills to do your project, you actually have domain knowledge or other skill, like reporting project management. That's all very valuable though.
And if your qualification is not irrelevant discipline, I think you may need further confirmation from Tony. So you can provide your prior learning or work experience, which can demonstrate you have data skills or mathematic concept skills or programming experience, which is also helps. For me, like I mentioned, I know as accountant to translate into data science study, it was definitely not easy at the beginning. But I know that's a thing I really want to do and I guess if you want really want to learn it, my mindset is like, "Okay, I don't have very strong background, but I can learn every day, right?" So I getting better each day. So you feel really passionate about these things, I think you should just try and just apply because data science started... Or learning is also intuitive process, I guess. We'll do this project work. You can always learn more, we'll make mistakes. By trying you learning more. So yeah, if you like it, I'll say just yeah, just do it. Yeah.Simon Knight:
Thanks Amy. And so what we'll do now is just start to try and go through some of the questions. Some of the questions we have answered in text already, so hopefully you've seen that. If we haven't answered it there, then of course please do just ask another question and we will respond. And again, you can drop us an email and I'll post the link to that in the chat again shortly. So Tony, I think these are probably best for you. There's a question about whether a Bachelor's in CompSci and Masters in Business Administration from about 10 years ago would be eligible for the one year program?Tony Huang:
Yeah. To answer that question, you do need to have a look at our admission requirement. So our admission requirement knowledge us about the qualifications but also your recent work experience in the relevant field. So to answer your question, so you will have better knowing computer science than you have a qualification in the current field. We also require you have at least two year full-time relevant working students within last five years.Simon Knight:
And so I think that answers a couple of other questions as well. So someone had asked about taking... So it's the one year program but part-time over two years with two years of work experience. So seeing that that will depend on what the work experience is and what your discipline background is. Pritpal as well, regarding the physics honors that you would be eligible for the course certainly through the two year program and check the eligibility criteria for the one and a half year because that may be a passway. Let's see, Tristan, this is an interesting question that I am going to steal an answer. So the question is about how we bring innovation and creativity into the degree and comparison with interdisciplinary study. And so I guess it's worth saying that the degree is hosted in the transdisciplinary school, the TD School at UTS, and we're the only transdisciplinary school or faculty in Australia.
And the idea with transdisciplinarity is that we're bringing together knowledge and expertise from different disciplines. So as I said, I'm a psychologist, philosophy, education person by background. Tony does visualization research and has a background in computer science and psychology, I seem to remember. And our students are also from a really wide range of backgrounds. And we are also then connecting to those professional expertises and thinking about how bringing them together brings new perspectives onto problems and helps us to develop a team sport approach to data science. What that means practically in terms of how we teach and the structure of the course, so course wise, there's flexibility in the electives and some other universities do have that. Although, lots don't.
And we've put a lot of effort into trying to make sure that all of the assessments that you do, not only will you not be doing exams, but you won't be doing anything like an essay, an academic essay that doesn't look like something that someone in a professional context might produce as well. So the subject that I've taught Data Science for Innovation, the first assignment there is to write a discussion paper. And the idea is that these are things that organizations do produce, where they're trying to identify, what are the challenges we face? That's a hard thing to do by itself. And then, where are the opportunities for data science to help inform how we can tackle those challenges and implement them?
And so organisations often release them as white papers. Sometimes they're a bit marketing based, these ones are more grounded in evidence. But people have used them then in their organizations, students of ours. And we get loads of different ones and one of the ones I loved this year was on bee management, which was an area I had never thought about before as being relevant to data science. But the student had written about how data science provided potential to help understand bee sickness and bee movement in order to be able to support beehives and populations. And there's a whole range of other things that are in a more technical space, right the way through to more journalism and lots of different sectors.
The other side of it then is that creativity. That's partly through that collaborative, team sport approach. But I think it's also comes through in how we think about what we're trying to teach. So it's not about giving you coding problem sets or teaching you routines for rigid visualisations, but instead thinking about what is it you want to communicate? What things are people trying to achieve in this context? And what are creative ways to do that? Sometimes that means actually hand drawing things just to play with the ideas at least first and then you start to do things on the computer afterwards. So those are just some examples from my experience, which hopefully gives some insight. I don't know whether Tony or Amy, you want to add anything to that?Tony Huang:
Well said, Simon. So I could add some points. Data science itself is a multidisciplinary course, so it choose knowledge from different discipline as I just mentioned in my introduction. I guess the key point of innovation and creativity come from how we teach. Some just mentioned in class we encourage the team assessment, team projects and also introduction in groups in class. So that students are getting motivated and come up with a [inaudible 00:57:22] with the innovative and creative thinking.
And also another perspective is that the data science... To be a good data scientist is not just to learn technical component but also train our students to have ethics and human-centered thinking when they deal with data set and make documentation to stakeholders. And the third point is that when come it to data science projects, there are also other soft skills, such as the team spirit and business contexts, these kind of things. So we saw a lot of service of activities in class discussing project, basically assessment to train our students to have a comprehensive and innovative and creative thinking approach to the data problems. Yeah.Simon Knight:
Thanks. No... So regarding the question about whether we use data analysis in Excel or programming, there is some spreadsheet based analysis sometimes. But mostly it will be based in programming tools and we will introduce people to the tools. Of course it always does depend on the task that you need to get done. And... Let's see. So there's a question about the percent of students that have got a job after completing the course. I'll ask Tony a second if we have exact numbers on that. I think that we probably don't. And I think part of the challenge is that people come in with quite different aims and different backgrounds and so the journeys that they go on prior to, with us, and then afterwards will always be really different.
And our job is to try and help you to understand the different options you have available and the directions that you might want to take and support you for the UTS bit in navigating those opportunities with us. We actually have some innovative tools that are to help to do that. Some systems that have been built at UTS that try and help to map the subjects we have available, to jobs that are appearing out there in the workplace and the things that you are interested in doing. But of course, it's always so contingent on yourselves and where you are at in your professional journeys as well. I know that there are people who get jobs directly out of the degree through the connections, through the innovation labs and internships and things like that. And we're still quite well connected to many of our alumni who are working in data roles, sometimes data science management roles now and making use of those skills.
Tony?Tony Huang:
Yeah, so I want to emphasize that as I mentioned in the introduction, our subjects and content are designed in collaboration with our partners and also working professionals. So our students have very practical skills and knowledge that are ready to be used immediately after they graduate. We do not have the exact numbers, but I do heard very often from Nicolene from student program that our students got the jobs even before they graduated. So yeah, so not only UTS but also MDSI are famous for our students with the practical skills. When they graduate, they are industry ready. So this perspective should help you to understand how our students work at a job after graduation.Simon Knight:
Great, thanks Tony. There's another question about the availability of the subjects for the grad cert and whether they would all be running in one year. Tony, can you answer that one?Tony Huang:
So the graduate certificate has a set of subjects that we offer. So it depends on which semester you do and which year, you may choose subjects from that set we provided. So I think the maximum duration for graduate certificate is one and a half years. You should complete your graduate certificate in one and a half years.Simon Knight:
And so that's answered that. And then there's also a question about from Brett about the implications of doing part-time and how much study that would require each semester. So how many credits you have to enroll in. Tony, can I ask you to answer that one as well?Tony Huang:
Yeah. So if you plan to do part time, you need to enroll into at least one subject the first session of your course. And after that, for example, if you think you are thinking you are too busy, you can't study any subject in one particular session, you can apply for leave. I think you can only can apply for less than three leave. Yeah. So we do have limitations.Simon Knight:
And there are some subjects that will be available in the summer period as well. So there is some potential to complete some credits over those stretches. So that means that you're not then completing them in the autumn or the spring session. The number of subjects available in summer is a more limited number and they tend to be smaller in credits as well. Useful to flag. Okay, I think that's all of the questions that we've had have been addressed now.
Some of them we answered in text so you should be able to see those and obviously we spoke to some of them as well. If you do find that you have other questions after the session, thanks to Michaela who's just put the link to the email into the chat there so you can drop us an email and someone will get back to you. And thanks again for joining us today and we hope to meet some of you in the future. And my thanks as well to Michaela who works behind the scene to organise things and Tony and Amy for their help today as well. Thanks folks. And have a lovely evening or morning, midday, whatever it is, wherever you are in the world. Bye.Tony Huang:
Thank you, bye.Amy Yang:
Thank you guys. -
Nursing at UTS is a world of discovery. There are plenty of hands-on practical experiences such as simulation scenarios, clinical skills development...
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The Australian Research Council’s national review of research quality has rated all of UTS's research at world standard or better, with about 70% of its research considered above or well above world standard.
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We work with a wide variety of partners and businesses, including small and medium enterprises, large multi-national companies, local, state, federal and international government agencies, NGOs and charities.
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Resource futures
Resources are fundamental to our society and well-being. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation have put immense pressure on natural resources.
Data Science is emerging as a field of critical importance in the same way that computer science developed in the 1970s and 1980s to underpin the explosion of information technology. For UTS, this Focus Area includes the ‘science’ of data science and, importantly, the application of data science to all fields of human endeavour.
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Short courses
We are committed to building independent capacity in our clients by passing on knowledge and skills.
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We have many ongoing partnerships across a range of technical fields and can coordinate a specialist team to meet our client’s requirements.
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The Australian Research Council’s national review of research quality has rated all of UTS's research at world standard or better, with about 70% of its research considered above or well above world standard.
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We work with a wide variety of partners and businesses, including small and medium enterprises, large multi-national companies, local, state, federal and international government agencies, NGOs and charities.
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100%of UTS Research in broad Fields of Research (FOR)
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Gemma Gillette: Collaboration across the board between scientists and people of business, as well as from different faculties is super important. We're facing some big challenges at the moment and I think we need all different minds from all different backgrounds to be looking at these problems from different angles to come up with solutions that will work.
Shreeya Haridas: I definitely think that entrepreneurship and innovation are vital to disrupt the space that we're working in, in sustainability. You need to disrupt what's currently happening to be able to innovate within that and create change
Gemma: So the pitches today have been super inspiring. I think the problems that are being tackled are quite diverse and that's exciting that there's a lot of different people working on a lot of different areas of need right now.
Shreeya: So my startup is Conscious Skincare and I'm looking to disrupt the skin care market that's currently on our shelves I'm looking into a gap where organic and natural skin care isn't actually advertised enough or when it is it's usually fake products that are kind of claiming this natural and organic label. I would love to tap into the green recovery space to start promoting a better lifestyle for all and incorporating products and services that are more sustainable and natural. I think my background in science and innovation helps me become a great disrupter in this area. I think that if we can think both scientifically and innovatively, we can definitely create change within sustainability.
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Dani Alexander: ISF is a special butterfly; we work in so many areas.
So, we have a number of different research areas that are tackling this problem of a sustainable future from multiple different angles.Damien Giurco: The breadth of expertise at ISF spans the technical, modelling analysis including with big data sets, to the human and the institutional; understanding the changes that will be needed in these spaces to deliver impact.
Stuart White: So, we're working with clients to develop and support them in solutions to sustainability problems. And secondly, we're applying a range of different disciplines and different ways of thinking to the problem, often learning from other areas and applying that across the problem that they're bringing to us.
Damien Giurco: When we work together in partnership, it's often as one big team and the thing that's important about this is the learning that's generated through the project manifests in our own team and that of the partner organisation.
Dani Alexander: We bring everyone together at the beginning and actually design the best solution with everyone's expertise in the same room and it's almost like a melting pot.
Stuart White: That's why all of our researchers have to think and operate in a completely interdisciplinary way, because that's how the problems of the world present themselves to us.
Damien Giurco: At ISF we believe there's no organisation too big or small to affect change we work with start-ups and entrepreneurs through to multinational organisations and governments at all scales, from the local right through to the United Nations.
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Gemma Gillette: Collaboration across the board between scientists and people of business, as well as from different faculties is super important. We're facing some big challenges at the moment and I think we need all different minds from all different backgrounds to be looking at these problems from different angles to come up with solutions that will work.
Shreeya Haridas: I definitely think that entrepreneurship and innovation are vital to disrupt the space that we're working in, in sustainability. You need to disrupt what's currently happening to be able to innovate within that and create change
Gemma: So the pitches today have been super inspiring. I think the problems that are being tackled are quite diverse and that's exciting that there's a lot of different people working on a lot of different areas of need right now.
Shreeya: So my startup is Conscious Skincare and I'm looking to disrupt the skin care market that's currently on our shelves I'm looking into a gap where organic and natural skin care isn't actually advertised enough or when it is it's usually fake products that are kind of claiming this natural and organic label. I would love to tap into the green recovery space to start promoting a better lifestyle for all and incorporating products and services that are more sustainable and natural. I think my background in science and innovation helps me become a great disrupter in this area. I think that if we can think both scientifically and innovatively, we can definitely create change within sustainability.
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[Intro music]
Dani Alexander: ISF is a special butterfly; we work in so many areas.
So, we have a number of different research areas that are tackling this problem of a sustainable future from multiple different angles.Damien Giurco: The breadth of expertise at ISF spans the technical, modelling analysis including with big data sets, to the human and the institutional; understanding the changes that will be needed in these spaces to deliver impact.
Stuart White: So, we're working with clients to develop and support them in solutions to sustainability problems. And secondly, we're applying a range of different disciplines and different ways of thinking to the problem, often learning from other areas and applying that across the problem that they're bringing to us.
Damien Giurco: When we work together in partnership, it's often as one big team and the thing that's important about this is the learning that's generated through the project manifests in our own team and that of the partner organisation.
Dani Alexander: We bring everyone together at the beginning and actually design the best solution with everyone's expertise in the same room and it's almost like a melting pot.
Stuart White: That's why all of our researchers have to think and operate in a completely interdisciplinary way, because that's how the problems of the world present themselves to us.
Damien Giurco: At ISF we believe there's no organisation too big or small to affect change we work with start-ups and entrepreneurs through to multinational organisations and governments at all scales, from the local right through to the United Nations.
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“We have commissioned research on sustainability issues from every continent. ISF are at the top in terms of inter-disciplinary skills and experience, creating new ways to analyse and understand issues, and delivering projects."
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Tenant-incurred damage remains a challenging problem for social housing maintenance companies. Broadspectrum (BRS) provide maintenance, repairs and FM...
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Jacqui: So first, I'd like to introduce some people here with me today. So firstly, my name is Jacqui. I'm the director of studies for the Bachelor of Nursing so Curriculum and Student Matters. So that means that I look after all, undergraduate nursing students in the program. I'm also in nursing research my area of research is around violence against nurses and more broadly, health care workers. Amanda can't be with us today. Unfortunately, she's unwell, but she's our Deputy Head of School (teaching and learning). Judy, did you want to just introduce yourself?
Judy: Hi, my name is Judy Smith. I'm the first and further year student experience coordinator, a big mouthful. But that basically means that I'm here to help transition students into the university life and also working with academics to help facilitate that smooth transition so that you can get the most out of university. I'm a lecturer in nursing and my research interests are simulation and also looking at how technology impacts the way that we work as nurses and the implications to Nursing responsibilities and also to patient care. So a very interesting topic.
Jacqui: Thanks, Judy. Mark.
Mark: Hi, everyone. My name is Mark Goodhew, I'm the academic liaison officer in the faculty of Health. So basically I support students who may have a mental health condition, a disability or a physical health problem. And also, I support people who are carers or who may be pregnant as well to support them with their studies as well. I'm also a lecturer. My mainly teach in mental health and drug and alcohol nursing. And my research involves working with marginalized populations and doing co-production research as well.
Jacqui: Thanks, Mark. And we also have Rose with us this morning
Rose: Good morning, everyone. I'm Rose Calero. I'm the manager of the clinical administration unit. And I will be your, my unit will be looking after you, all your clinical placements, all your administration, all your compliance that you'll need to to do so. You will have a lot of involvement with our unit and the team. So welcome.
Jacqui: Right. Thanks, everybody. OK, so first a little bit about us. The School of Nursing and Midwifery, it eats with some established formally back in 2020. So pretty new. Prior to that, we were part of the faculty of health, and we've been part of that in a permanent part of the faculty for decades before that. As a school School of nursing and midwifery were committed to improving the health and well-being of individuals and communities through our world class research, global connections and inspirational evidence based teaching. At the moment, we're actually ranked number one in Australia, for nursing and number 11 in the world, which is something that we're all very, very proud about. We're privileged and lucky to have staff that include a lot of high-profile, award-winning educators and researchers. We also have experienced clinicians who are still practicing clinically. We collaborated with industry partners and we worked hard as an interdisciplinary team to help develop world class approaches to health care, education and research. And as a result, our graduates are actually very highly regarded and have a well-earned reputation as outstanding clinicians, leaders change agents and innovative researchers. At the moment, we have more than 3000 students enrolled in our undergraduate and graduate nursing and midwifery courses across the university.
Jacqui: So today's session is also going to be your opportunity to ask us questions or if you have any questions. We can talk that into the chat, into the Q&A, and we will at the end have that opportunity to answer those. If you have, if we have a lot of questions, you might receive your answer in a text reply from one of the panellists or from the Faculty of Health marketing team who are there to help us moderate the questions. So being an online event, you know what can happen. So please bear with us if we have any technical issues, will work quietly or quickly behind the scenes to try to resolve those. If you find that at any point, you can't access the webinar. The advice is just to log out and to log back in again. And usually that resolves any issues. But a reminder, we are recording this. So worst case scenario, you could come back and access that recording.
Jacqui: So students who complete the Bachelor of Nursing degree at UTS. Once you have completed the degree, you will become a registered nurse. And so a registered nurse is registered through AHPRA. And once you join us at UTS, you will be registered as student nurses. You can see that there are nearly 300000 registered nurses in Australia at the moment, and we are very much in demand. I would add in there as well in vaccination centres at the moment as well.
Jacqui: So, as I said, we ranked number one in Australia, something we're really proud of, and this is. I think it's the second they're actually I think maybe the third or fourth year that we've been ranked number one. So something we've been able to consistently hold on to. And what do we do next is to a lot of things that really what is at the core of our business is she would commit is that we provide person centred care that is evidence based. We work in a variety of health care settings, and we can become experts in a range of specialties as well.
Jacqui: So we would really like you to come and study nursing at UTS we think we've got a lot to offer. If you were able to be on campus today, you would say that we have amazing sort of state of the art, nursing clinical facilities and simulation labs, and you'll be engaging in those from your very first session of study. And it really gets, you'll have the uniform on. And the aim is to get you to feel like a nurse from day one of these studies with this. Most of our academics are still working. Also working industry conducting research as well. And we fit that into the curriculum. We did start a new curriculum this year, and the feedback we had from our accrediting body was that it was actually a world class quality. So it was very, very I think that we received.
Jacqui: So here's some, I guess, some logistics about The Bachelor of Nursing, including the previous ATAR ranks. It will take you three years if you complete full time. And if you were an EN and you make the criteria so that you can qualified in the last five years and we've registered, you would get through that one two years. And you can see that there are a couple of dual degrees as well. And that would take you a little bit longer.
Jacqui: So what's involved lots of different ways that we engage with you and I guess the traditional ones or we have labs and tutorials and so tutorials in the theory subjects, clinical labs in our clinical subjects, and you would be doing a mix of those each session. We also have simulation labs that would be engaged in. Lectures a lot of that is in the online space, but we also have face to face. And then when you're in your tutorials and in your labs, you'll be working collaboratively as nurses we work as part of groups all the time, so as part of multidisciplinary teams. So you'll be interacting and collaborating with your classmates. But as well as academic work. So there's a lot of independent time, the independent study as well, and academic reading.
Jacqui: So your clinical placement start early in the degree will look a bit more about what that looks like from your first year. You'll be going out on a clinical placement. And our first year students that are currently enrolled are getting ready for their first placement in October.
Jacqui: Lots of global opportunities as well that you can become involved in. And when campus, so 2022, let's be positive and you'll be that everyone will be back from campus. We've got lots of different clubs, including nursing specific ones that you're welcome to engage in. And also the more traditional university clubs, I guess, around sport and extracurricular stuff. Got a range of assessments, so we've got a real variety that is spread across the program so that you're not doing the same things all the time. So while they might be essays and case studies, they're just one of the things that we do. So we aim to have a lot of practical assessments because the degree is very obviously going to become a registered nurse, that ssomething that's practical? So we aim to integrate that in. And we also take advantage of clinical placements to assist you there as well.
Jacqui: So what does the program look like? So you can see here and we've kind of got this spaced out in terms of the clinical placements that you'll be doing. So each session would be doing four subjects. Typically a clinical placement or more each session in the first year. That starts in spring session. So each year we have autumn and we have spring session rather than first and second semester. So your first clinical placement is three weeks. In second year, you have a mix of placements. So you will do, we have clinical practice subjects each session. We do a placement in those of two weeks and also specialized placements. So you do one in aged care and one in mental health as well. And the aim is to increase the number of hours as you go through the program, because you will you increase your ability to be able to provide nursing care. By the end of the degree our aim is to have you managing a patient load, obviously under the direction of a registered nurse so that you're really ready to in as a new graduate nurse. And you can see that your final placement in spring session will be a six week placement, so the bulk of the hours is sitting there in third year.
Jacqui: UTS is pretty unique because we have special subjects that you can enrol in in your final year, and this gives you a taste of what specialty you might like to move into, and there's a list there that you can see. So Judy would tell you, oh, you should do perioperative nursing because that's her specialty. Where is Mark would tell you? Probably to do drug and alcohol nursing, that's his specialty. But he's also a mental health clinician. I would say critical care, because I've worked in Eds but lots of different opportunities there for you to enrol in in your final year.
Jacqui: We have a range of clinical placements, so you go to a lot of different areas. And Rose is the expert on this and can answer questions around this. But we're affiliated with over 100 hundred clinical settings with an agreement with every local health district in Sydney, which is great. It means we can place our students widely across the Sydney area. Rose's clinical practice unit allocates nursing placements for students. The aim is to have that within an hour's commute from your home. Placements occur in two-to-six-week blocks, as we saw there. You're only going to go during the week and you will either do an AM or a PM shift. So we don't do overnight shifts. You might be pleased about that. You also do have the option to go on rural and remote placements. And you can see there some of the examples, including the air ambulance, which is a pretty cool place, but to be able to do.
Jacqui: So we've mentioned before the facilities that we get to use, and you can see just a little snapshot of them there, but we have high fidelity clinical simulation suites that we use. We have 16 clinical practice labs. And the aim there is to mimic real hospital settings. And you've got a little snapshot there, but they really are quite amazing. And they're located in level six of our building. We also provide patient care and empathy scenarios with what we would call simulated patients or actors, just so that you have that practice speaking to a real live person.
Jacqui: And so, again, you can see all of the settings that we use here. We need to do this because not all learning is going to happen in labs which are. We do need you to develop non-technical skills, so something like communication, you do a whole subject on it because it's really critical and at the core of what we do as nurses. And it remains one of the areas that we're that we strive for improvement because it is linked to errors in health care and to poor patient experience, as well as a communication, teamwork all really vital. And so we get you to engage in different settings and to hone those skills.
Jacqui: So where are we? You probably have seen our building if you've been in the city would have seen it. We've got a massive campus that's quite unique because it's across Sydney. You can see the tower building. That is our original building. That's the one with its logo, the full one there. So we really are in the heart of the city. We really near close to public transport and a quick walk from central station. And we're all in building 10. And our labs are building six, sorry we located on level six. We're on level seven. And that amazing picture that you can see there with all the glass is at the UTS Central Building, which is pretty new to us. And that's where our library is. And it's just quite an amazing building. Lots of amazing resources for you to access there.
Jacqui: So at the end of the degree, what what should you look like, what are we aiming for in our registered nurses? So we want you to be able to have knowledge and skills around, and these are kind of the cornerstones, I guess. So person centred care, so that what that means is you're looking after the person, not so much the patients with, for example, a patient in bed six with the appendectomy. You're looking after Mr. Smith. And it's a more holistic way of looking at patient care. You're entering a profession that really, really values the professionalism of nursing, we think it's the most amazing profession that there is. And so it's important to have a professional disposition. Mentioned before, already communication and collaboration, they’re key to successful patient care. Everything that we do must be based on evidence-based practice. And we go to the evidence. And that is what guides our care, and that's what ensures that we provide safe care to our patients.
Jacqui: Indigenous cultural respect is central to what we do, and it's woven through our studies, as well as having a stand-alone elective study. We want you to be critical thinkers, so we want you to be able to care for your patients, to think about what's happening to them, and to be able to direct the care, to be able to raise questions. With other clinicians with doctors to provide the best care to be able to advocate for your patients. And so, above all, we need you to be professionally competent so that you're going to be an effective part of the health care team. And I think you've seen at the moment in the current situation how vital nurses are in the health care system. So there is the opportunity so you can go so many, in so many directions with nursing and everyone on the panel here, it's taken us in lots of different ways. And you might start off in acute care, and end up in education, you might move into management. And what we've got on here is really just a smattering of the areas that you can end up in. Where some of these things you might want to do, further study. And certainly, in nursing, what we would say is that we have a commitment to lifelong learning, and that's part of being a registered nurse. We have to provide evidence of that professional development each year and some of these special things you might want to go on and do postgrad studies with this as well.
Jacqui: So these kind of feed into the different trees, so you will start off as a registered nurse when you complete with us and you become a new graduate nurse that's typically a nurse in their first year. And these are all of the different things that you can become specialists, you might decide to become an educator on the ward or working in education more broadly, you know that the person in charge of each ward in a hospital or each nursing home is actually a nurse in a lot of nurses, working management and nurse practitioners are, you know, super specialized nurses who have prescribing rights in Australia. So they're real specialists. They work in areas, for example, like wound care. We have them in emergency departments as well, other areas.
Jacqui: So UTS has lots of different resources that can help you to succeed. And it's really important to take advantage of all of these. For example, we have the student centre. So this is where you can drop in and submit any requests online for classroom and student matters, maybe arrange a time table and things. We also have HELPS, which is great acronyms, these are the people who are sitting there waiting to help you and you writing in your academic, assignments skills that academic staff part of your studies. Timetable planner, and one of the things that we know that students struggle with and also when you graduate nurses is planning their activities. So we have a timetable planner. UTS Online is just the at the moment we removed everything is on canvas. So some of you may already be familiar with that. And it's just that's the repository. That's where you interact with your subjects and all the resources there. As I said, we have an amazing library. Even though our students can't visit it at the moment, its online presence is massive. Lots of support available for students and lots of resources there. We have an amazing careers service who work closely with nursing specialist students in their final year to help us with the events around careers, to help you practice interview skills for those new grads, jobs that you'll be going for in that final year. So they're a really great resource to students. And we also have something unique. We have what we call practice lab and said this is a lab that's dedicated for our students, would share that with, midwifery as well. And students can book into that and go practice and skills. So, for example, if they had a placement coming up and they wanted to practice skills around subcut Injection's, for example, they could book some time. The resources are there. And we also have a dedicated staff member in there to assist with that. So we think that's really quite a great facility to have to be able to offer.
Jacqui: So how do you apply? So you're applying through UAC, the dates on here. None-recent school leavers, there's competitive entry, so it's all around going to through the UX system to do this. So applicants over 20 years of age at the time of applying can also opt to sit a special tertiary admissions test. But obviously, lots of detailed information about the admission criteria can be found on our website and you can see the link to it there.
Jacqui: So now what we'd like to do is throw to you so that you can ask us any questions. Like I said before, you might just receive an answer in a text reply from one of the panellists or from the Faculty of Health marketing team who are here. They have done all the hard work behind the scenes to help us come to you today. So let's have a look at, I might just start reading questions.
Jacqui: OK, so I'm just going to start reading out questions here and asking the audience so high, Hailey. Hailey has just asked, do you have any accelerated programs for people who hold non missing bachelor's degrees already? We have discontinued that. Hailey so, no, we don't. So you would come into our standard program, a simple program.
Jacqui: So someone has asked, do you recommend that of nursing, that true creative intelligence and innovation to someone who wants to work in paediatric nursing? I think so I would just answer. You know, it's a great add on to have that have a dual degree in terms of working in paediatrics. It's not something that would make you more specialized in it, but it may be something that, you know, adds to adds to your skills. Certainly, I would say that if that's something that you're interested in, that definitely you can do that.
Jacqui: So got a question about vaccinations. So do we need vaccination proof, if needed, Rose I might get you to answer that question?
Rose: Yeah. So as soon as you accept your offer for The Bachelor of Nursing, you'll receive emails from the clinical practice unit and that will advise you of what you need to do. And we need evidence of your vaccinations. And most of you, if your school leavers, you'll be able to get your immunization record of your MyGov. You will need to get a health card from the clinical practice unit, which is on level six. And you'll need to get your doctor to fill that out. But yes, your vaccinations, your and COVID-19 is very much present now. And as you would have seen in the news, that it's a mandatory requirement for health care workers. So I'd advise you to get to make sure you have that vaccine and you have that evidence. So you'll upload that into our system and you have all those logins as soon as you accept your offer.
Jacqui: Thank you, Rose. If I'm currently studying in nursing courses, a year 12 student at school, can I use that qualification somewhere as an advantage when applying for this course? So it's great that you're doing that. I'm assuming that surround an assistant in nursing program through probably through one of the hospitals or through Tafe. It doesn't add to qualifications coming into to the Bachelor of Nursing degree in terms of being able to, it's around the UAC process.
Jacqui: Are there any international opportunities, Natasha? Yes, there are. They have been somewhat stymied because of Covid at the moment. But we do have in our third year and especially course, global health, and that has the opportunity for global placements that didn't run this year for that for those reasons. But those opportunities do come up, we have had students previously travel to overseas as well as part of exchanges. So, yes, there are some.
Jacqui: I want to be a midwife and have been advised to look into studying the nursing first year, then applying the midwifery course. Is that a common scenario? Look, I'm just going to be biased and say you should become a nurse first, but you certainly if you're at and perhaps that's around the more limited numbers that midwifery take, certainly coming into nursing and having a nursing degree will give you set you up with a lot of skills and then you can apply to do midwifery. So I know that other students do do it. I have had students previously who have to have done it. Yes.
Jacqui: Can students enrol in this course if they are currently studying Diploma in Nursing at TAFE, can we get credit for the units? So you can't get any credit because you're coming from, I guess the basic answer is the degree is higher than Tafe. So that means that a Tafe subject, you're not going to get recognition primarily for because it's not completed at the same level. So if you're currently studying it, you can still enrol in our course. But it would be the standard course. If you completed that diploma, then you would be able to come into our accelerated program, and that would bring the number of years of study down two.
Jacqui: So which majors required postgrad degree? I'm not exactly sure I'm wondering, you're talking about the specialties that you are moving into and you can move into those specialties without those great degrees, but you will often start to study postgrad, the one that was sitting there Nurse practitioner is definitely a post graduate program that you would be doing. So if I haven't answered that quickly, quickly, Melissa, please type another question for me. So Mark's going to answer this one, what classes and labs are based at Moore Park? So, Mark, did you want to answer that question?
Mark: OK, so basically there's no nursing at Moore park. It's all at the Ultimo campus. So all of your labs, sort of the Ultimo campus.
Jacqui: It is quite an amazing facility out at Moorpark that that's for our sports science colleagues.
Jacqui: My daughter is currently studying nursing overseas and would like to continue to study in use for any of her subjects be credited. So again, it's on an individual basis. I would need to have a look at the transcript. I would need to have a look at, there's a formal application process and we can provide you with those details and school recognition of prime learning. Basically what we're looking for is that the course subject was completed within the last five years and that there is an 80 percent match to the content and the assessments of the UTS program. Also anything that was done in the clinical space, if it's overseas, wouldn't those wouldn't be credited here because those hours do need to be completed here.
Jacqui: How many recent school leavers get accepted into the nursing course each year? So the estimates, I think that we have for next year are around. Six hundred, six hundred and fifty and around 200 in the EN space. Previously, we've taken we're not up at a 1000, but we have taken around 800. I think they are our high numbers.
Jacqui: Is midwifery also February admission date for EN Tafe for April finisher, or is there a mid-year intake? We don't have midyear intakes unfortunately.
Jacqui: Will this degree be valid in developing world countries? So the process for finding that out is actually to, it depends on the country. So, yes, our degrees, I recognize it's a formalized degree, but because you're a registered nurse, what you need to do is apply through the nursing boards in each country and to provide evidence, and then you become registered in those countries. In the end, it's unique. Each country will have its own requirements. For example, if you were going to Canada, you'd be required to to sit in an entrance exam as well. So I think that's answering the question there. An Australian registered nurses work in practice overseas. If you want to go to the UK and US, sp certainly can. You just have to go through the registration process in those countries.
Jacqui: If I wanted to do rural placements, will accommodation and transport be provided by UTS. We do provide some scholarships around that, but we don't and please feel free to jump in Rose if you have anything to add. But we don't provide accommodation and transport, is my understanding.
Rose: Yeah. You can also apply to New South Wales government to get a financial support package when you're doing, you know, rural and remote placement. So that's an opportunity for you as well.
Jacqui: Rose, I might get you to react to this one because it's from a Rosie. I was wondering what the different options were replacement, for example, what hospitals were available for replacement?
Rose: Yeah, we have agreements with all our local health hospitals throughout New South Wales. So we any public hospital, we have placements in. Also, we have placements with our private hospitals in Sydney and New South Wales. So we've got an array of opportunities and different facilities that you will be able to access in your degree.
Jacqui: Great, thank you. How many placement hours does the UTS RN course provides? We have eight hundred and forty hours. There are minimum requirement with our per hour registering body is that you have eight hundred hours. So we now, our program, we have eight hundred forty.
Jacqui: You're a student doing a foundation's thiomersal in health science course with another university. Can I use this course to apply for UTS? Yes, certainly through the UAC, you would include that information and you may be able to get recognition of prior learning as well for doing those subjects at another university so make sure that your possibilities.
Jacqui: Do you have mature age students in a full time course? Any indication of the number of mature age students accepted every year? Look, we certainly have a range of students and we do have a number of mature age students. I wouldn't be able to give you a breakdown of those though, but we do have plenty in each class that to it. We have a mix.
Jacqui: During a typical week semester, how many days would you would students spend on campus, in-person in non COVID times? So that's a good question. So the way that we have scheduled our time table is that you will come in. It's in an intensive format. You do choose subjects intensively for five weeks, and you people didn't do the next two. So, for example, in the foundations of nursing subjects, you would do a four hour tutorial each week and you would also then do something for science each week. So you might find that you can do that in one or two days and then with the labs, you're doing typically either at a five or a seven hour a day in those clinical subjects. And you're also doing another theory subject. So depending what your timetable looks like, you can again, it would probably be one or two days as well.
Jacqui: Once I’m an RN, can I work in a private hospital straight away? So private hospitals also have new graduate programs that they will that they recruit students to apply for. Typically, that's the route that you would go through.
Jacqui: Do students choose. I'll get you to answer this one Rose. Do students choose which wards they go on during placement.
Rose: They don't. The wards are a primary against all your subject ordering, and they're allocated accordingly to the subject that you're in, and has different areas that they'll go into so you'll be allocated to that depending on the subject criteria.
Jacqui: Right. Thank you. And Judy, I might get you to answer this one. Judy's one of our clinical subject coordinators, and you will meet her in first year. So the question, Judy, is if I do part time study with the clinical hours be halved.
Judy: Clinical hours, as in, placement hours.
Jacqui: Yes.
Judy: No. Is that right, Rose, you still be required to do your job?
Rose: Yes, absolutely. Yes. If you're doing it, if you're doing a clinical subject and you're doing that in that that session, you will have the clinical hours attached to that session. So you might take five years to do your degree. But when you do a clinical subject, you need to do those clinical hours with that subject in that session.
Jacqui: Great. So how many days so I think I've answered the question, how many days per week, how is it spread out? Ideally, in non-COVID times, what would be online? A lot of our lectures are online. We have drop-in sessions online. And then typically our tutorials and our labs and our simulations workshops are Face-To-Face. So that's how typically the subjects will run.
Jacqui: So what is recommended for a mature age student to do so? I'm not sure exactly, Lauren, what your meaning there, whether you're meaning part time or full time study. I guess it just depends on having a, you know, enrolling, having a look at the timetable, seeing how you cope coming back to study and then making that decision and again, factoring in the amount of time that you need to do in clinical placements.
Jacqui: Do students get an opportunity to study all nursing specialty areas before they choose an elective. So the answer to that would be no, because we're providing a generalized degree really in terms of our content, so that it means that you can become a new graduate work. The aim would be that you have the skills and you could work anywhere with that set of skills, and then you kind of develop the skills. So some of you may have had a placement in a more specialized area before those third year placements. But that's where you get a kind of homely skills. So Judy’s going to answer this question because she is our perioperative specialist. So, Judy, did you want to answer the question? I just lost. It was around becoming a surgeon.
Judy: Oh, OK, yeah, that was for the down there is one up the top.
Jacqui: To become a surgeon or something in that area would this course, be a good way to get there.
Judy: No, they're very different degrees. However, if you are interested in the perioperative environment and you can become a perioperative nurse, which is my specialty, where you can be an aesthetic nurse, you can do instruments circulating. So you actually working with the surgeon, you're actually part of the perioperative team, so you're working right alongside the surgeon. There's also some advanced nursing roles in the perioperative environment. So there is a nurse, nurse, surgeon's assistant, which is actually a nurse practitioner level role. And you are independent, you have your own ABN number. And so you kind of like a consultant that works with the surgeons. And there's also opportunities for other advanced perioperative nursing roles. So endoscopes, where you actually do procedures, nurse seditionists so giving some sedation defections as well. So there's lots of evolving and developing advanced nursing roles in the perioperative environment. So, no, you're not a surgeon because that’s a medical degree, and that's six years of study and then another 10 years of, you know, work after that. But there's certainly lots of advanced nursing roles within the perioperative space as well, and that it's offered in third year as a specialty subject.
Jacqui: Thanks, Judy, so might get you to answer this one as well. Are there physicians’ assistants in Australia, is it a career that's possible for nurses here?
Judy: So physician assistants, no, so that's, I guess, the equivalent of what we would call a resident or a registrar, but as I said, I know within the perioperative space there are what we call productiveness surgeons assistants. So they might stop the operation. So they’ll, they’ll, you know, do the incision and help suture. They'll put in drains and things like that. But a physician's assistant know that that's a medical role. That's not a nursing role.
Jacqui: I think they're in the US. I think physicians assistants. But we don't have that.
Jacqui: If you can't get into a graduate program job after graduating, what options are there for employment? So certainly there are there are different avenues to find employment. So, there are lots of different graduate programs, and not just through, for example, New South Wales Health, which is our biggest employer. All of the private hospitals do that. Also, general practice facilities, the GPs will take on students who, you know, nursing students who just graduated in the aged care sector. That is happening as well. You can also apply directly to RN one roles, which the one just means it's your first year out. You may get agent work and you may become a vaccinator. And lots of there are different opportunities. And you know, that six-week placement at the end of your degree is a real great opportunity to be able to network and just to build up contacts you may be able to get to be able to make contacts that way, for example, my daughter is an emergency department nurse, she didn't get a new grad position. However, she was interviewed separately outside that program a bit later and did manage to get a position that way.
Jacqui: Do nursing students generally learn in the same class groups. So do you have a regular group of people you work with or who do classes with? So, yeah, that's what we're aiming to do. So we call that streams. So, for example, when you're doing your clinical subject and the theory subject in that second part of each session, you're in the same stream because we want you to be in the same classes together and cohorts for those two and you go to a placement at the same time as well. And also by having longer tutorials. So the four hours, kind of gives you the opportunity to better develop those relationships as well and be with the same people.
Jacqui: If you're a part time RN student, would your first placement be, when is your first placement? Are they the same length? So if you're part time and you're doing two subjects position, then your first placement, would be at the end of your first year of study and your placements are the same length. So that would be a three-week placement. That's because you're doing the same subject at the time. And so all the requirements are the same there.
Jacqui: Someone had asked a question about picking your major so you don't actually have a major in our program. It's the same accredited program for every everyone. So in terms of those third use specialist subjects, you just pick them at the time so you don't have to come in with a preconceived idea of what you want to do. And often people come in and think, oh, I really want to be a paediatric nurse. And then they decide midway through, actually I think mental health is amazing, I'm going to I'm going to do that instead.
Judy: Yes. I'd like to know more about the pathway to become a cosmetic nurse. Finished a Diploma of Beauty Therapy. Would that help me on my application? Would a Bachelor of Nursing be available? Yes, you can do you better nursing Part-Time in terms of cosmetic nursing cosmetic or what they said was as aesthetic nursing is actually an unregulated area at the moment, but it is one that the Australian Nursing Midwifery Board and ANMAC are actually looking at to become regulated. So there's no specific nursing course, for aesthetical cosmetic nursing. However, they are looking at where it will sit in terms of the specialty area and at the moment, they're looking that it will come under the umbrella of perioperative nursing. So I guess if you are looking at to have something, some sort of qualification to complement your Diploma of Beauty Therapy, perioperative will probably be the closest to that, because you are learning about all those specific roles around anaesthetics, also about, you know, aseptic technique and, you know, you know, handling instruments and all that kind of stuff. So so short answer is no. There is no actual qualification for cosmetic nursing. But certainly perioperative qualifications will be what will get you leading towards that. There will be eventually. But as I said, ANMAC are looking at that now in terms of regulation, I hope that's it.
Jacqui: Thanks Judy. Thank you. What are the latest time slots you offer practical labs in a day? Judy, do you want to answer that one? Because you work in the lab space.
Judy: So we have labs running all day, every day so Monday to Friday and we have let's starting at well these are first year labs, eight thirty they’re five or six hour will a half hour break. So the morning session start at eight thirty and the afternoon sessions start at two thirty. So be finishing up around eight thirty.
Jacqui: So I think our labs are open from eight eight a.m. to nine pm. You know, typically we're not running until 9:00 p.m. because we don't really want to be there at 9:00 p.m. But we do offer them across the time.
Jacqui: Any specific subjects that we would need to be done in high school prior to applying for an orange? So I might leave marketing to answer around the specific subjects?
Jacqui: What I might mention is that the things that you can do now to kind of get yourself prepared are to look at your vaccinations, what you need to have done, because that's something you can get started now, because vaccination is one of the key things that you need to have done to be able to attend placement. So I'm not just talking that about that Covid, the Covid vaccination, which is something that we're recommending or we're moving likely moving towards making that mandatory. But all the other things like whooping cough, sorry, pertussis and the different ones, also doing a senior first aid certificate, because that is something that we're going to that we ask you to have done in your first session of the study. So, you know, once you're able to if you can get those kind of things done, the things you can take off the list as well.
Jacqui: So to students who completed the Diploma of Nursing go with students a first year, so no, if you're entering our accelerated EN program, you'll entering the second year of the program. And you'll be with us, so when you're in classes, you'll be with other ENs in those classes, so we try to keep that cohort together. And that's something that Judy, who is our official video, made a kind of, you know, liaises with the different cohorts to make sure that they're settling in effectively.
Jacqui: All right. So I think that we've answered all the questions and you've heard me talk for long enough. As we said, we will be making a copy of this available. If there are any questions that we haven't that you think you can get in touch with us. We can answer those. Best of luck for those of you doing the HSC. We just really all want to wish you the best of luck in these difficult circumstances. Can't imagine how difficult that must be for you all. And we really look forward to having you join us next year. We think nursing is an amazing profession. We think UTS is an amazing university to be able for you to come to be able to come to. So thank you so much. I'd like to thank the panel as well for giving us their time up on a on a Saturday. So thanks to everybody for coming along today.
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Kees van Gool 00:00
So, let me now introduce the speaker. Richard is Associate Professor with the central health economics research and evaluation at UTSA. And he's one of the CRE's chief investigators. He is the senior evaluator of the feedback team and coordinator of the Cancer Research Economic Support Team. CREST are supported by Cancer Australia, which had commenced his career as an economist with the Reserve Bank of Australia and made the jump through the brilliant but short-lived New South Wales Health Economics training program where in fact, that's where I met Richard for the first time well over two decades ago. He holds a Master's of economics honours from Sydney University and a Bachelor of economics honours from Murdoch University, and a PhD from UTS. Richard is a highly experienced and highly regarded health economist, having worked in the public and private sectors as long as I can date. He has a keen interest in applied economic evaluations, the economics of specialty health areas and patient preferences and quality of life priority setting. Richard's primary interests and focus in specialty health has been the fields of oncology and hematology across a broad range of indications and clinical settings. Today, he's going to bring a few of these primary interests together in his presentations, entitled, using state of preferences methods to explore broader concepts of value for cancer care, please take it away, Richard,Richard De Abreu Lourenco 01:18
Thank you, Kees and welcome, everybody to this webinar. It's a real pleasure for me to be able to speak to you all today, here virtually. So I'm just making sure that that's working. As Kees said, I'm more than happy for this to be a bit of an interactive session; it would be just as boring for you as it is for me to listen to me speak for 30 to 45 minutes without some interaction. So please stop me ask questions along the way. As Kees said, the ideas I'm going to speak to about today do bring together some of the research I've been looking at for a number of years, and and an interest that I have in how we make decisions, patient preference, cancer. And importantly, these, these very critical concepts of value. Here are my general disclaimers; the most important one is the one at the bottom, which I will try to limit for the purposes of this afternoon. So I thought I'd start the day with highlighting an article that many of you may know, as it helps to ground much of the discussions that we are having now about value-based care and value in cancer care. And for me, one of the takeaways that that that come from this article is that when we're looking at this idea of value and value-based care, we should be thinking about it as being grounded and always being defined around the patient. What is important to the patient in in accessing care and in what they're taking away from that care. And it isn't just about what is important. It's not only about what goes into the back care or the costs of producing care, but it's how those costs are achieved, relative to the outcomes. So how do we balance outcomes relative to costs, which is a pretty fundamental concept to people like myself in case and many others on this call, who are always thinking about that value proposition and how we weigh up, what goes into and comes out of the provision of care. And we're also recognising that outcomes. And what we're producing is multidimensional, there are many aspects have many facets to those outcomes of care, and that they vary across care. They pretend there isn't a one size fits all approach in what we're thinking about as outcomes, and in what we're valuing. So how might we as a population come at this notion of, of value in determining value? Well, as many of us, many of us know, then the idea of value is often reflected by what we're prepared to pay. And in a public system like Australia, that comes about in terms of what we're prepared to pay it as reflected in something like an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, we look at how much we're prepared to pay relative to, to its outputs. Compared to what we're doing at the moment, and committees like the PBASand MSAC do that all the time. That's not a notion that is only restricted to Australia. But it's something that's happening more and more around the world. Obviously, the UK has been doing it for a long time. New Zealand does it Canada does it. It happens in Thailand and even Japan is now doing it to a more or less extent. Even in the United States where we don't have public reimbursement per se. We have we have ISO which has adopted its own value assessment framework, where they are looking at these ideas of how we can incorporate value to look at what we're paying for care and ensuring that it represents some notion of value. Interestingly, for eisah, they're not just looking at that assessment and based on the comparison of costs and outcomes, but they are establishing some notion of a willingness to pay, and looking at prices that are required to achieve that actual willingness to pay threshold as one of their metrics. What's common to many of these approaches is that the outcome that they're interested in is the quality. So that combination of how long people are living and their quality of life, the quality adjusted life year. But that's brought some in the industry, to thinking about well, is the quality broad enough to measure that multi dimensionality that we that I mentioned earlier, when we're thinking about value based care, is that nexus between the length of life and quality of life enough when we're thinking about value propositions, and indeed the that the group that the article I just showed you here, led by Lu garrison from esport has produced a taxonomy of potential additions, we might like to add to our conceptualization of outcomes, when looking at this value proposition. and expand on the quality. And think about how we can include other outcomes beyond quality of life and potentially length of life, in economic evaluations. So some of the things that we're thinking about values around motion information, for example, so the value of knowing so for meaning diagnostic tests, there is value in understanding what our risks of particular conditions are, indeed, in the face of a pandemic, the value of knowing what our what our risk of contagion might be, whether we are going to face increased, increased risk of becoming ill, there's peace of mind from certain treatments and the value of insurance from one treatment versus another, we might want to include disease severity, when looking at the value of one of a new treatment, how that might influence the the idea of what we're willing to willing to pay more and more in cancer particularly for in advanced conditions, there is the notion of can we pay for the value of hope, particularly with with with some conditions like pancreatic cancer or brain tumors, there is an increasing call to factoring whether or not treatments are adding value in terms of adding hope to conditions where there might not otherwise have been treatments, or treatments available. We can think about potential value is also arising from this notion of an option value. That is by by extending life by making people live longer, we are giving them the potential to benefit from future treatments, is there a value attached to that? There might also be a sense in which we want to expand outcomes measurement to allow for better equity of access. And there is a there is a wide movement at the moment, particularly in the health economics, space about how we can adapt economic evaluations to take that into account. Finally, there are some more process related measures around outcomes and how we can change those to take into account the effects of innovations in moving from one treatment to another. And how advances in one area can impact on another area. And indeed, more directly how the patient's experience of care might lead to value in and of itself. are patients finding care more or less cumbersome? Are they benefiting from more convenient care? Are they engaging in more in more shared decision making, and experiencing greater autonomy? And are those aspects or part of the value proposition? So we were interested in this question of whether or not those sorts of broader value propositions were actually being utilized by by researchers and individuals, when assessing value and we looked at the literature and found that within publications of economic evaluations that people were actually using some of these concepts to try and get out this notion of value, either through a willingness to pay metric or through a quality of life metric and that is by trying to put quality of life weights on some of these concepts like information, convenience or process of receiving care like shared decision making. And of the papers that we reviewed, what we found was that quite a large proportion, around 28 of those papers used a technique called stated preference or discrete choice experiments as the means of attaching value to the outcomes that they were investigating. So that we have this broader notion of outcomes. And they were trying to value those broader notions using these discrete choice experiments. And in the next few slides, what I'd like to do is give you a bit of a flavor for what a DC actually is. And then I'll take you through a couple of examples. So many of you on this, I can't actually see you at the moment because you know, I can only see keys. But for many of you on this webinar, you will actually have a much more deeper technical understanding of what a DCE that is the novel ever. But this is a survey technique that we use, where we can actually observe in a market how choices are being made. Ordinarily, we can observe in markets how people are making choices, but discrete choice experiments allow us to construct surveys to observe how people might behave in conditions where we can't observe a certain situation. They are therefore based on what we call a hypothetical hypothetical, but realistic scenario that describes a product or service in terms of its underlying characteristics. And I'll show you what I mean in a moment. And we vary those underlying characteristics or attributes between plausible ranges and ask people to make choices about what they would do in varying scenarios. And we use those choices to understand what it is how, how people are trading off, and essentially, what it is that people are valuing in those different contexts and in different circumstances. The key assumptions underpin underpinning this type of survey based assessment of how people make choices and in understanding preferences and values is that we can understand choices by comparing the underlying attributes of a product or service that's on offer. This relies on the premise that any good or service can be broken down into those attributes. So for example, we can think about a car as being broken down by whether it's four wheel drive or two wheel drive, its color, how fast it goes, its cost, those sorts of things. They're all attributes. And an individual will always choose the combination of attributes on offer that they expect to maximize their well being, which which combination of these attributes that they're being offered, would make someone feel most well off. So here's a bit of an example a bit topical from today. So imagine that we're offering someone asking someone whether or not they would participate in a vaccination program. The characteristics or attributes that we might use to explain that vaccination program are things like whether or not there are side effects, who administers that vaccine, that vaccine and where, who should be vaccinated within the community, the proportion of the population that's likely to be vaccinated once it's rolled out whether or not the vaccine is efficacious in avoiding infection, how much it might cost the individual. And at the moment, whether or not it's going to impact on lock downs and allow everybody to go out and have some fun. Okay, so these are the sorts of ways that we might conceptualize a program. And hopefully, you can start to see that we could think about most programs or products or services in this type of way and breaking it down into its attributes or components. Setting up a DCE and thinking about the problem that we're going to answer is, is quite critical. And it really does frame the results that you will be able to get out of your out of your research. So if trying to use it to value a particular outcome of interest, then the way that the question is framed is really, really critical. One of the outcomes I alluded to earlier in that broader framework from garrison was something around the value of hope. And if you could, if you could think about that for a moment and think about well, could you describe a or could you construct a discrete choice experiment that was looking at hope as something that we might try and value? and important thing to consider in thinking about that sort of question is whether or not hope is extrinsic or intrinsic. And what I mean by that is, can you in the context of an experiment and And a survey to ask someone to imagine that they are feeling more or less hopeful, or that by using a particular product, they will feel more or less hopeful. And I'll let you think about that. And the answer might be no, in most cases, that there are some characteristics or attributes that are very difficult to ask people to imagine. And so we have to think about a different way of potentially getting at those outcomes. And I'll show you an example in a moment. So setting up the problem is very critical. And you can see here that the the steps we'd go through, I'm not intending to give you a lecture on how to construct the DCE. But these are the steps. The key takeaway from this slide, is that how we quantify the question is critical. How we describe the attributes and levels, it's critical, and important input input at this point, is to actually have some robust qualitative research, usually with the people who are going to be affected by the program. So if it's about how patients are interacting with the healthcare system, then I would greatly suggest that having patients involved in this qualitative research is critical. And having the patient voice embedded in understanding what the outcome is, and, and in understanding how the outcome is described, would really help set this phase of this research up. really well. The much of the much of the driving force and the engine behind the discrete choice experiment comes with its mathematical design. And it comes in ensuring that what as you can imagine, is a very complex combination of, of attributes and their levels, is presented in a way that can be understood by respondents, but importantly, allows the the analytical framework to investigate the relationships that we're interested in. And to potentially produce or to investigate whether the value propositions that we're interested in can be can be backed out. And so getting this design right, with the help of people who have strong mathematical backgrounds, and have experience in experimental design is a really important element of framing of developing a discrete choice experiment. It helps to set up how the experiment will be rolled out or is critical in in setting up how the experiment will be rolled out, but also in how the analysis will also will be conducted. actually implementing a DCE, who you're going to implement it with will determine the types of information that will be produced. A critical question here in assessing value and how that value is going to be used is who you're going to ask. So if we're interested in coming at values for cancer care, while patients will help us to understand what is critical in terms of the description of the outcomes that we're interested in, in the descriptions of the service, if those if the values that come out of this sort of exercise are going to be used in public decision making, then perhaps it's this it's societal preferences, society's views on these discrete choice questions that are going to be more important, and we could have a discussion in the debate about that, at the end. Getting the surveys completed. With enough individuals and having the right number of completions is also critical. That's something that can be worked out during the DCE design phase. Happily, these days, we can do these surveys online so that large surveys can be completed relatively quickly. Of course, if we are doing with doing surveys with patients, it can take much longer to recruit the patient samples required. Nonetheless, they are it is generally much faster than doing surveys by paper analysis of all these data for number crunchers and geeks like me can be a lot of fun, and allows us to interrogate not only what is driving choice within a particular choice, context or service in and of itself. But if it's been designed appropriately, it also allows us to look at whether or not value propositions and what is influencing value differs between between different groups. And we can potentially assess how something like the value of information or the value of convenience differs between different patient characteristics are different socio different socio demographic goods. As I said that really depends on making sure that we've designed it correctly to allow us to do that, but it is possible Now, thanks to developments by people like Nick bands back, we can also not only look at value in this in the context of dollar values, but we can also start to look at value here in terms of quality of life weights, which starts to bring us back to that the notion that the quality can be expanded to bring in some of these broader concepts of what represents value. How we apply this, all of this information that comes out of these sorts of experiments, I've talked about willingness to pay, I've talked about quality of life weights, one of the things I've not talked about is actually looking at uptake. And that's really not something I was going to talk about a lot today. But these experiments do tell us about the probability of use, because they're telling us about when people might choose one program one service over another. And if you're designing a healthcare program, understanding those probabilities of use can be very powerful in helping to set up programs in a way that will be potentially used to the most in a maximum way. Sorry, that's my home phone, very old school. So let me take you through one brief case study. How embarrassing. Here's a, a, an example that we looked at a couple of years ago, where we were looking at the situation of women who were managing breast cancer risk following an initial diagnosis of breast cancer. And we want to understand what though, in that particular situation, what the value was associated with reducing the fear of recurrence in those women, once they if they were undergoing a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy. So much of this in the same way as it's difficult to imagine telling someone that they are feeling more or less hopeful. It's also very difficult to ask someone to imagine that they're feeling more or less fearful. The experience of fear is something that's very intrinsic to an individual. So in conceptualizing the data, the discrete choice experiment here, which was looking at the choice between undergoing a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, or, and or continuing to undergo usual monitoring following a breast cancer diagnosis, we couldn't really conceptualize of an attribute that was about how fearful someone felt. But we could have a question after the discrete choice experiment that assessed how the level of fear or cancer concern that people were feeling while they were completing the choice question is, and that's what we did, because we wanted to utilize that that rating about cancer concern to then do some subgroup analysis. So you can see here the schemer of the overall project, it was grounded in doing qualitative work with women who had undergone contralateral prophylactic mastectomy or not piloted and then implemented in in, in looking at whether or not sorry, looking at the choice between CPM or contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, or regular management, regular monitoring for breast cancer risk. What we saw, and what we saw is that when we looked at the willingness, marginal willingness to pay for our attributes, and we had attributes around the impact on breast sensitivity, the frequency of undergoing scanning the types of scanning that women underwent, and the impact on breast cancer risk overall, what we saw was that in women who expressed some degree of concern about the cancer coming back, they placed a higher value in avoiding cancer risk, and wanted more frequent checkups and wanted to be involved in their decision making compared to women who didn't express a cancer concern. So when we use that idea of fear of cancer recurrence or cancer concern, to try and stratify, or to look at how value differed between these groups, we could see some notion of difference. Now the cane beans among you will say I look but you know, many of your values there are different, that's due to our sample size, but we at least starting to see some signals here. That driven by that are according to difference in these in these cans of concern levels. And so we can start to see some differences there from from that source. Another case study I wanted to run was a recently completed and recently published study, looking at genomic approaches to Children's Cancer Care. And here we want, we were looking at the value associated with choosing to participate in genomic medicine in children with cancer. And in particular, we were interested in looking at how the factors that influence that participation differed between the parents of children who had an advanced pediatric cancer, healthcare practitioners, and the general community health care protect health care practitioners in this context was a broad, inclusive statement. So it wasn't it wasn't only medical practitioners, it included supportive nursing and allied health. Again, this work was informed by extensive pre qualitative work with parents and healthcare practitioners. And they had identified that hope was something that they worked, they were all interested in, you know, they wanted to do anything that they could for their children, and a desire to do what it takes, often motivated actions. The attributes that were included in this DCE were things around the survival prognosis, so how sick was the child before they underwent the test, the benefit that they might, they might experience from having a treatment based on a test whether or not a target could be located as the source of of treatment. So could we could a mutation be found that could be treated, the impact on quality of life of being treated, whether there was a recommendation from a clinician to treat or whether the family supported the treatment. Now, that was a reflexive attribute. So clinicians only ever saw whether or not the family supported the treatment and families saw whether or not clinicians were recommending treatment. We then had a couple of attributes around cost, which looked diff, which looked separately at who was paying and how much was being paid. And finally, an attribute around the need for a biopsy. What we've found across those three groups was that increasing the chance of people participating in, in genomic medicine increased when we had a higher probability of baseline survival, a higher probability of children living longer if they did find a target, improved quality of life. So improving quality of life following treatment meant people were more likely upon a recommendation to participate in in targeted, a targeted approach and finding a target. But that was only important for medical practitioners. What we did find, though, was that the importance of those things differ across the groups. So for families and and the general population, we found that the quality of life was the most important attribute. So they were really influenced by what was happening around kids, kids potential quality of life, whereas for healthcare providers, they were all around, let's let's make sure that these children are going to live longer. And so we see a slight difference between the two groups in that, now health care providers were, were also influenced by quality of life. And you can see that there. But we don't see the same influence of survival benefits for parents and the general community. They were more influenced by quality of life, as I said, and then by things around recommendation, and who pays. What we took away from this is that we start to see a little bit of a hierarchy of, of outcomes in, you know, in terms of what people were willing to pay. And these these are based on the general community sample, where we have quality of life being something that is very highly valued. shared decision making, is also quite highly valued. But we found this interesting idea that there was some level of baseline survival at which people actually were not willing to undergo or recommend that their children be treated, where it was almost the inverse of hope. But it was potentially reflecting some notion of utility, that where children were where the prognosis for a child was so poor, and could potentially couldn't be improved through quality of life. They didn't want to participate. Pain in treatment, reflecting a potential notion of why would we put kids through this if the game is so small, which we thought was a very interesting finding in this context. So, from those two case studies, I wanted to link this back a little bit to some of the discussions that Porter raised raised through his work. And that is that we can use these sorts of sorts of studies to look at how people are making decisions and making choices, but also to start to think about how outcomes might be valued through some sort of hierarchy. And I raised this because through these case studies, and through other theses that I've seen either been involved with or I've seen, you start to see that there are outcomes, which we might call high level outcomes. You know, things like efficacy, risk reductions, and quality of life. These are things that are potential drivers, or what I've called an influencer, in today's parlance of value, they are things that we can observe quite readily, and have a large impact on people's behavior, and a large contributors to value. But there are other attributes such as shared decision making, and who pays for care, that also influenced choice and value. And that perhaps we shouldn't be ignoring, when we are thinking about how we pay for care, and how and when we're thinking about what constitutes the value that that we attach to care when we're when we're putting forward our value propositions for payments. The other thing is that we can differentiate between groups in terms of how much people are in terms of what people value and how they might value things differently. And that's, again, another another important motion to keep in mind, when we are looking at what what we're paying for care. And thinking about the payment systems, we might put in place. An interesting proposition, and this is hopefully to foment some some discussion is whether or not we can use these types of studies to investigate how we might pay for care. And indeed, there have been some studies of some VCs looking at payment systems. I've come across some, or there have been some here locally, but most of the ones I've seen, we're looking at payment systems in in LCMS, looking at how we might structure payment systems for primary care, but could we conceive of constructing a discrete choice experiment around a value based healthcare system? And if we could, what might that look like? Who would be involved? And you know, how would we go? Whose preferences would we go? Go about eliciting? Julie, I'm nearly finished, and then we'll come to your question. That's all right? So my my musings because this is my last slide, Julia promise, is that the and I hope you've you've taken this away is that this notion of value is broader than then what we often measure as a final outcome in clinical studies, and clearly goes beyond what we put into care in terms of costs. These fees are a useful tool in helping us to get at some of those different notions of value, they can be very, they can be a very powerful tool, we do need to be careful in how they are applied, and utilized the way that they designed it is very, very critical. I think I think there is a lot of potential to utilize them in understanding what matters in the way we assess value and potentially, in helping us to put together programs that better reflect what's value and potentially to design those payment systems. But there's a lot to knock out in how we might do that. And as my little icon men there says thank you, everybody. And now we have a couple of questions case you want me to go straight to those?Kees van Gool 34:30
Yes. Would you like me to read them? Yes, and if you like, or you might be worthwhile reading enough for everybody else who can't see the other chat rooms. So Julie asks, How much variation is there across different countries or cultures?Richard De Abreu Lourenco 34:48
So Julie, do you mean within a discrete choice experiment, or do you mean in the practice of applying?34:56
Hi, Richard, great to see you. Thank you. I mean, Is my video anybody know now? I meant to replicate the same research study in a different country? Yeah, do it in terms of, you know, the high level things that matter and the other things that matter left or the individual results really anything that you can say at all about variation across different countries and whether or not we can apply results from one country to or one one group of participants to a different group.Richard De Abreu Lourenco 35:32
Great question. I think we always we, we should always be a little bit cautious about directly applying results from one country to another, particularly where we're dealing with some concepts that aren't where we're dealing with concepts that might not be concrete. So if we're dealing with something like survival, for example, that might be transferable. But when we're starting to deal with things that are less tangible, and might be more subject as to cultural context, then we need to be very careful, we need to ensure that the the ideas and concepts are going to be going to translate. So I think local, local adaptation of a study is always a good idea. I run it in the local context, if you can, if you can't do that, then think about what how applicable other methods that have been used there to our local context. And would we expect those results to mirror What's happening here?Speaker 3 36:30
Awesome, thank you so much.Kees van Gool 36:32
Welcome. A question from Michelle. Richard. Thanks, Richard, great presentation will echo that. Could you talk a little bit about how information generated from DCEs can be used to inform or supplement current approaches of combat economic evaluation, or be supporting MSAC and PBAC decisions?Richard De Abreu Lourenco 36:52
So I'm very nervous to answer this question, because Lloyd and Rosalie are on the call. And I have to put a big caveat that I am, I am answering this as a researcher and not as an evaluator. And so Michelle, I would say, Please look at the guidelines. Second, I think I think he can't leave. So DCEs can be used in economic evaluations. And indeed, there is a very good paper, which I'd be happy to send you the reference to, on how you can incorporate discrete choice experiments into an economic evaluation. Either as valuing quality of life or through willingness to pay when it comes to including them in a reimbursement application. As with anything in a reimbursement application, it is about the clarity of how you're including it, what the methods are, and ensuring that all of that can be well understood, both in terms of what's been done, how it's been applied, and what the implications of it are. And the other thing I'd say is make sure you if you're going to include it that you show results within without, it's then up to the evaluators in the committee to look at it. What you have done. Right, I think I'm going to stop there before I get myself in trouble.Kees van Gool 38:17
I think Christobel mentioned, she has struggled to get MSAC to accept this. We'll take that as a comment, Christabel. Lloyd, asks what differences are seen in DCEs between people who enter clinical trials, those who have the disease who are who do not enroll in trials in persons without the disease?Richard De Abreu Lourenco 38:39
And then and then Rosalie's answered it. And then Lloyd we have a ongoing study, which will also answer it. So we have a trial and model. were part of a study in myeloma at the moment where the patients enrolling in the study will complete the DCE and a general population sample have already completed the DCE and ultimately, when all the trial participants have finished it will be able to compare what the patients in the trial compare their bad news with the general population values. So I can't actually answer your question at the moment from firsthand39:25
when it doesn't converge to 80 of the attributes basically know people who enter trials would be hopeful that they will wait. So why you define the attributes across that population? And if it is, yeah, it's just a why fascinates me about discrete choice experiment. He's got to be, it's got to be put in a context of the individual. If someone says White heavily drove, I'll go for anything that will white in a different way, because then they decide not to go this route. It's been wondering what the route the other relevant consistency, the argument about dch and decision making? Basically it's the weighting of the attributes in the context of people in the trial, or that did not go in the trim.Richard De Abreu Lourenco 40:36
Yeah. And I think, Lloyd, you need to have that comparison. So I guess there's two things there, how have the attributes been chosen? And then how have they been analyzed? Post? In terms of, you know, did the development of the attributes reflect the right choice question? And then in the in the post situation, how have those decisional contexts that you're alluding to being taken into account in looking at those at the different population subgroups? So they are things which are lenses. On that same study was made things that we will take into, you know, 100, advisement and look at?Kees van Gool 41:22
Right, thanks, Richard. Next question from Christobel. My experience of trying to introduce a new treatment in the real world after doing this kind of patient preference work, is, as you say, often, clinicians are more conservative about accepting risks for better quality than patients. And this can lead to huge barriers to put in the new intervention into practice. How can we wait and work these two competing interests?Richard De Abreu Lourenco 41:55
Interesting that you use that word competing Christabel. Because I'm I think they can often be complimentary if we sit people down, to talk about what they're actually trying to get at. So in the in the work we did with the genomics, it was, and indeed, with some other work that I've done in a semi, it was about making sure what was about getting the getting the two views separately, and then sitting down and saying, Well, actually, what are people talking about here? Are they really competing? Or are they just coming at it from different angles? It wasn't necessarily that the two views were at loggerheads. But as I said, they said in this in the in the presentation, they might weight things slightly differently. But not necessarily in a way that was mutually exclusive. And I think recognizing that they're not mutually exclusive is a really important aspect of what we do, and trying to trying to get people to have that conversation of, okay, so for us, survival is important to the patient quality of life is important. Let's, let's have a conversation about having those two things coexist. And I don't think that's impossible.Kees van Gool 43:16
I'm sorry, I'm gonna take chairs prerogative here. I think that that's a really interesting issue with regards to payment reform, because after all, payment reform, tries to address imperfect agency, right, you're trying to align the financial interests of the provider, alongside the health and any other utility aspects of the patient and the family. And so that is where there might be, I don't think you're right. It's not always competing. But there might be some circumstances where there is a bit of competing interests. And that's where payment reform could could help to try and realign the competition and make them move in the same direction. So you joined to your your example, the decision making the joint decision or shared decision making, for example, there may be no financial interest in doing that at the moment. But it's something that patients really value. So how could you then write that in a payment system that so that there is value for the for the provider, as well as the patient? I'm not in because I'm in vehement agreement are. Good, that's why we work together. Great, so let me move on to the next question from Sarah. Thanks, Richard. Your childhood cancer DCE example was reassuring that quality of life is the most preferred health outcome for parents and the community. All your examples for hope we just lost Kees. Health just wonderingRichard De Abreu Lourenco 45:03
So we just lost you there a little bit Kees. But the rest of Sarah's question was about how to include non health outcomes. People have done PhDs on this topic, Sarah. So the the, it's a interesting question. And so there are, there are avenues to incorporate non health outcomes. Like convenience, if you want to include a call that a non health outcome into economic evaluations, you could go down the cost benefit analysis route, I know that's quite controversial. You could do, you could try and assess it on a quality of life scale, or using quality of life weights, either, you know, using a DCE, it's got a survival metric to allow you to do quality weights or using time trade offs, for example. And that has been done. The challenges and Allison alludes to this is if you're going to do that, and then you've got quality of life measured in a trial, do double count. So it can it can be can be done, sir. But you've got to be very careful about how you do it. And then you've got to be careful about who's capturing the benefits of that non health outcome. Where the benefit sits?46:23
Yeah, Richard, I probably should have been a bit more specific. I mean, I was thinking specifically about when you generate utility that isn't clinical utility. So for instance, with the use of genomic tests when you might achieve value of knowing so you have a test result, but it has no impact on on how that patient is being managed, because it doesn't change the diagnosis, but it might give them peace of mind, because they've got a molecular diagnosis. And so, you know, something MTech has grappled with, you know, we can recognize things like that can that could then allow you to access, say the MD is? So that's, you know, it's not a health impact, per se. And it doesn't really you can't actually put a utility weight on it. It's not a it'sRichard De Abreu Lourenco 47:09
I don't think so there's been there's been quite a lot of work done in the UK on that particular sorts of value. And they have looked at how to include it. So there is there is a there's a body of work on doing that. It's it's challenging, because what is it that you're actually picking up? And have the studies been framed in a way that will pick up the potential harm that may ensue from that information as well? That's always my worry is that it's often framed in the positive and not framed in the potential for actual harm associated with people knowing.Kees van Gool 47:50
Sorry, I hope I'm I haven't frozen on you, personally. Greg. Elson asks, Do you worry that some of of what you capture into DCE is also been capturing the quality of life measurements differently using a ? If you've answered this question, I think was there anything else you wanted to add to that original?Richard De Abreu Lourenco 48:08
But the only thing? Thank you, Allison, I think it's a great point to make, which is, if you're measuring something in the clinical trial using using a multiattribute utility instrument, do you really need to supplement it with a discrete choice experiment, as well. And you need to think very carefully about that, because you don't want to double count. So, you know, you need to, you need to be careful about combining sources of utility values from, you know, disparate, disparate places for that very reason.Kees van Gool 48:47
Okay, Siobhan asks, maybe you want to does it depends on whether the clinical trial is the only hope, Shiva, maybe you want to say, the conversation has moved on a little bit, so maybe you're gonna say what instruments is?49:02
No, no, I was just gonna say, I feel like I'm about short in a daylight, but I'm on my feet in the context of what we were talking about. And I was just struck me when you were talking that there's lots of different types of clinical trials, you know, like the, there's, you know, you get to the end of cancer treatment, and maybe there's immunotherapy that might work versus, you know, the trials that are coming out testing, whether this is more effective than something else, that was all.Kees van Gool 49:37
Okay, and Chris Christabel asks, it can be an issue if the provider of the treatment will actually lose money there. That's, well, we'll take that as a comment as well. I was actually going to follow that up, Richard because I can see one of the great sort of utilities or the uses for DCs in this this To sort of measure people pose risk appetite, because after all, we're losing your case. You know, just following up on your news. So have just thinking about shifting risk. And whether DCs have looked at people's appetite for taking on the risk, or At what point as an attribute of doing an activity that has some risk associated with it. Have there been any desease that sort of show that people with where people's appetite for risk, sort of cut off?Richard De Abreu Lourenco 50:43
Short answer? Yes. Right. That is the there is, again, is a body of literature that looks at not only risk presentation, but how you can investigate risk in using this this sort of survey method. And it is something that you could that you could do to look at how people respond to different risk levels.Kees van Gool 51:07
Yeah, because I think that would be a really interesting thing to pursue with regards to payment reform, because obviously, payment reform will never be implemented, if nobody wants to take it up. Because they have, you know, the risk appetite is just not there. Yep. Any other we think the chat room is, has exhausted the questions. But are there any other questions from the floor? No, I think we're all good. Well, in that case, we are what we are actually out of time anyway. But Richard, can I ask you to put up the last slides of your presentation, certainly. Sorry, I forgot about that. Just with details of the next slide. So thank you so much for for coming. It's been a great presentation. So thank you, Richard, for your time and thought provoking presentation. Thank you everyone, for coming and participating in the discussion. I hope it's been useful, just to let you know, some few plugs. Our next presentation, our next webinar will be held on the 14th of September, you can hold your phone to that QR code right now. And register. If you'd like that, obviously, if you're part of our network, and our mailing lists, you will get reminders anyway, check out our website, it's it's improving all the time. It has some content there now, including a new plug for a new section called the data corner, which is for all those tech heads out there who love their admin data, but have experienced problems with with dealing it as Denzel always says, who's on this call, all data misbehave. And that is never true or said then for administrative data. So this is a resource that we will keep building on at the moment, there are only two pieces there. But we'll keep building on this as a resource for the entire community, who have dealt with admin data and experienced problems with it. And they're just our thoughts on this and our contribution to trying to come up with solutions. So, on that note, thank you so much for participating. And hope you have a very productive, rest of your day and week, wherever you are. Thank you very much. -
The Social Science of Fisheries | Heart and Soul (Teaser)
When the cicadas come, the tuna come on a hard easterly you'll get a low tide, on a hard westerly you get a high tide and a hundred different combinations in the middle.
My fishing heritage goes back six generations, my great grandfather's grandfather. I do feel like fishing is in my blood.
It's just so real to me because my late husband was a fisherman.
So him catching the fish, me cooking the fish, it's a real love thing.
Some days you'll come in and you'll have a stretch of people all the way to the car park.
And you know that what you did last night is actually going to mean something.
When you talk Victorian seafood, you talk local, niche, fresh, 'fresh is best' market.
That's what we have to preserve. That's what's so special about here.
It's real.
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test
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Can the agriculture, land use and food industries help solve the climate change situation?
I think we’ve had such a challenge looking at electricity and shifting our energy markets and that’s all happening now at pace with the cost of renewables really driving the transition now we’re becoming aware of the significant emissions that come from agriculture forestry land base uses. And the exciting thing there is yes it is a big challenge but it also is a very significant potential solution if we could reward producers for cultivating natural capital which happens to be good for productivity, resilience, well-being of animals, soil quality imagine – it’s a different revenue stream and it offers great hope for sequestering. The other really exciting aspect of that in mining, Australia has developed the Met sector the technology services that go around mining the economic multiplier is very very significant for those services. AG tech is a nascent class of technology that will have similar multiplier effects coming under the ground now and facilitates this revolution in land management because from satellites, to drones to robotics sensors there are all kinds of technologies that will help farmers to understand minimisation strategies for water when and how to harvest how to minimise inefficiency and waste all of that can be technology driven so opportunities everywhere.
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test
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The Social Science of Fisheries | Heart and Soul (Teaser)
When the cicadas come, the tuna come on a hard easterly you'll get a low tide, on a hard westerly you get a high tide and a hundred different combinations in the middle.
My fishing heritage goes back six generations, my great grandfather's grandfather. I do feel like fishing is in my blood.
It's just so real to me because my late husband was a fisherman.
So him catching the fish, me cooking the fish, it's a real love thing.
Some days you'll come in and you'll have a stretch of people all the way to the car park.
And you know that what you did last night is actually going to mean something.
When you talk Victorian seafood, you talk local, niche, fresh, 'fresh is best' market.
That's what we have to preserve. That's what's so special about here.
It's real.
test
test
test
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James Perry FJMT Studio (architects)
So here we are in the UTS Central building, it’s a 5 star Green Star and 5 star ‘as built’ building.
The contributing factors to the Green Star rating of this building range from the integration of landscape, the connection to the precinct plant across the road at Central Park, tapping into their tri-gen plant but also their recycled water, in terms of no plastic on the campus we built in sustainability clauses within the tenants in the Food Court, the use of recycled material, the performance of the glass façade with shading systems that are integrated into the facades.
What is unique about this building, and unique by its location in the city and its proximity to Central Park is that we’ve been able to get a precinct sharing with Central Park which allows us to tap into their tri-gen plant. Tri-gen plants means that we can actually take the cooling from that plant and use it within this building.
Where we have used timber in the building it is certified sustainable timber, in the terraces that was a key factor in how we actually used the timber.
The solar benches on level 8 are really about wirelessly recharging phones, so students can go out there, sit on the bench, place their device phone down and that wirelessly charges their phone with solar power.
So, the building has three roof gardens, two terraces at level 8 and one on the roof (level 17). The landscape on their gives an amazing opportunity for biodiversity. It was important that we introduced trees, and actually tried to introduce mature trees so that those spaces get activated immediately, and create a passive shaded place in those spaces. And so the objective was to actually find recycled trees. So on level 17 we sources recycled olive trees and on level 8 recycled fig trees. And we actually had to crane them in because of their size. And they were sourced from a nursery that salvages trees from sites that are being redeveloped or just change in use. We intentionally used really hardy resistant plantings – that’s really important, and the species selection of the plants is really essential. Given the extent of the landscape it also helped us control the performance of those roof gardens and the performance of the buildings, insulation of the levels below, but just more generally as well, from a landscape point of view, to actually connect that greenery and the planting to the campus and into the city as well.
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Welcome to UTS at the Rugby Australia Building in Moore Park. This world-class facility is a first for Australia - embedding university programs in a sporting centre of excellence. It's home to more than 700 staff, researchers and students working across sport and exercise science and physiotherapy.
Our location within Sydney's elite sporting precinct provides us the opportunity to work as professional athletes, coaches and sporting organisations which is opening doors to internships and exciting careers.
Our high performance training spaces include a multi-purpose Sports Hall, a resistance training facility and this rooftop running track. State-of-the-art classrooms and study spaces make it a great place to learn, collaborate and connect.
In our cutting-edge research labs we're working on a range of projects involving exercise physiology biomechanics, training sciences, skill acquisition, strength and conditioning and injury management and prevention. Our researchers are making an impact in both sports performance and health outcomes for people of all ages and abilities.
UTS Graduate School of Health operates an on-site physiotherapy teaching facility for post-grad and research students with a focus on neuromuscular rehabilitation and injury prevention.
And there's no better place for you to learn the skills to take you into the press box then with our industry relevant sports media and journalism degree. This custom-built facility is providing unmatched opportunities for UTS students and researchers looking to build a career in Australia's Sport and Exercise industry. And it's allowing UTS to play a leading role in the future of Australian sport.
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Okay, good evening, everyone.
And welcome to the postgraduate
information session here at UTSindustry
panel information session for journalism and sports media.
My name is professor Saba Bebawi.
I'm head of discipline for journalism and writing,
and I'm joined tonight with Alex Brown, head of discipline sports media,
head of Communications Cricket Australia. And also we have with us,
the alumni panel, Wendy John, Michaela Morgan, and Alyce Mokrzycki.
So I would like to start by a welcome to country,
and I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation
upon whose ancestral lands our city campus now stands.
I would also like to pay respect to the elders both past and present
acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.
Now, before we start just a few housekeeping things to keep in
mind, we will be recording this session.
So I just wanted you to know that this recording
is purely for a resource for the future.
So by taking part in this session I just heard that you understand acknowledge
that your information will be used for those purposes.
You mean vault and beauty quoted as part of this webinar.
Just contact UTS at marketing fass.Marketing@Uts.Edu.Au
instead to discuss any questions that you might have.
So let's start today.
I just I'm excited to see you all here and clearly you are interested
to know more about us.
So what we'll do is we'll the plan for today's that we'll talk through
giving you background about the courses we offer and how they're structured and
why we do them.
We then we'll move on to a panel where we will have a
discussion about all things, journalism in the current environment,
and then we'll pass it on to you for Q and a. So if you don't mind,
if you can just keep the questions if you have
any questions, please use the Q and a box at the bottom.
And hold on hold off until we get to the Q and a,
if you don't mind I do want to let you know that we will also be keeping an
eye on that throughout.
So the first thing I'd like to talk to you is about the master of advanced
journalism.
Now this course is ideally suited for students who want to delve a
little bit more into the area,
and they have the option of taking more electives
including advanced journalism electives.
So it might suit those who want to specialize at this stage of their career,
or there might be completely new to journalism and want to
expand their journalism studies.
Certainly they can specialize in, for example,
sports reporter just we'll talk about later,
or they might want to in have an interest in data journalism where electives
from other faculties are available in re in relation to that.
We also have a digital journalism focus where we offer a variety of
practical and theoretical subjects across many disciplines,
including digital and social media. Now,
one of the things I like to highlight and I've worked across a lot of
germs and schools in Australia and overseas is we do more than
just teach students how to do journalism.
Rob focus is that we want students to
be thinking as journalists.
We want students to be journalism, critical thinkers.
So our courses have a very nice balance of both
practical skills, but also theoretical concepts.
We want you to sit on a table with other journalists and be able to talk the
talk and understand the issues that surround the industry of journalism.
So but not only that,
not only do we want you to be upscale to the latest digital
technologies in journalism and not only do we want you to think as journalists,
but we want you to think about changing journalism and
adapting, not just adapting to it,
it'd be the drivers of change for the future and them firmly believe in that.
And I hope that through our alumni,
you can see how the way they perceive journalism think about Joseph is
different when, when they came in.
So this is a really vital area that we focus on.
Moving on,
like to also talk about the advanced journalism structure.
So the master of advanced journalism is a year and a half.
It was full-time course, which can be done also part time.
So you can take part time students
depending on the subject, as it says, here could take up to two to five years.
Now, the course consists of six core subjects,
which you can find online or on the handbook.
And these are why they're important foundation for the course.
So the core subjects are advanced journalism,
me journal and accountability, journalism studies, digital journalism,
and beyond data and computational journals.
And we wrap it up with the journalism major project at the end, as a capstone.
You also get to choose electives,
and this is where your specialization in this is where if you want to be
specialized in a particular area or build your portfolio in a particular area,
you can select the electives accordingly.
So you can choose three elective subjects
and you can explore your interests.
And there are wide array of areas,
including creative, non-fiction, investigative journalism,
international and transnational gems and, and digital sports Germans.
And just to name a few,
so depending on where you want to be where you see yourself or how you would
like your portfolio to look, then you can select those electives.
And it's really important that you have that flexibility.
So a typical cost structure for full-time students would,
you would usually include two core subjects and one elective per
semester. So that's the load that you're looking into.
We also had the graduate diploma and advanced journalism in
the grad dip,
the core subjects you would take to study our advanced journalism,
media law, and accountability, journalism studies,
and digital journalism and beyond.
And these are combined with a very strong baseline for
knowledge, from which to continue building.
So advanced journalism and journalism studies expose you to
the crossover between practice and the theory with an overlay of
the pure practice incorporating latest technologies in
digital journalism and beyond.
So one of the ways you can do it is
you can start with a graduate diploma in advanced journalism
just to dip your toe and just get a feel of it.
And then you can always go on to the masters of advanced journalism
or arguably you can also go for the master's of advanced journalism,
and then if you want to cut it short,
then you can always fall back onto a graduate diploma in advanced journalism,
depending on the number of subjects that you have accumulated and passed.
We'll go on to talk about the GRA graduate diploma in sports media.
And I might hand over here to Alex Brown will introduce himself and talk about
that. Alex, are you around to talk about this?
How are you? Good to see Saba. Thanks Alex, for joining us.
Not a problem.
So guys just a quick run-through with digital
sports journalism.
So I think this is the third year I've been doing this.
I also work as head of communications at cricket Australia as a full-time
job, but the subject is very
deliberately practical.
And every week we are either in conversation with, you know,
one of the real sort of thought leaders or leaders in industry and in the sports
media space or were offsite at you know, for example,
so this semester, for example,
we've done an offsite at Fox sports and where we've watched evening and
programming being created live in the studio on the set in the control
room. And then speaking to all the people who are creating that live television
afterwards,
after it's finished we been to the Sydney cricket ground to have a look at
how a stadium operates in,
in a live environment from media perspective and also in the MX lab
to record at UTS to record podcasts.
So we try to cover all the disciplines and all the platforms so that, you know,
the you're assessed on video written and audio which, you know,
covers a fair few of the platforms that you know,
the digital sports media space covers,
and we try to cover some of the issues confronting it. And, and, and again,
so last night, for example
we would be in discussion with Finn Bradshaw,
who is the head of digital and on the executive of the international cricket
council in Dubai. So he joined us as aid. The, he was very,
it was very good of him to join us to, to talk with the students about, you know
the, the digital sports media space changes in the industry.
And there was some real,
like I learned quite a bit from our discussions with some of these
topic area experts, you know, talking about you know,
he's advice for those entering the industry. You know,
so it, again, it's a very, very deliberately a
hands-on practical course where you spend genuine face time with leaders in the
industry who listened to you, take your questions and the, I guess,
the flow and effect from that is that we've,
we've got a really good I would say record of
students picking up employment. So this semester alone,
I think there's three students who've already picked up paid shifts at Fox
sports. So quite often they'll they'll call and be looking for,
for recommendations. So we've got three this semester,
a couple of semesters ago. I think we had something like seven.
I'm not saying that's always the case,
but like we've got a pretty solid track record of
I th I think the industry views this subject favorably and that, you know,
the students who,
who Excel in it tend to have a pretty decent track record of of picking up
picking up, you know, genuine work in the industry.
So Saba that's the, that's the snapshot.
Thanks. That's really great, Alex. I,
it so that just kind of gives everybody an idea of what the course looks
like and the kind of energy that's going on there.
We'll hear more from Alex shortly.
But Alex actually very shortly, if you want to pitch into any of this,
then please do, but the idea of why studying gyms and sports media, UTS,
I can speak from the journalism aspect.
As it says here, we've got the industry facilities. You can,
you can have exclusive facilities to the
Sydney cricket, ground trust or more park facilities.
Did you want to talk about that, Alex at.
All? Yeah, again, so, so this, you know,
we, we spent the evening at Fox sports is always
it always goes down well with the students because you get to, you know,
we can talk about the theory and have all the discussions with, you know,
executive producers and CEOs, but the,
the evening at Fox sports every semester is the opportunity to see it being
created, live warts and all like, you know, it's actually,
some of the better nights is when life goes wrong,
because you actually get to see firsthand from a real industry experiences to
how, you know, how, how that, how they get through that.
So this year we went to the studios in our Tom and that we're
recording a television program called NRL three 60 that night.
And we've got quite a bit intake this year. I think we've got 21 students.
Three of which are overseas, who we,
we showed virtually this evening,
but we had to split into two groups,
one set in the control room for the first segment of the show until the first ad
break to see the line produces the sound technician,
everybody there behind the scenes, pulling the show together in real time,
as it went live to it.
And the other half were on the step with the talent and the cameras.
And then we switched in the ad break. And then afterwards the talent,
the hosts that APS or sat down with us talked about what was made,
talked about the roles and responsibilities and how live TV came to life.
So that's always a, that's always a great evening cause some it's watching,
watching sports, journalism, getting made in real time, going live to, you know,
a couple of hundred thousand people.
The Sydney cricket ground is another great one.
There's the UTS partnership,
the STG and has for many years where we, you know,
go onto the ground and they explained to us,
it's funny because you look at a stadium and you think it's grass and say it's,
but it's actually a mini city in terms of its connectivity. It's, you know,
that the Sydney Cricket Ground last summer was hosting a test metric between
Australia and India and, you know, the viewing audience,
the global viewing audience was alive in the hundreds of millions.
And so you've got this,
this venue in sitting in Moore park with this unbelievable ability in terms of
its connectivity and its ability to send messages out to the world,
which is a sophisticated as kind of anything you'll say in the world
genuinely. So you stayed from an operational level, from a, you know, sort of,
you know, the dressing rooms where the,
where the athletes are with a meteor out with the commentators are,
and you really get that feeling for what it is to be
producing journalism in this live environment.
And it's quite unique to sport if you don't,
you can't really replicate that in all avenues of journalism.
And then probably, yeah, the third, I guess, you know you know,
offside that we have is that one where we go to the MX lab in the Bon Marche
building in, in at UTS. And it's terrific because that,
that is as a facility,
the equivalent of pretty much any radio station you'll go to around the
country and the students sit there with their equipment, having,
you know, in groups of three to four, having worked through the script and,
you know, the roles that have reapplied to record a podcast, which we,
which are then assess. So again, you get this,
this terrific very practical, very hands-on
experiences to what it is to say at night law to create it yourself and to sort
of say it in that live environment, which again is quite quite unique to sport.
So I think,
I don't know of any other subject in the laced in this
city that offers that kind of, again, that hands-on experience, but also that,
that,
that window into the hirers and the decision makers and the thought leaders in
the industry and it's every week. So it's, it's pretty good.
It's pretty special like that.
Absolutely. And I do suggest you know,
come down and see our facilities and studios and come and talk to us.
Definitely it doesn't have to be confined within zoom to see a little bit more
of what we're talking about,
but also having our campus in the city really helps being so close to the
AC across the, the, the street basically, and,
and very close central to everything else. So thanks for that,
Alex. I'll move on to talk about central news,
which is our student publication.
Now central news has I actually asked
we have a new editor Martin Newman to join us,
but he's actually teaching as we speak that we're very excited about central
news because it's been developing beautifully.
It has actually won awards at two years in a row,
the Ozzies award for the best student publication.
And this is a very competitive space.
The idea of central news is this space where students can
work. We have a rotating mentorship program.
We've got an audio team, we've got a social media team, we've got a video team.
We, we focus a lot on multimedia.
I strongly encourage you to go and have a look at at the, at the site,
but more importantly,
it just brings into practice everything that you work on
for students or undergrad,
and post-grad every morning from nine to
10 30, we have a pitching
meeting where you can come and pitch your ideas. And we work with you.
I'm going to just call on Wendy, just off guard.
If she's here. When do you, John,
who has actually had a lot to do with central news.
So when did you want him to talk a little bit about your experience? Yeah,
thanks, Saba. Cause you,
the central news is one of the, yeah.
One of the best experiences in terms of
just you do your assignments and you learn so much from your assignments.
And I was able to build a really good level of capability across a whole range
of writing audio video socials,
but it's only when you do it again and again and again and again that you get
good and then you get faster and central news enabled
me to get better and faster. So it was,
it was such a rich part of my heart, my university experience,
I think, yeah, hands down. And I was,
I would like you to be a part of the student editor team and and still now
as a, as a mentor for some students. So it's kind of,
it's a part of that. It's part of that real newsroom experience,
but you can do it at your own pace and it's really supportive.
Like some students want to like, you know, I don't have a story,
but I want to do something for central news and you can work with a story editor
and they really support you to refine your ideas and come up with pitch.
And then it's you, they've got you back the whole time.
Thanks when do that's great.
And absolutely we that Martin has been sending out,
for example daily on what the latest news is and calls anyone who wants
to come do a story on it. So that's a really good way. I mean,
right now gone out last night and covering the budget.
So, you know, there's,
there's constantly things happening and there's a vibe and as you
will see,
and Wendy can also talk about that is that there are a variety of
topics that we welcome.
We do want to also not be restrained by certain
editorial agendas.
This is a platform and it's a space learning and that's why
it's really important. So thanks Wendy for that really a break.
And I'll move on to talk about the phone cross respondence study too.
We also offer Wendy was part of that,
but I'll also call on Michela and Alyce to talk a little bit about this,
but just to give you a background right now, the borders are closed.
So this is on holiday that we get funding from the department of foreign affairs
to run this study to which we take students
internationally for two weeks, we've gone to countries such as the Philippine,
Jordan, Tunisia, India, and Thailand.
And these study twos they are funded.
So students usually just pay their ticket,
but we have an exclusive partnership with SBS online.
And and so students have been publishing as they go.
One of the things that is important for us in this degree is
in addition to the things that we spoke about at the beginning,
which is the need to have that critical thinking with high level skills
is also to have an international outlook.
We want you to understand different gems and cultures and different ways that
journalism has been done. Michaela and Alyce joined us.
Michela actually came to Angeles
are both unique to the foreign correspondence study to when do you join too?
But Michaela came at one study tour and then join me into
nausea as a study tour
leader. So she was a student and then let it and Elise
is I think the only student who joined us for two study tours,
which was to Jordan and India.
So I start with Michaela and then at least if you want to
say a few words on that. Yeah. I would just say thank you to the study too.
I think it kicks out of my whole career, to be honest, before I signed up,
I didn't even know if I'd get accepted.
And then once we hit the ground we started in a man.
I filed a story the next day we're in the dead sea and Saba is editing it
for me.
Then we sent it off to SBS and then that evening it was live in Australia.
And to have that kind of rewarding experience of working so hard,
the adrenaline, you don't sleep, you know,
interviewing people in a country you've never been to before and then to have it
published the next day was absolutely incredible.
And then you just get even better with each story and just gives you that
confidence in that skill of digital journalism.
And then that's why I've not wanted to leave the project.
And so it was equally as rewarding to go to Tunisia and help the students,
the master students who went in 2019. Thanks Michaela. Yes,
we do five stories in two weeks. So it's a real foreign correspondent,
authentic learning experience, at least. Thanks Michaela.
At least. Yeah, I mean,
I think probably two things in terms of the turnaround of content in that two
weeks. I'm not sure about the other Michaela and Wendy,
but as a reporter in central Australia we were talking sort of
eight to 12 stories a week.
So I think you really do challenge yourself and you get into that
rhythm of producing things quickly.
But I think also in another knows I can handle it on hot and southerners
days. I would not be where I am today where it not for the
experience that those two foreign correspondent to is gave me
even one correspond for a correspondent to it would have been enough.
I think in terms of the not just the experience,
but the connections I made and I think the gravitas that's that
experience has by placing it on your resume and being able to have those
discussions and showing that you have that sense of wanting to challenge
yourself, explore new places and cultures and that you're agile.
That's something that yeah, absolutely would not be where I am today.
Career-Wise where it,
not for the fact that I did this masters and participated in these two
foreign correspondent to us. Thanks, Elise.
That's it's just reminded me of how it was and now we work on the buses
make them into newsrooms. So everywhere was a mobile news room,
but yeah,
so that is kind of an example of the internationalization of the
program along with having international guest speakers and also collaborations
with other students and journalists.
The advanced journalism admission requirements are listed
here.
So I won't go through them
simply because they are available online.
But just letting you know that applicants need to have completed a
a UTS recognized bachelor's degree or equivalent or higher qualification
or submitted other evidence of general professional qualifications that allow
them to pursue graduate studies.
If you don't have any of that and then applicants can provide a short essay of
no more than 1000 words about key challenges facing journalism and the
news industries. So you can read through that if you've got any questions,
let us know today just highlighting that for the English proficiency
requirement for international students is an
I outs of seven. So overall
the sports media admissions requirements are also listed
here. So quite similar, but with few variants.
So you do need to also include a personal statement of
approximately 500 words explaining why you do want to study this
course and a CV,
which could include details of paid and voluntary work or other experiences that
you think are relevant. And for the international ions,
it's 6.5 overall.
So in terms of the application deadlines we have
international students is 31st of May, 2021.
I might just call on James, moved from UTS.
If you would like to say anything at this point to act.
Hello, everyone knows this.
The application deadlines are pretty clear out there.
So domestic students can apply through the UTS online application system.
And I just realized that if you're a UTS student and you're trying to apply,
you may face issues trying to use your UTS login details,
you have to create a new login and profile to be able to
apply. That's it. Thanks, James.
In terms of the fees they are listed
here it is important just to remind
you that if you are an Australian citizen or
New Zealand, special category visa holder, or a humanitarian visa,
permanent resident,
you are entitled to fee help for your eligibility,
which is mainly a low tax loan from the government,
which you pay off very similar to hex.
Once you start working,
I must say that's how I paid off my masters at Monash university. So
so that's a,
that's a really good way of investing in your career and
it's it's always rewarding when you get to be where you
want to be or achieve what you want to achieve.
So definitely see it as an investment in your career certainly was for me.
If you are a UTS alumni,
then you get 10% of the fees if I'm
correct. So if you have any further questions,
please let us know in regards to the fees.
I will now move to the second part which is
the panel discussion.
So we're just going to have a little bit of a discussion and talk about things
in general.
So this is when I would kind of the last task the panel members to turn on their
cameras and their mics. I've got different,
we're going to have a relaxed chat tier.
So but before I start it would be great if the panelists
introduce themselves. You've had a little bit of everyone,
but be good if they can introduce themselves really properly.
So Alex, I might start with you.
Yeah. Hi guys. Sorry. I'm just struggling to find the video profile on it.
So Alex is mine.
I've been lecturing the subject for,
yeah, I think almost three years now. I,
I started in journalism at the Sydney morning Herald a long time ago.
When was it 95 in the mail room?
I think it was and was studying at UTS at the same time.
And have since worked
overseas in the U S for in San Francisco for a couple of years
Piper, they called the San Francisco examiner.
I was with the guardian in the UK.
I was with ESPN windier in the UK.
A little paper called this in Korea. I was in the caravan,
but there's PR that was probably more,
more life experience in journalism experience. But most of the time,
most of my career has been either, either the Sydney morning Herald
and stint that news Corp and through Fox sports in the last
two years I've gone to intercommunication with cricket Australia and
which is interesting, you know,
from the geopolitical standpoint is as much as anything.
And that's basically essentially in terms of the
original map. So.
Thanks Alex. I'll move on to Alyce.
Yep.
So I have a background in anthropology and sociology from
USYD. I spent my entire twenties
not knowing what I wanted to do and not knowing sort of where I belonged in the
world, I suppose.
And then I had done a bit of social media for a
psychologist in sorry, host and knew that I was good at writing.
And I was on Facebook one day and got served an ad for the master's
degree at UTS.
So I enrolled and I started the
degree and one of the,
my fellow students was looking for staff at a,
kind of a startup at news Corp called news extends.
And so I ended up working with her.
We were a two person team that looked after over 400 social media
accounts at news Corp.
And then did their two foreign correspondence study.
Two is finished my masters and there was a job in central
Australia in a place called Alice Springs that I really wanted.
So I ended up getting it after I finished my master's.
I was in Alice Springs as the senior reporter and digital editor there for a
year. And then COVID happened. I came back to Sydney for a couple of weeks,
which turned into a few months and started working for news local managing three
of their mastheads.
And then one of the politicians that I met whilst in Alice Springs
he scouted me for a role as he's engagement and communications
advisor.
So he is a young minister Aboriginal
he's gay sorry.
He checks all the right boxes in terms of representation up in the territory.
And I look after all the pieces I should media and comms.
So yeah, so I think coming from someone that, you know,
didn't know what they wanted to do throughout all their twenties I'm 34 now and
yeah,
the master's degree and everything absolutely changed my life.
So yeah, that's me in a nutshell.
That's great, Wendy.
So I've got a background of about 20 years in corporate learning and
development. So as a training and development manager facilitator,
and probably about six, seven years ago,
I really wanted to do something different. I wanted to do have a more creative,
a deeper, richer, more creative life.
And so I started looking at different options.
Was it filmmaking or was it journalism?
And I remember going to actually going to a face to face session exactly like
this back, you know,
those years ago and hearing about the program.
And I started the masters because I chose this master's because it was so
practical.
I thought I'm going to be able to get a lot of really hands on experience,
working with audio recorders, working with video, working with editing stuff,
where I'm going to learn how to write,
I'm going to learn how to create multiplex content.
I guess what I didn't expect. And obviously me chipping away at this.
I know I started when I fell pregnant, I started when I was pregnant,
I took 18 months off and I've just been chipping away some years.
I've only done one subject. Some years I've done two, I mean,
chipping away at the masters. I finally finished the end of last year.
And what I didn't expect was I actually,
I've got an undergrad in international business relations and I've studied some
international relations post-grad as well, a couple of subjects,
but I actually feel educated in a way that I never had before.
And a part of that is a segment of the time and the stories that pardon
me, the stories that I got to cover through central news,
that black lives matter movement.
And then covering coronial inquiries for tiny Chatfield indigenous
man who died in custody following candlelight vigils,
being challenged by younger students who are doing their undergrads,
working with them through central news hearing what their perspectives are.
So I'm 49,
I'm from a generation that has a certain viewpoint or viewpoints
relative to age.
And so to be able to engage with different people who were sometimes a
lot younger than me was very useful in
expanding my thinking in challenging my thinking and
enabling me to go deeper into my journalism studies beyond
just, Oh, I'm great at making video now. So it was,
it's been amazing and that is directly as a result of being involved in central
news. That that wouldn't necessarily,
I didn't think I would have had so much exposure to so many different ways of
thinking if I hadn't been engaged with that.
So that's one of the things I really love about UTS is just how many
opportunities there are outside of the actual
coursework and the course works great. I mean,
the foreign correspondent study tour is a subject, you know,
how good is that? So now I finished last year.
I did the Sydney morning Herald internship over the summer.
It's a tough time to be looking for work as a journalist,
but I've been doing a bit of freelance work throughout because I've taken up,
taking my time, doing the masters, which has been the best thing about
I've been also doing a bit of freelance work during that time. And I, I,
I had never listened to a podcast.
I think I'd listened to a Ted talk on podcast previously.
And then I had to make a podcast at uni and then, you know,
went to a conference and submitted the podcast for a podcast in competition with
no entertainment and, you know, wonderful competition.
And now I'm doing a podcast, but over, and then on the back of that,
I got some freelance work creating a podcast for Australian society of authors.
And since then you know, at the moment I'm doing a bit of freelance work work,
creating collaborating on a podcast for the Sydney Institute of Marine
science, with Sydney, for the manly seaweed forest festival. So
even though I'm not in, full-time work at the moment I'm looking for it,
but the, you know, there's,
there's work coming in as a direct result of being pushed
to do things that I didn't know anything about when I was at university.
Thanks, Wendy. And moving on to Michela,
who's also employed as a phone call to
leader and tutor at UTS.
So he's become one of us.
So if you can introduce yourself, Miguel, the show.
So I know I mentioned the foreign cars on it study tour,
but what I didn't say was that partnership with SBS directly led me to
employment. So on the strength of the work that I did in Jordan,
the editors back in Sydney said, Oh, Hey, are you available for two weeks,
do some work? And I said, yes.
Then as usual that the weeks turned into months turned into years.
So that directly as a result of that UTS project,
I had my first journalism job and it was at SPS and I loved it.
So I was there for a while SPS life and food writing, feature stories,
and also just learning how to be a digital journalist use social media,
you know, get a story out really quickly.
But then I saw another great opportunity through UTS,
which was to study in Denmark and working full time.
I saw it as an opportunity to finish the rest of my degree lung go in six
months. So I ended up studying at the Danish school of media and journalism,
which I don't want to keep throwing overseas opportunities around.
Cause I know it's tricky right now and we can't be it,
but it was an amazing opportunity given to me from UTS where I now have a whole
network of journalists from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America.
And we all studied together there in Denmark for six months.
Then when I came back,
I started doing some work for channel 10 and 10 daily and stayed
there for two years until COVID unfortunately hit.
And it was shut down by channel 10,
but that was another really great young newsroom.
I started just a few months after they launched.
There was also a lot of other great UTS, undergrad students working there.
And then since then I've been working kind of freelance,
which has been also really interesting, but yeah, a lot,
a lot to that I owe to the UTS master's degree.
Thanks Michela. That's great.
So I'm not just, I've got a question for each of you.
So,
but feel free if anyone wants to jump in and comment.
So Alex, I'll start with you and I'm really interested to know. I,
I would like to know what drew you to the career in sports
journalism? It's a good.
Question. It was something I felt
sort of three of my later years of high school I wanted to do.
What I didn't know it was now and
what I, what I've figured it was, you know, the,
the best way was just to get a foot in the door.
And it's funny because I still think that'll bless is really sounded certainly
when we have all the bosses through talking to the students. And it's always,
the first question that gets asked is like, how do I, how do I get you know,
how do I get into the industry?
And it's just like the very fact that you're here talking to me, not me,
but the people who are hiring now puts you ahead of the 200 Reiki
guys I've got on my desk.
To me that was getting a job in the mail and I was doing an undergrad at UTS.
But I just genuinely couldn't think of a better
career, which was, you know, the, the deadline pressure writing.
Yeah, that's now sort of expanded, obviously across many more platforms,
you know, the modern sports journalists, but, you know, I was very lucky.
I got to cover the Sydney, Athens,
Beijing Olympics have been to super bowl as well, cups
baseball world series traveled to India, the Caribbean, South Africa,
Zimbabwe with cricket. So you, you sort of, on the one hand, you,
you obviously must be able to go into sports, journalism, sort of like sport.
But you get to, you know, if you like writing and storytelling,
it's re it's a really rich environment.
And it's just, you know, kind of the opiate of the masses, right? Like it's,
it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a universal language in a lot of ways.
Like you can, you know,
you can go to a country that you've never been to before.
You might struggle with customs and cultures and language,
but it's sort of like the one thing that everybody kind of understands and,
you know, the places that this career has taken me,
if you'd asked me,
like at the age of 18 coming out of high school and joining the mile or the
Sydney morning Herald, I wouldn't have believed it, but it is. And, and,
you know, it's sort of,
it's something I'm quite conscious of in the class every semester is that like,
if you read the trade press, there's a lot of doom and gloom and, you know,
media is in trouble, like are,
I can't speak for every sector of journalism,
but it certainly in the sports space,
there's more jobs now than at any other point in my career.
And now they're not like they were so I'm 44. So, you know,
when I was coming through in the mid nineties,
you kind of got to choose the train and you used Piper radio station or TV
station, or maybe it was, and that was kind of vehicles, not nowhere else to go.
Whereas now, you know, lucky in the sports space, it's telcos,
it's sporting codes, it's the clubs, you know,
in addition to the mainstream media and really energizing and
enterprising independent media collective that's sort of coming
to life in that space. So it's dynamic, it's terrifying.
It's honest because the right of the right of change it was funny. I was,
I was lecturing a very similar subject for NYU a couple of semesters ago,
and I had this textbook, like, you know, terrific textbook,
like it only been printed about eight months before,
and I was reading it before the semester started and I called the professor in
New York and I said, I'd like two thirds of this is redundant.
And it's got nothing to do with the book itself. The book was terrific,
but that's the, that was the rate of change of the industry, you know,
which again comes back to the practical nature of this subject, which is,
you know,
it's very much about getting in front of listing to asking questions of
the people who are at the forefront of that change in the industry who are
making those decisions and then putting it into play yourself and making it,
creating it yourself across multiple platforms,
seeing it being made in real time. So, yeah, I, I just,
I dunno, like I still, I still think it's,
let's still think it's the best job in the world, so.
Right. To have a job you love. Thanks, Alex.
When do I might ask you a question about, I mean,
you spoke about your experience at UTS,
but what we have right now joining us today,
many people who are interested in our courses,
and that's why they're here and might perceive this as
an opportunity for a great change.
So what advice do you have
for love the attendees who were thinking about
starting this course? Like just a
few points or, or one piece of,
in terms of a career change?
I think the course really has equipped me with
the skills that I need, not just the course, but being a,
being a journalism student at UTS and all that,
that offers has really equipped me.
But I would have to say if I had to have done it full time in 18 months,
I mean,
that wasn't physically possible for me sort of having a baby and family and all
that sort of thing at the time. So if I'd had to do it in 18 months,
I honestly don't think I would have enjoyed it
anywhere near as much.
It wouldn't have enabled them because I really took it slowly.
I think that's my advice, taking it slowly as time,
I was able to do freelance learning and development and earn money and support
myself throughout this these years.
As well as learning these new skills and starting to pick up freelance
journalism. So at the moment I've got, I've got side-by-side careers going,
and then hopefully the journalism will start to take over more and more in the
freelance learning and development will Peter off.
So slowing it down. It's been such a blessing. Yeah.
And I've just loved it.
I've been able to achieve more because I've been able to just focus on
one subject,
one topic at a time and really dive deep and over a long
period of time, a longer period of time, just so just being patient and,
and allowing myself to do that and taking the pressure off.
And it's allowed me, I've been happier. I've had a happier life because of it.
And yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thanks,
Wendy. That's, that's sound advice now.
I'm conscious of time because I do think we need to learn for Q and a.
So I'm waiting for some kind of indication as to how we're going,
but I will squeeze in two quick questions, one for Alyce, one for Michaela,
so we'll make it snappy.
But at least you've been working during
COVID times and journalism has changed a little bit.
Do you think there were any skills that you picked up at UTS journalism that
allowed you to function in a COVID world or journalism
that we could not have predicted or even prepared anyone for?
I think in terms of
for me, I'm really big on the digital side of things.
So knowing that I had you know,
that insight into how the digital platforms operated
I'd made really fantastic networks as well
at at UTS. And so that also allowed me to
when the paper I was working for shut in central Australia allowed me to go back
to Sydney and then leverage those networks and get back in the game.
I mean, in terms of a COVID world
being able to work remotely and work independently
and being proactive and, and knowing that you,
you really have, I mean,
when you said before that you feel like you've received an education
I absolutely agree. It's, it's something that's,
I feel like it took me three years to do my masters and I was
absolutely empowered. I'm not just through the coursework,
but I think what sets UTS apart was the
care factor of the lecturers. So I think, yeah,
there was definitely a myriad of things that that gave me that sense of
resilience to be able to work remotely work independently,
know which questions to ask. I think the having really,
really good critical thinking skills and good problem solving skills and
knowing that again with the foreign correspondent to is that's,
if something goes wrong and in my job now, when I'm at Bush
or, you know,
when I covered a shooting in a remote community or the closure of the all the
reclined closure you're in places with no internet and no one that you can get
guidance from. And so being able to really back yourself
and, and really something I'll take away from UTS
or something I did take away from UTS. That's lovely. Thank you.
We've got questions coming into the QA box,
so hopefully we will answer them as we go. Good, James Lew,
is that taking care of it, but if, if there are any questions for the panel,
then let us know. And meanwhile,
I'll move on to my last question to Michaela Michaela,
you spoke about working for SBS online,
and you've been on other online news platforms working.
How do you usually journalism?
There's a huge focus on digital skills and digital media,
and we are aware of the need of the future focus of the industry.
So how does this professor students for when they start applying the skills they
have learned in their work place? If you can tell us a little bit,
I think when you're doing these projects,
like if you're working on central news or foreign correspondence study tour,
you're learning to do the things that I think when I did my undergraduate,
we weren't learning as much back then
were learning how to pitch learning how to put a story,
put a story together and learning how to put a social cell together.
So people actually click on it when they see it on social media.
So all those little practical things, if you know how to tell a story,
there's all these other elements that you're learning at UTS that help you,
when you get to a workplace setting, you feel at home, you know what to do.
Thanks, man. That's, that's really
appreciate it.
We've got three questions and I'm going to just throw them at the panel.
The, some that I can answer. So the first one is by Nikki.
Does UTS journalism have any industry partnerships? Yes, we do.
We have a very strong industry partnership with
different various news organizations,
but what's more important is that we have as part of
our team doctor had an invest, the cupolas,
who is the intention for nature. And also Christine,
can you teach them to the man who's the international partnerships coordinator
and they are working exclusively on providing internships and opportunities for
students.
So we actually had the inbox flooded on a weekly basis.
I think our alumni can attest to that. In,
in that we do have partnerships and we are very well known at
UTS for always having graduates who end up
suited for industry and getting employed.
So industry partners are always happy to take our students.
We've got another question here by
Michael,
I believe is doing this course part-time and working part-time
manageable. Wendy,
you spoke time. I think it's so many different variables.
I, the answer is, is yes.
And also you can always,
you did you start off doing three subjects one semester and that's too much,
we cut back to one subject the next semester and that's,
that's fine as well.
It depends what else is going to be going on outside the life. You know,
what other family commitments you might have,
what other commitments to your community and your,
your friendship group or your hobbies,
or your interests and passions you might have. So, you know, as with anything,
when you bring a major commitment into your life, whatever that is, for example,
university, then there might be some things that you say, okay,
for the next some, you know, for these next 12 weeks, I'm not going to do that.
Or you take something out of your life, make it manageable.
I think it's finding the balance so that it's enjoyable and
useful rather than just an extra stress in your life is important.
And that'll be different for different people. Thanks.
Thanks so much short answer. Yeah.
Getting through it just to the point. Oh,
so if you're making, if you're making this investment
like you actually want to take the time to.
To.
Enjoy it and to do well. I think you know,
I had a little sister who the rhetoric was, PS get degrees,
but when you're doing your masters,
you actually really want to see how much you can challenge yourself and see how
well you can do. So I worked full time and study part time.
And it's absolutely doable. You just have to, you know,
know that you love what you're doing and take it day by day.
Thanks, Elise. We started five paths.
So I think we can squeeze in one more question,
which is the only question we have open at this stage. And this one is for you,
Alex.
So a question for Alex from Gina sports comms is very
competitive industry not to get into does this course provide me with the
opportunity to network.
I am concerned that I will be older than the average 21 year old intern
applicant. So hoping this course will.
Yeah, so, so that I would say I wouldn't.
So one of the,
I think one of the central factors of this is that networking opportunity. And,
you know, so example last night we, as we were talking to the,
somebody who's on the executive of the international cricket council in Dubai
who runs a digital media arm and, you know, he's, he's,
sign-off was here and must, here are my contacts here and my social accounts,
follow me. Talk to me, ask me questions.
And that's a really common refrain from the people in our subject,
some, some, honestly, some of my favorites.
But then I remember him in my first semester, we had a,
we had a student who was,
if he wasn't 50 years knocking on the door of it and he was a geologist.
And he called me one week and said, look, I'm really sorry.
I have to miss this week's class. I'm like, no, that's fine. Like, you know,
what, what, what's the reason? And he had to give it,
give a talk at a symposium in Peru that Waco in
geology, but he loved sports journalism. And he now,
so he still works in geology and loves it.
And I think he's really well-regarded in that industry. I mean,
they're flying into South America to speak.
So I figured he must be good at what he does.
But he's writing for some sports journals and publications
around the country and, you know,
and he's getting published quite frequently and I follow him on Twitter now.
And I dunno, man, like, that's just awesome.
Like he's a guy who his career had been going in one direction for
decades and, and it's not that he's lost that he's just, you know,
he's had a passion and he's followed it. And now he's able to, I guess,
engage that passion, you know,
without kind of completely going the full state change from what he was doing.
You know, I think that's great. So I, I wouldn't,
I definitely wouldn't worry about the age thing because I think if Jason can
crack it, then say you're, you're every chance.
And in terms of the networking opportunities,
I think it's generally one of the features of this subject.
It's one of the best parts.
And seriously organized to that. When you apply for internships,
it's usually a written internship application. They don't know how old you are.
Like I'm 49. I got an internship last summer,
this past summer with Sydney morning Herald, you know, so the advantage of,
I feel the same, why in part, I was like, Oh no, am I too, am I too old?
And I can't give the same sort of hours as, you know,
some 19 year old who goes home and has their washing and done for them in meals
provided I can't do that. But at the other hand,
I have all this wealth of experience from a life lived and professional
background that these other things, other candidates going to have.
So it's six to one, half dozen of the other.
And I choose to focus on what I do have rather than what I don't.
Yeah.
Beautifully said and genuinely to thank you so much.
There are no more questions in the Q and a so I will wrap this
just to be on time 59 minutes. We've been going,
I want to very sensitive all the attendees for coming.
I'm going to be after I ended up put up a slide with a contact
information, if you need any further information, but fee,
it feels free to contact me,
Saba Bebawi head of discipline or anyone else
who you want from the team. All our details are online.
I want to thank Alex for his,
from his very busy schedule for joining us today.
It's great for students to know that they could potentially be working with and
huge big thank you to my students who have now become
friends, Michaela, Wendy,
and Alyce from different parts of Australia.
Thank you so much for being there. And yes.
So hopefully we get to see you and work with you and even travel with you
at UTS journalism. Thank you so much. And I'll just end up with the slide. Bye,
everyone.
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IT Games Studio Sample of Student Work
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James Perry FJMT Studio (architects)
So here we are in the UTS Central building, it’s a 5 star Green Star and 5 star ‘as built’ building.
The contributing factors to the Green Star rating of this building range from the integration of landscape, the connection to the precinct plant across the road at Central Park, tapping into their tri-gen plant but also their recycled water, in terms of no plastic on the campus we built in sustainability clauses within the tenants in the Food Court, the use of recycled material, the performance of the glass façade with shading systems that are integrated into the facades.
What is unique about this building, and unique by its location in the city and its proximity to Central Park is that we’ve been able to get a precinct sharing with Central Park which allows us to tap into their tri-gen plant. Tri-gen plants means that we can actually take the cooling from that plant and use it within this building.
Where we have used timber in the building it is certified sustainable timber, in the terraces that was a key factor in how we actually used the timber.
The solar benches on level 8 are really about wirelessly recharging phones, so students can go out there, sit on the bench, place their device phone down and that wirelessly charges their phone with solar power.
So, the building has three roof gardens, two terraces at level 8 and one on the roof (level 17). The landscape on their gives an amazing opportunity for biodiversity. It was important that we introduced trees, and actually tried to introduce mature trees so that those spaces get activated immediately, and create a passive shaded place in those spaces. And so the objective was to actually find recycled trees. So on level 17 we sources recycled olive trees and on level 8 recycled fig trees. And we actually had to crane them in because of their size. And they were sourced from a nursery that salvages trees from sites that are being redeveloped or just change in use. We intentionally used really hardy resistant plantings – that’s really important, and the species selection of the plants is really essential. Given the extent of the landscape it also helped us control the performance of those roof gardens and the performance of the buildings, insulation of the levels below, but just more generally as well, from a landscape point of view, to actually connect that greenery and the planting to the campus and into the city as well.
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From predicting the risk of natural disasters to shaping global policy responses to COVID-19, making sense of increasingly massive data sets can help solve some of the most significant challenges facing humanity today.
At UTS, the Master of Information Technology with a major in data analytics is preparing students to meet the challenges of a data driven world. Accredited by the Australian Computer Society, course content is designed in partnership with industry and builds on student's existing academic and professional IT knowledge.
Through core subjects students gain exposure to fundamental concepts like Data Visualisation, Machine Learning, and Advanced Analytics Algorithms. With the global analytics market set to move and double in value to $549 billion by 2028, analytics graduates remain highly sought after in Australia and beyond. The UTS, Master of Information Technology in Data Analytics is a leading degree for a profession with limitless opportunities.
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Welcome to UTS at the Rugby Australia Building in Moore Park. This world-class facility is a first for Australia - embedding university programs in a sporting centre of excellence. It's home to more than 700 staff, researchers and students working across sport and exercise science and physiotherapy.
Our location within Sydney's elite sporting precinct provides us the opportunity to work as professional athletes, coaches and sporting organisations which is opening doors to internships and exciting careers.
Our high performance training spaces include a multi-purpose Sports Hall, a resistance training facility and this rooftop running track. State-of-the-art classrooms and study spaces make it a great place to learn, collaborate and connect.
In our cutting-edge research labs we're working on a range of projects involving exercise physiology biomechanics, training sciences, skill acquisition, strength and conditioning and injury management and prevention. Our researchers are making an impact in both sports performance and health outcomes for people of all ages and abilities.
UTS Graduate School of Health operates an on-site physiotherapy teaching facility for post-grad and research students with a focus on neuromuscular rehabilitation and injury prevention.
And there's no better place for you to learn the skills to take you into the press box then with our industry relevant sports media and journalism degree. This custom-built facility is providing unmatched opportunities for UTS students and researchers looking to build a career in Australia's Sport and Exercise industry. And it's allowing UTS to play a leading role in the future of Australian sport.
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Okay, good evening, everyone.
And welcome to the postgraduate
information session here at UTSindustry
panel information session for journalism and sports media.
My name is professor Saba Bebawi.
I'm head of discipline for journalism and writing,
and I'm joined tonight with Alex Brown, head of discipline sports media,
head of Communications Cricket Australia. And also we have with us,
the alumni panel, Wendy John, Michaela Morgan, and Alyce Mokrzycki.
So I would like to start by a welcome to country,
and I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation
upon whose ancestral lands our city campus now stands.
I would also like to pay respect to the elders both past and present
acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land.
Now, before we start just a few housekeeping things to keep in
mind, we will be recording this session.
So I just wanted you to know that this recording
is purely for a resource for the future.
So by taking part in this session I just heard that you understand acknowledge
that your information will be used for those purposes.
You mean vault and beauty quoted as part of this webinar.
Just contact UTS at marketing fass.Marketing@Uts.Edu.Au
instead to discuss any questions that you might have.
So let's start today.
I just I'm excited to see you all here and clearly you are interested
to know more about us.
So what we'll do is we'll the plan for today's that we'll talk through
giving you background about the courses we offer and how they're structured and
why we do them.
We then we'll move on to a panel where we will have a
discussion about all things, journalism in the current environment,
and then we'll pass it on to you for Q and a. So if you don't mind,
if you can just keep the questions if you have
any questions, please use the Q and a box at the bottom.
And hold on hold off until we get to the Q and a,
if you don't mind I do want to let you know that we will also be keeping an
eye on that throughout.
So the first thing I'd like to talk to you is about the master of advanced
journalism.
Now this course is ideally suited for students who want to delve a
little bit more into the area,
and they have the option of taking more electives
including advanced journalism electives.
So it might suit those who want to specialize at this stage of their career,
or there might be completely new to journalism and want to
expand their journalism studies.
Certainly they can specialize in, for example,
sports reporter just we'll talk about later,
or they might want to in have an interest in data journalism where electives
from other faculties are available in re in relation to that.
We also have a digital journalism focus where we offer a variety of
practical and theoretical subjects across many disciplines,
including digital and social media. Now,
one of the things I like to highlight and I've worked across a lot of
germs and schools in Australia and overseas is we do more than
just teach students how to do journalism.
Rob focus is that we want students to
be thinking as journalists.
We want students to be journalism, critical thinkers.
So our courses have a very nice balance of both
practical skills, but also theoretical concepts.
We want you to sit on a table with other journalists and be able to talk the
talk and understand the issues that surround the industry of journalism.
So but not only that,
not only do we want you to be upscale to the latest digital
technologies in journalism and not only do we want you to think as journalists,
but we want you to think about changing journalism and
adapting, not just adapting to it,
it'd be the drivers of change for the future and them firmly believe in that.
And I hope that through our alumni,
you can see how the way they perceive journalism think about Joseph is
different when, when they came in.
So this is a really vital area that we focus on.
Moving on,
like to also talk about the advanced journalism structure.
So the master of advanced journalism is a year and a half.
It was full-time course, which can be done also part time.
So you can take part time students
depending on the subject, as it says, here could take up to two to five years.
Now, the course consists of six core subjects,
which you can find online or on the handbook.
And these are why they're important foundation for the course.
So the core subjects are advanced journalism,
me journal and accountability, journalism studies, digital journalism,
and beyond data and computational journals.
And we wrap it up with the journalism major project at the end, as a capstone.
You also get to choose electives,
and this is where your specialization in this is where if you want to be
specialized in a particular area or build your portfolio in a particular area,
you can select the electives accordingly.
So you can choose three elective subjects
and you can explore your interests.
And there are wide array of areas,
including creative, non-fiction, investigative journalism,
international and transnational gems and, and digital sports Germans.
And just to name a few,
so depending on where you want to be where you see yourself or how you would
like your portfolio to look, then you can select those electives.
And it's really important that you have that flexibility.
So a typical cost structure for full-time students would,
you would usually include two core subjects and one elective per
semester. So that's the load that you're looking into.
We also had the graduate diploma and advanced journalism in
the grad dip,
the core subjects you would take to study our advanced journalism,
media law, and accountability, journalism studies,
and digital journalism and beyond.
And these are combined with a very strong baseline for
knowledge, from which to continue building.
So advanced journalism and journalism studies expose you to
the crossover between practice and the theory with an overlay of
the pure practice incorporating latest technologies in
digital journalism and beyond.
So one of the ways you can do it is
you can start with a graduate diploma in advanced journalism
just to dip your toe and just get a feel of it.
And then you can always go on to the masters of advanced journalism
or arguably you can also go for the master's of advanced journalism,
and then if you want to cut it short,
then you can always fall back onto a graduate diploma in advanced journalism,
depending on the number of subjects that you have accumulated and passed.
We'll go on to talk about the GRA graduate diploma in sports media.
And I might hand over here to Alex Brown will introduce himself and talk about
that. Alex, are you around to talk about this?
How are you? Good to see Saba. Thanks Alex, for joining us.
Not a problem.
So guys just a quick run-through with digital
sports journalism.
So I think this is the third year I've been doing this.
I also work as head of communications at cricket Australia as a full-time
job, but the subject is very
deliberately practical.
And every week we are either in conversation with, you know,
one of the real sort of thought leaders or leaders in industry and in the sports
media space or were offsite at you know, for example,
so this semester, for example,
we've done an offsite at Fox sports and where we've watched evening and
programming being created live in the studio on the set in the control
room. And then speaking to all the people who are creating that live television
afterwards,
after it's finished we been to the Sydney cricket ground to have a look at
how a stadium operates in,
in a live environment from media perspective and also in the MX lab
to record at UTS to record podcasts.
So we try to cover all the disciplines and all the platforms so that, you know,
the you're assessed on video written and audio which, you know,
covers a fair few of the platforms that you know,
the digital sports media space covers,
and we try to cover some of the issues confronting it. And, and, and again,
so last night, for example
we would be in discussion with Finn Bradshaw,
who is the head of digital and on the executive of the international cricket
council in Dubai. So he joined us as aid. The, he was very,
it was very good of him to join us to, to talk with the students about, you know
the, the digital sports media space changes in the industry.
And there was some real,
like I learned quite a bit from our discussions with some of these
topic area experts, you know, talking about you know,
he's advice for those entering the industry. You know,
so it, again, it's a very, very deliberately a
hands-on practical course where you spend genuine face time with leaders in the
industry who listened to you, take your questions and the, I guess,
the flow and effect from that is that we've,
we've got a really good I would say record of
students picking up employment. So this semester alone,
I think there's three students who've already picked up paid shifts at Fox
sports. So quite often they'll they'll call and be looking for,
for recommendations. So we've got three this semester,
a couple of semesters ago. I think we had something like seven.
I'm not saying that's always the case,
but like we've got a pretty solid track record of
I th I think the industry views this subject favorably and that, you know,
the students who,
who Excel in it tend to have a pretty decent track record of of picking up
picking up, you know, genuine work in the industry.
So Saba that's the, that's the snapshot.
Thanks. That's really great, Alex. I,
it so that just kind of gives everybody an idea of what the course looks
like and the kind of energy that's going on there.
We'll hear more from Alex shortly.
But Alex actually very shortly, if you want to pitch into any of this,
then please do, but the idea of why studying gyms and sports media, UTS,
I can speak from the journalism aspect.
As it says here, we've got the industry facilities. You can,
you can have exclusive facilities to the
Sydney cricket, ground trust or more park facilities.
Did you want to talk about that, Alex at.
All? Yeah, again, so, so this, you know,
we, we spent the evening at Fox sports is always
it always goes down well with the students because you get to, you know,
we can talk about the theory and have all the discussions with, you know,
executive producers and CEOs, but the,
the evening at Fox sports every semester is the opportunity to see it being
created, live warts and all like, you know, it's actually,
some of the better nights is when life goes wrong,
because you actually get to see firsthand from a real industry experiences to
how, you know, how, how that, how they get through that.
So this year we went to the studios in our Tom and that we're
recording a television program called NRL three 60 that night.
And we've got quite a bit intake this year. I think we've got 21 students.
Three of which are overseas, who we,
we showed virtually this evening,
but we had to split into two groups,
one set in the control room for the first segment of the show until the first ad
break to see the line produces the sound technician,
everybody there behind the scenes, pulling the show together in real time,
as it went live to it.
And the other half were on the step with the talent and the cameras.
And then we switched in the ad break. And then afterwards the talent,
the hosts that APS or sat down with us talked about what was made,
talked about the roles and responsibilities and how live TV came to life.
So that's always a, that's always a great evening cause some it's watching,
watching sports, journalism, getting made in real time, going live to, you know,
a couple of hundred thousand people.
The Sydney cricket ground is another great one.
There's the UTS partnership,
the STG and has for many years where we, you know,
go onto the ground and they explained to us,
it's funny because you look at a stadium and you think it's grass and say it's,
but it's actually a mini city in terms of its connectivity. It's, you know,
that the Sydney Cricket Ground last summer was hosting a test metric between
Australia and India and, you know, the viewing audience,
the global viewing audience was alive in the hundreds of millions.
And so you've got this,
this venue in sitting in Moore park with this unbelievable ability in terms of
its connectivity and its ability to send messages out to the world,
which is a sophisticated as kind of anything you'll say in the world
genuinely. So you stayed from an operational level, from a, you know, sort of,
you know, the dressing rooms where the,
where the athletes are with a meteor out with the commentators are,
and you really get that feeling for what it is to be
producing journalism in this live environment.
And it's quite unique to sport if you don't,
you can't really replicate that in all avenues of journalism.
And then probably, yeah, the third, I guess, you know you know,
offside that we have is that one where we go to the MX lab in the Bon Marche
building in, in at UTS. And it's terrific because that,
that is as a facility,
the equivalent of pretty much any radio station you'll go to around the
country and the students sit there with their equipment, having,
you know, in groups of three to four, having worked through the script and,
you know, the roles that have reapplied to record a podcast, which we,
which are then assess. So again, you get this,
this terrific very practical, very hands-on
experiences to what it is to say at night law to create it yourself and to sort
of say it in that live environment, which again is quite quite unique to sport.
So I think,
I don't know of any other subject in the laced in this
city that offers that kind of, again, that hands-on experience, but also that,
that,
that window into the hirers and the decision makers and the thought leaders in
the industry and it's every week. So it's, it's pretty good.
It's pretty special like that.
Absolutely. And I do suggest you know,
come down and see our facilities and studios and come and talk to us.
Definitely it doesn't have to be confined within zoom to see a little bit more
of what we're talking about,
but also having our campus in the city really helps being so close to the
AC across the, the, the street basically, and,
and very close central to everything else. So thanks for that,
Alex. I'll move on to talk about central news,
which is our student publication.
Now central news has I actually asked
we have a new editor Martin Newman to join us,
but he's actually teaching as we speak that we're very excited about central
news because it's been developing beautifully.
It has actually won awards at two years in a row,
the Ozzies award for the best student publication.
And this is a very competitive space.
The idea of central news is this space where students can
work. We have a rotating mentorship program.
We've got an audio team, we've got a social media team, we've got a video team.
We, we focus a lot on multimedia.
I strongly encourage you to go and have a look at at the, at the site,
but more importantly,
it just brings into practice everything that you work on
for students or undergrad,
and post-grad every morning from nine to
10 30, we have a pitching
meeting where you can come and pitch your ideas. And we work with you.
I'm going to just call on Wendy, just off guard.
If she's here. When do you, John,
who has actually had a lot to do with central news.
So when did you want him to talk a little bit about your experience? Yeah,
thanks, Saba. Cause you,
the central news is one of the, yeah.
One of the best experiences in terms of
just you do your assignments and you learn so much from your assignments.
And I was able to build a really good level of capability across a whole range
of writing audio video socials,
but it's only when you do it again and again and again and again that you get
good and then you get faster and central news enabled
me to get better and faster. So it was,
it was such a rich part of my heart, my university experience,
I think, yeah, hands down. And I was,
I would like you to be a part of the student editor team and and still now
as a, as a mentor for some students. So it's kind of,
it's a part of that. It's part of that real newsroom experience,
but you can do it at your own pace and it's really supportive.
Like some students want to like, you know, I don't have a story,
but I want to do something for central news and you can work with a story editor
and they really support you to refine your ideas and come up with pitch.
And then it's you, they've got you back the whole time.
Thanks when do that's great.
And absolutely we that Martin has been sending out,
for example daily on what the latest news is and calls anyone who wants
to come do a story on it. So that's a really good way. I mean,
right now gone out last night and covering the budget.
So, you know, there's,
there's constantly things happening and there's a vibe and as you
will see,
and Wendy can also talk about that is that there are a variety of
topics that we welcome.
We do want to also not be restrained by certain
editorial agendas.
This is a platform and it's a space learning and that's why
it's really important. So thanks Wendy for that really a break.
And I'll move on to talk about the phone cross respondence study too.
We also offer Wendy was part of that,
but I'll also call on Michela and Alyce to talk a little bit about this,
but just to give you a background right now, the borders are closed.
So this is on holiday that we get funding from the department of foreign affairs
to run this study to which we take students
internationally for two weeks, we've gone to countries such as the Philippine,
Jordan, Tunisia, India, and Thailand.
And these study twos they are funded.
So students usually just pay their ticket,
but we have an exclusive partnership with SBS online.
And and so students have been publishing as they go.
One of the things that is important for us in this degree is
in addition to the things that we spoke about at the beginning,
which is the need to have that critical thinking with high level skills
is also to have an international outlook.
We want you to understand different gems and cultures and different ways that
journalism has been done. Michaela and Alyce joined us.
Michela actually came to Angeles
are both unique to the foreign correspondence study to when do you join too?
But Michaela came at one study tour and then join me into
nausea as a study tour
leader. So she was a student and then let it and Elise
is I think the only student who joined us for two study tours,
which was to Jordan and India.
So I start with Michaela and then at least if you want to
say a few words on that. Yeah. I would just say thank you to the study too.
I think it kicks out of my whole career, to be honest, before I signed up,
I didn't even know if I'd get accepted.
And then once we hit the ground we started in a man.
I filed a story the next day we're in the dead sea and Saba is editing it
for me.
Then we sent it off to SBS and then that evening it was live in Australia.
And to have that kind of rewarding experience of working so hard,
the adrenaline, you don't sleep, you know,
interviewing people in a country you've never been to before and then to have it
published the next day was absolutely incredible.
And then you just get even better with each story and just gives you that
confidence in that skill of digital journalism.
And then that's why I've not wanted to leave the project.
And so it was equally as rewarding to go to Tunisia and help the students,
the master students who went in 2019. Thanks Michaela. Yes,
we do five stories in two weeks. So it's a real foreign correspondent,
authentic learning experience, at least. Thanks Michaela.
At least. Yeah, I mean,
I think probably two things in terms of the turnaround of content in that two
weeks. I'm not sure about the other Michaela and Wendy,
but as a reporter in central Australia we were talking sort of
eight to 12 stories a week.
So I think you really do challenge yourself and you get into that
rhythm of producing things quickly.
But I think also in another knows I can handle it on hot and southerners
days. I would not be where I am today where it not for the
experience that those two foreign correspondent to is gave me
even one correspond for a correspondent to it would have been enough.
I think in terms of the not just the experience,
but the connections I made and I think the gravitas that's that
experience has by placing it on your resume and being able to have those
discussions and showing that you have that sense of wanting to challenge
yourself, explore new places and cultures and that you're agile.
That's something that yeah, absolutely would not be where I am today.
Career-Wise where it,
not for the fact that I did this masters and participated in these two
foreign correspondent to us. Thanks, Elise.
That's it's just reminded me of how it was and now we work on the buses
make them into newsrooms. So everywhere was a mobile news room,
but yeah,
so that is kind of an example of the internationalization of the
program along with having international guest speakers and also collaborations
with other students and journalists.
The advanced journalism admission requirements are listed
here.
So I won't go through them
simply because they are available online.
But just letting you know that applicants need to have completed a
a UTS recognized bachelor's degree or equivalent or higher qualification
or submitted other evidence of general professional qualifications that allow
them to pursue graduate studies.
If you don't have any of that and then applicants can provide a short essay of
no more than 1000 words about key challenges facing journalism and the
news industries. So you can read through that if you've got any questions,
let us know today just highlighting that for the English proficiency
requirement for international students is an
I outs of seven. So overall
the sports media admissions requirements are also listed
here. So quite similar, but with few variants.
So you do need to also include a personal statement of
approximately 500 words explaining why you do want to study this
course and a CV,
which could include details of paid and voluntary work or other experiences that
you think are relevant. And for the international ions,
it's 6.5 overall.
So in terms of the application deadlines we have
international students is 31st of May, 2021.
I might just call on James, moved from UTS.
If you would like to say anything at this point to act.
Hello, everyone knows this.
The application deadlines are pretty clear out there.
So domestic students can apply through the UTS online application system.
And I just realized that if you're a UTS student and you're trying to apply,
you may face issues trying to use your UTS login details,
you have to create a new login and profile to be able to
apply. That's it. Thanks, James.
In terms of the fees they are listed
here it is important just to remind
you that if you are an Australian citizen or
New Zealand, special category visa holder, or a humanitarian visa,
permanent resident,
you are entitled to fee help for your eligibility,
which is mainly a low tax loan from the government,
which you pay off very similar to hex.
Once you start working,
I must say that's how I paid off my masters at Monash university. So
so that's a,
that's a really good way of investing in your career and
it's it's always rewarding when you get to be where you
want to be or achieve what you want to achieve.
So definitely see it as an investment in your career certainly was for me.
If you are a UTS alumni,
then you get 10% of the fees if I'm
correct. So if you have any further questions,
please let us know in regards to the fees.
I will now move to the second part which is
the panel discussion.
So we're just going to have a little bit of a discussion and talk about things
in general.
So this is when I would kind of the last task the panel members to turn on their
cameras and their mics. I've got different,
we're going to have a relaxed chat tier.
So but before I start it would be great if the panelists
introduce themselves. You've had a little bit of everyone,
but be good if they can introduce themselves really properly.
So Alex, I might start with you.
Yeah. Hi guys. Sorry. I'm just struggling to find the video profile on it.
So Alex is mine.
I've been lecturing the subject for,
yeah, I think almost three years now. I,
I started in journalism at the Sydney morning Herald a long time ago.
When was it 95 in the mail room?
I think it was and was studying at UTS at the same time.
And have since worked
overseas in the U S for in San Francisco for a couple of years
Piper, they called the San Francisco examiner.
I was with the guardian in the UK.
I was with ESPN windier in the UK.
A little paper called this in Korea. I was in the caravan,
but there's PR that was probably more,
more life experience in journalism experience. But most of the time,
most of my career has been either, either the Sydney morning Herald
and stint that news Corp and through Fox sports in the last
two years I've gone to intercommunication with cricket Australia and
which is interesting, you know,
from the geopolitical standpoint is as much as anything.
And that's basically essentially in terms of the
original map. So.
Thanks Alex. I'll move on to Alyce.
Yep.
So I have a background in anthropology and sociology from
USYD. I spent my entire twenties
not knowing what I wanted to do and not knowing sort of where I belonged in the
world, I suppose.
And then I had done a bit of social media for a
psychologist in sorry, host and knew that I was good at writing.
And I was on Facebook one day and got served an ad for the master's
degree at UTS.
So I enrolled and I started the
degree and one of the,
my fellow students was looking for staff at a,
kind of a startup at news Corp called news extends.
And so I ended up working with her.
We were a two person team that looked after over 400 social media
accounts at news Corp.
And then did their two foreign correspondence study.
Two is finished my masters and there was a job in central
Australia in a place called Alice Springs that I really wanted.
So I ended up getting it after I finished my master's.
I was in Alice Springs as the senior reporter and digital editor there for a
year. And then COVID happened. I came back to Sydney for a couple of weeks,
which turned into a few months and started working for news local managing three
of their mastheads.
And then one of the politicians that I met whilst in Alice Springs
he scouted me for a role as he's engagement and communications
advisor.
So he is a young minister Aboriginal
he's gay sorry.
He checks all the right boxes in terms of representation up in the territory.
And I look after all the pieces I should media and comms.
So yeah, so I think coming from someone that, you know,
didn't know what they wanted to do throughout all their twenties I'm 34 now and
yeah,
the master's degree and everything absolutely changed my life.
So yeah, that's me in a nutshell.
That's great, Wendy.
So I've got a background of about 20 years in corporate learning and
development. So as a training and development manager facilitator,
and probably about six, seven years ago,
I really wanted to do something different. I wanted to do have a more creative,
a deeper, richer, more creative life.
And so I started looking at different options.
Was it filmmaking or was it journalism?
And I remember going to actually going to a face to face session exactly like
this back, you know,
those years ago and hearing about the program.
And I started the masters because I chose this master's because it was so
practical.
I thought I'm going to be able to get a lot of really hands on experience,
working with audio recorders, working with video, working with editing stuff,
where I'm going to learn how to write,
I'm going to learn how to create multiplex content.
I guess what I didn't expect. And obviously me chipping away at this.
I know I started when I fell pregnant, I started when I was pregnant,
I took 18 months off and I've just been chipping away some years.
I've only done one subject. Some years I've done two, I mean,
chipping away at the masters. I finally finished the end of last year.
And what I didn't expect was I actually,
I've got an undergrad in international business relations and I've studied some
international relations post-grad as well, a couple of subjects,
but I actually feel educated in a way that I never had before.
And a part of that is a segment of the time and the stories that pardon
me, the stories that I got to cover through central news,
that black lives matter movement.
And then covering coronial inquiries for tiny Chatfield indigenous
man who died in custody following candlelight vigils,
being challenged by younger students who are doing their undergrads,
working with them through central news hearing what their perspectives are.
So I'm 49,
I'm from a generation that has a certain viewpoint or viewpoints
relative to age.
And so to be able to engage with different people who were sometimes a
lot younger than me was very useful in
expanding my thinking in challenging my thinking and
enabling me to go deeper into my journalism studies beyond
just, Oh, I'm great at making video now. So it was,
it's been amazing and that is directly as a result of being involved in central
news. That that wouldn't necessarily,
I didn't think I would have had so much exposure to so many different ways of
thinking if I hadn't been engaged with that.
So that's one of the things I really love about UTS is just how many
opportunities there are outside of the actual
coursework and the course works great. I mean,
the foreign correspondent study tour is a subject, you know,
how good is that? So now I finished last year.
I did the Sydney morning Herald internship over the summer.
It's a tough time to be looking for work as a journalist,
but I've been doing a bit of freelance work throughout because I've taken up,
taking my time, doing the masters, which has been the best thing about
I've been also doing a bit of freelance work during that time. And I, I,
I had never listened to a podcast.
I think I'd listened to a Ted talk on podcast previously.
And then I had to make a podcast at uni and then, you know,
went to a conference and submitted the podcast for a podcast in competition with
no entertainment and, you know, wonderful competition.
And now I'm doing a podcast, but over, and then on the back of that,
I got some freelance work creating a podcast for Australian society of authors.
And since then you know, at the moment I'm doing a bit of freelance work work,
creating collaborating on a podcast for the Sydney Institute of Marine
science, with Sydney, for the manly seaweed forest festival. So
even though I'm not in, full-time work at the moment I'm looking for it,
but the, you know, there's,
there's work coming in as a direct result of being pushed
to do things that I didn't know anything about when I was at university.
Thanks, Wendy. And moving on to Michela,
who's also employed as a phone call to
leader and tutor at UTS.
So he's become one of us.
So if you can introduce yourself, Miguel, the show.
So I know I mentioned the foreign cars on it study tour,
but what I didn't say was that partnership with SBS directly led me to
employment. So on the strength of the work that I did in Jordan,
the editors back in Sydney said, Oh, Hey, are you available for two weeks,
do some work? And I said, yes.
Then as usual that the weeks turned into months turned into years.
So that directly as a result of that UTS project,
I had my first journalism job and it was at SPS and I loved it.
So I was there for a while SPS life and food writing, feature stories,
and also just learning how to be a digital journalist use social media,
you know, get a story out really quickly.
But then I saw another great opportunity through UTS,
which was to study in Denmark and working full time.
I saw it as an opportunity to finish the rest of my degree lung go in six
months. So I ended up studying at the Danish school of media and journalism,
which I don't want to keep throwing overseas opportunities around.
Cause I know it's tricky right now and we can't be it,
but it was an amazing opportunity given to me from UTS where I now have a whole
network of journalists from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America.
And we all studied together there in Denmark for six months.
Then when I came back,
I started doing some work for channel 10 and 10 daily and stayed
there for two years until COVID unfortunately hit.
And it was shut down by channel 10,
but that was another really great young newsroom.
I started just a few months after they launched.
There was also a lot of other great UTS, undergrad students working there.
And then since then I've been working kind of freelance,
which has been also really interesting, but yeah, a lot,
a lot to that I owe to the UTS master's degree.
Thanks Michela. That's great.
So I'm not just, I've got a question for each of you.
So,
but feel free if anyone wants to jump in and comment.
So Alex, I'll start with you and I'm really interested to know. I,
I would like to know what drew you to the career in sports
journalism? It's a good.
Question. It was something I felt
sort of three of my later years of high school I wanted to do.
What I didn't know it was now and
what I, what I've figured it was, you know, the,
the best way was just to get a foot in the door.
And it's funny because I still think that'll bless is really sounded certainly
when we have all the bosses through talking to the students. And it's always,
the first question that gets asked is like, how do I, how do I get you know,
how do I get into the industry?
And it's just like the very fact that you're here talking to me, not me,
but the people who are hiring now puts you ahead of the 200 Reiki
guys I've got on my desk.
To me that was getting a job in the mail and I was doing an undergrad at UTS.
But I just genuinely couldn't think of a better
career, which was, you know, the, the deadline pressure writing.
Yeah, that's now sort of expanded, obviously across many more platforms,
you know, the modern sports journalists, but, you know, I was very lucky.
I got to cover the Sydney, Athens,
Beijing Olympics have been to super bowl as well, cups
baseball world series traveled to India, the Caribbean, South Africa,
Zimbabwe with cricket. So you, you sort of, on the one hand, you,
you obviously must be able to go into sports, journalism, sort of like sport.
But you get to, you know, if you like writing and storytelling,
it's re it's a really rich environment.
And it's just, you know, kind of the opiate of the masses, right? Like it's,
it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a universal language in a lot of ways.
Like you can, you know,
you can go to a country that you've never been to before.
You might struggle with customs and cultures and language,
but it's sort of like the one thing that everybody kind of understands and,
you know, the places that this career has taken me,
if you'd asked me,
like at the age of 18 coming out of high school and joining the mile or the
Sydney morning Herald, I wouldn't have believed it, but it is. And, and,
you know, it's sort of,
it's something I'm quite conscious of in the class every semester is that like,
if you read the trade press, there's a lot of doom and gloom and, you know,
media is in trouble, like are,
I can't speak for every sector of journalism,
but it certainly in the sports space,
there's more jobs now than at any other point in my career.
And now they're not like they were so I'm 44. So, you know,
when I was coming through in the mid nineties,
you kind of got to choose the train and you used Piper radio station or TV
station, or maybe it was, and that was kind of vehicles, not nowhere else to go.
Whereas now, you know, lucky in the sports space, it's telcos,
it's sporting codes, it's the clubs, you know,
in addition to the mainstream media and really energizing and
enterprising independent media collective that's sort of coming
to life in that space. So it's dynamic, it's terrifying.
It's honest because the right of the right of change it was funny. I was,
I was lecturing a very similar subject for NYU a couple of semesters ago,
and I had this textbook, like, you know, terrific textbook,
like it only been printed about eight months before,
and I was reading it before the semester started and I called the professor in
New York and I said, I'd like two thirds of this is redundant.
And it's got nothing to do with the book itself. The book was terrific,
but that's the, that was the rate of change of the industry, you know,
which again comes back to the practical nature of this subject, which is,
you know,
it's very much about getting in front of listing to asking questions of
the people who are at the forefront of that change in the industry who are
making those decisions and then putting it into play yourself and making it,
creating it yourself across multiple platforms,
seeing it being made in real time. So, yeah, I, I just,
I dunno, like I still, I still think it's,
let's still think it's the best job in the world, so.
Right. To have a job you love. Thanks, Alex.
When do I might ask you a question about, I mean,
you spoke about your experience at UTS,
but what we have right now joining us today,
many people who are interested in our courses,
and that's why they're here and might perceive this as
an opportunity for a great change.
So what advice do you have
for love the attendees who were thinking about
starting this course? Like just a
few points or, or one piece of,
in terms of a career change?
I think the course really has equipped me with
the skills that I need, not just the course, but being a,
being a journalism student at UTS and all that,
that offers has really equipped me.
But I would have to say if I had to have done it full time in 18 months,
I mean,
that wasn't physically possible for me sort of having a baby and family and all
that sort of thing at the time. So if I'd had to do it in 18 months,
I honestly don't think I would have enjoyed it
anywhere near as much.
It wouldn't have enabled them because I really took it slowly.
I think that's my advice, taking it slowly as time,
I was able to do freelance learning and development and earn money and support
myself throughout this these years.
As well as learning these new skills and starting to pick up freelance
journalism. So at the moment I've got, I've got side-by-side careers going,
and then hopefully the journalism will start to take over more and more in the
freelance learning and development will Peter off.
So slowing it down. It's been such a blessing. Yeah.
And I've just loved it.
I've been able to achieve more because I've been able to just focus on
one subject,
one topic at a time and really dive deep and over a long
period of time, a longer period of time, just so just being patient and,
and allowing myself to do that and taking the pressure off.
And it's allowed me, I've been happier. I've had a happier life because of it.
And yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thanks,
Wendy. That's, that's sound advice now.
I'm conscious of time because I do think we need to learn for Q and a.
So I'm waiting for some kind of indication as to how we're going,
but I will squeeze in two quick questions, one for Alyce, one for Michaela,
so we'll make it snappy.
But at least you've been working during
COVID times and journalism has changed a little bit.
Do you think there were any skills that you picked up at UTS journalism that
allowed you to function in a COVID world or journalism
that we could not have predicted or even prepared anyone for?
I think in terms of
for me, I'm really big on the digital side of things.
So knowing that I had you know,
that insight into how the digital platforms operated
I'd made really fantastic networks as well
at at UTS. And so that also allowed me to
when the paper I was working for shut in central Australia allowed me to go back
to Sydney and then leverage those networks and get back in the game.
I mean, in terms of a COVID world
being able to work remotely and work independently
and being proactive and, and knowing that you,
you really have, I mean,
when you said before that you feel like you've received an education
I absolutely agree. It's, it's something that's,
I feel like it took me three years to do my masters and I was
absolutely empowered. I'm not just through the coursework,
but I think what sets UTS apart was the
care factor of the lecturers. So I think, yeah,
there was definitely a myriad of things that that gave me that sense of
resilience to be able to work remotely work independently,
know which questions to ask. I think the having really,
really good critical thinking skills and good problem solving skills and
knowing that again with the foreign correspondent to is that's,
if something goes wrong and in my job now, when I'm at Bush
or, you know,
when I covered a shooting in a remote community or the closure of the all the
reclined closure you're in places with no internet and no one that you can get
guidance from. And so being able to really back yourself
and, and really something I'll take away from UTS
or something I did take away from UTS. That's lovely. Thank you.
We've got questions coming into the QA box,
so hopefully we will answer them as we go. Good, James Lew,
is that taking care of it, but if, if there are any questions for the panel,
then let us know. And meanwhile,
I'll move on to my last question to Michaela Michaela,
you spoke about working for SBS online,
and you've been on other online news platforms working.
How do you usually journalism?
There's a huge focus on digital skills and digital media,
and we are aware of the need of the future focus of the industry.
So how does this professor students for when they start applying the skills they
have learned in their work place? If you can tell us a little bit,
I think when you're doing these projects,
like if you're working on central news or foreign correspondence study tour,
you're learning to do the things that I think when I did my undergraduate,
we weren't learning as much back then
were learning how to pitch learning how to put a story,
put a story together and learning how to put a social cell together.
So people actually click on it when they see it on social media.
So all those little practical things, if you know how to tell a story,
there's all these other elements that you're learning at UTS that help you,
when you get to a workplace setting, you feel at home, you know what to do.
Thanks, man. That's, that's really
appreciate it.
We've got three questions and I'm going to just throw them at the panel.
The, some that I can answer. So the first one is by Nikki.
Does UTS journalism have any industry partnerships? Yes, we do.
We have a very strong industry partnership with
different various news organizations,
but what's more important is that we have as part of
our team doctor had an invest, the cupolas,
who is the intention for nature. And also Christine,
can you teach them to the man who's the international partnerships coordinator
and they are working exclusively on providing internships and opportunities for
students.
So we actually had the inbox flooded on a weekly basis.
I think our alumni can attest to that. In,
in that we do have partnerships and we are very well known at
UTS for always having graduates who end up
suited for industry and getting employed.
So industry partners are always happy to take our students.
We've got another question here by
Michael,
I believe is doing this course part-time and working part-time
manageable. Wendy,
you spoke time. I think it's so many different variables.
I, the answer is, is yes.
And also you can always,
you did you start off doing three subjects one semester and that's too much,
we cut back to one subject the next semester and that's,
that's fine as well.
It depends what else is going to be going on outside the life. You know,
what other family commitments you might have,
what other commitments to your community and your,
your friendship group or your hobbies,
or your interests and passions you might have. So, you know, as with anything,
when you bring a major commitment into your life, whatever that is, for example,
university, then there might be some things that you say, okay,
for the next some, you know, for these next 12 weeks, I'm not going to do that.
Or you take something out of your life, make it manageable.
I think it's finding the balance so that it's enjoyable and
useful rather than just an extra stress in your life is important.
And that'll be different for different people. Thanks.
Thanks so much short answer. Yeah.
Getting through it just to the point. Oh,
so if you're making, if you're making this investment
like you actually want to take the time to.
To.
Enjoy it and to do well. I think you know,
I had a little sister who the rhetoric was, PS get degrees,
but when you're doing your masters,
you actually really want to see how much you can challenge yourself and see how
well you can do. So I worked full time and study part time.
And it's absolutely doable. You just have to, you know,
know that you love what you're doing and take it day by day.
Thanks, Elise. We started five paths.
So I think we can squeeze in one more question,
which is the only question we have open at this stage. And this one is for you,
Alex.
So a question for Alex from Gina sports comms is very
competitive industry not to get into does this course provide me with the
opportunity to network.
I am concerned that I will be older than the average 21 year old intern
applicant. So hoping this course will.
Yeah, so, so that I would say I wouldn't.
So one of the,
I think one of the central factors of this is that networking opportunity. And,
you know, so example last night we, as we were talking to the,
somebody who's on the executive of the international cricket council in Dubai
who runs a digital media arm and, you know, he's, he's,
sign-off was here and must, here are my contacts here and my social accounts,
follow me. Talk to me, ask me questions.
And that's a really common refrain from the people in our subject,
some, some, honestly, some of my favorites.
But then I remember him in my first semester, we had a,
we had a student who was,
if he wasn't 50 years knocking on the door of it and he was a geologist.
And he called me one week and said, look, I'm really sorry.
I have to miss this week's class. I'm like, no, that's fine. Like, you know,
what, what, what's the reason? And he had to give it,
give a talk at a symposium in Peru that Waco in
geology, but he loved sports journalism. And he now,
so he still works in geology and loves it.
And I think he's really well-regarded in that industry. I mean,
they're flying into South America to speak.
So I figured he must be good at what he does.
But he's writing for some sports journals and publications
around the country and, you know,
and he's getting published quite frequently and I follow him on Twitter now.
And I dunno, man, like, that's just awesome.
Like he's a guy who his career had been going in one direction for
decades and, and it's not that he's lost that he's just, you know,
he's had a passion and he's followed it. And now he's able to, I guess,
engage that passion, you know,
without kind of completely going the full state change from what he was doing.
You know, I think that's great. So I, I wouldn't,
I definitely wouldn't worry about the age thing because I think if Jason can
crack it, then say you're, you're every chance.
And in terms of the networking opportunities,
I think it's generally one of the features of this subject.
It's one of the best parts.
And seriously organized to that. When you apply for internships,
it's usually a written internship application. They don't know how old you are.
Like I'm 49. I got an internship last summer,
this past summer with Sydney morning Herald, you know, so the advantage of,
I feel the same, why in part, I was like, Oh no, am I too, am I too old?
And I can't give the same sort of hours as, you know,
some 19 year old who goes home and has their washing and done for them in meals
provided I can't do that. But at the other hand,
I have all this wealth of experience from a life lived and professional
background that these other things, other candidates going to have.
So it's six to one, half dozen of the other.
And I choose to focus on what I do have rather than what I don't.
Yeah.
Beautifully said and genuinely to thank you so much.
There are no more questions in the Q and a so I will wrap this
just to be on time 59 minutes. We've been going,
I want to very sensitive all the attendees for coming.
I'm going to be after I ended up put up a slide with a contact
information, if you need any further information, but fee,
it feels free to contact me,
Saba Bebawi head of discipline or anyone else
who you want from the team. All our details are online.
I want to thank Alex for his,
from his very busy schedule for joining us today.
It's great for students to know that they could potentially be working with and
huge big thank you to my students who have now become
friends, Michaela, Wendy,
and Alyce from different parts of Australia.
Thank you so much for being there. And yes.
So hopefully we get to see you and work with you and even travel with you
at UTS journalism. Thank you so much. And I'll just end up with the slide. Bye,
everyone.
-
Sometimes your academic performance does not accurately reflect your actual capability. And so the early entry program takes this into account. We recognise that conditions at the moment are changeable.
I mean, even in the last few hours in Sydney, we've had changes with regard to using masks, how many people can be in our house, etc. So these changes can unsettle students, we recognise that and, and so we're trying to provide some certainty in an increasingly uncertain world. So we've got the disruptive impacts of COVID are not just a short, sharp disruption, they've been ongoing effects to that.
So in recognition of that with brought in this program, the other thing we're trying to do is take account of you as a whole person, because we recognise that you are more than your ATAR. We're trying to build in flexibility into our programs at your UTS. And that starts with entry into our programs.
So that's why we're going early entry or providing this early entry program. Why you should be interested in an early entry program with UTS. There are some reasons listed on the screen. So we are Australia's highest ranking University for computer science and engineering. Our programs are based around getting you to do active learning, and the types of assessment tasks that you might be called on to do in practice, as an engineer, we are training you to be able to function as that professional.
And along with that, that idea of creating the professionals of tomorrow, we offer internships with all of our engineering and it programs. So this is an opportunity for you to go out work with an engineering or IT company, and then be able to bring that experience back into your remaining programs in your academic studies, so it's an opportunity the internships are an opportunity for you to go out to industry, our programs at UTS also bring a lot of industry in onto the campus. So we are setting you up to be able to secure that type of job in engineering or it that you want to get when you graduate.
Excellent, thank you and appreciate that. So with those reasons as to why UTS is introducing an early entry program, and indeed Why come to UTS at all. I'll now cover how the program actually works. So the first thing is that you will apply for UTS early entry program for engineering and IT. And when you do that, you'll be assessed using your year 11 results, plus Edge points and edge points compiled composed of three key elements. The first is your Edge portfolio. In the portfolio, you need to just cover and tell us who you are and why you're passionate about engineering and it will talk a little bit later about the breakdown of the portfolio into the four parts. But your portfolio will be assessed by UTS and there's a maximum of eight points available for the portfolio. Then the next component is your year 11
subject grades. So high grades in selected STEM subjects equals more Edge points up to a maximum of five Edge points. And again, we'll talk a little bit more about that later in the webinar. And then finally, we have the end the Faculty of Engineering and IT is the Women in Engineering and IT initiative with 10 points available for that initiative. And so by doing well, in year 11, adding on Edge points with those three elements, we end up with a total ranking, which we're calling a threshold ranking. And from that we'll make conditional offers before the HSC. There's a maximum cap of 13 points that can for those three elements. So that's the way the program works. And I'll go through the key dates as to when you need to do each step shortly. But before we go there, they're less likely to give your some tips to give your portfolio an Edge. And again, I'd like to hand back to Bruce McCarthy to cover this section. Thanks, Bruce.
So the portfolio is essentially four questions.
But we'll start with some general advice. You're able to go into the portfolio and download all of the questions at once. So if I was filling in the portfolio, that's what I would do. And I would then save them in a Word document, and spend a bit of time drafting my responses to each of those questions. That gives you a chance to edit what you write, it gives you a chance to get someone else to check your spelling and grammar. And to give you some feedback about what you've written, and also gives you a chance to make sure that somewhere in those four questions, you have presented all of your strengths. So that's the first thing that I would do. If you have supporting documents like certificates, photos of award ceremonies, or activities that you've participated in, or recommendations or references from significant people, then I suggest that you upload those as well. Please save them as a PDF first, and then upload them with the relevant question.
Again, it's good if you can include as many of your achievements as possible. And that's why having a or going through a drafting process would be useful. It's also useful because we want you to be succinct and organised.
Okay, this is not meant to be a major thesis. We want to see whether you can convey the information in a short amount of words. And in during that process, try and be as open and honest as possible. So that links back to including all of your achievements. Get someone to check your spelling, grammar and your English expression. I know in the past some people have chosen to study engineering and it because I thought it didn't involve very much communication. Well, engineers and IT professionals in practice, spend a lot of their time communicating. So those skills are very important as well. Before you submit your portfolio, check that your email address is the one that you want us to send correspondence to.
And make sure that you include your date of birth and other details. In your submission, because we will use those to track your application. So the first question in the portfolio is, why are you interested in studying Engineering or IT at UTS. And so we want to find out what you are interested in. But also whether you are aware of the courses that are offered at UTS. So if you can do some detective work, if you can look at the information that's provided on the website, if you can come to the Open Day, or on the to the campus to our on the 30th of June, that will give you a firsthand chance to get some information about engineering and it at UTS. And if you can incorporate that firsthand experience into your answer, then it will be a stronger response than one that didn't include that information. Now, at this stage, the Open Day is going to be on campus and the campus tour is still happening.
Of course, these are dependent on notifications from New South Wales Health.
So keep your eyes peeled on messages about those. Question two were asking you to describe something you have created or designed. And specifically, how it is related to your preferred UTS course. So here, we're trying to see what your thinking processes, how have you incorporated and demonstrated creativity. But then how have you demonstrated skills like project management, they are also very useful for engineering and it students. And we're not looking for you know, specific
jargon terms that relate to either design thinking or project management. Tell us in your own words, what you have done, and why you have done it. For this question, it particularly lends itself to having some documents or images to support your claims. Alternatively, a link to a video would or may also be a useful way to show what you're doing, or what you have done.
Part of the Edge program or part of the purpose of the Edge program is because we are interested in you and your future as an engineer or an IT professional. And so question three is around what are the personal attributes and skills that will assist you most in your career. Because the idea of coming and studying at UTS is that you can eventually graduate and get out of the place as well as be a functioning professional. So think about what skills you have developed through the activities that you've been involved in, not just school activities, but activities that you've done outside school as well. So that might be sport, it might be Duke of Edinburgh programs or the Queen Scout program, it could be playing in an orchestra. There are all sorts of different activities that you could include. So different sorts of activities would have given you exposure or challenged you to be a leader to work as part of a team to engage with the local community, for example. So they are all attributes that are important for professionals. So as we said, communication, teamwork, leadership, resilience, these are all important skills for professionals working in industry. So when not just looking for technical skills, but we're looking for These other personal attributes as well.
The last question is more specifically about how you think, where you're starting from now, you will be able to improve, because you've come to UTS program. So I would encourage you to go and look at the course outline, look at the subjects that are offered. And also look at the graduate attributes or graduate outcomes. So we are designing our courses for our students to be able to achieve all these broad areas of development. So the first one there is about knowing about indigenous history and indigenous knowledge systems, so that as a professional, you can engage with indigenous communities. But you may also apply indigenous Ways of Knowing to solving that the problem solving the problem that you're addressing. Engineers are also and IT professionals are called to be socially responsible in their practice. Both the major professional associations, Engineers Australia, and the Australian Computing Society have very explicit codes of ethics. And so we want our students to understand what ethical practices and also a bit to understand how their practice will impact on the society, what the economic impacts are the environmental impacts, so that we can, as technical professionals be working towards a sustainable future. So if you've done some bushcare, volunteering, for example, that might link quite nicely with that, working towards a sustainable future.
Design oriented is about creating, showing your creativity, being aware of the steps that you need to go through in design, and understanding who you're actually designing for. And, of course, we want all our graduates from this faculty to be technically proficient. That is to understand the disciplinary, specific ways of scoping problems, solving problems, and analysing information. Of course, it's no good coming up with a fantastic technical solution, if you can't actually communicate that to anyone.
And so, we have an attribute around communication in various forms, and to various audiences, and also collaboration. So, major infrastructure projects are not completed by an individual engineer. We are always working in teams. And so being able to work with teams of the same discipline, but also teams of different disciplines. It is important for future professionals.
And the last attribute there really relates to you as an individual. So we want people to become reflective practitioners. That is to think about what they have done, and try to improve in the future. And also to recognise that learning is not kind of finish once you finish your course at university. Engineering and IT are fields of practice that change quickly. And so it's going to be a process of continually keeping up to date with what's happening in the field. And so learning how to learn and identifying what's important to learn is part of achieving that final attribute about being a reflective practitioner. So I encourage you to have a look at the graduate attributes and try and connect what we're aiming for with our students to what you may have done a little bit of already.
Tremendous and I think that covers the tips. on how to complete the portfolio. Was there anything else you wanted to cover there? And? No, I just wanted to wish everybody good luck and encourage you all to really have a good go at applying for this program. Fantastic.
Thank you. And so I mentioned before, that your application for the early entry program will be based on your year 11 results primarily, then, as Ann has just outlined the portfolio and you've now got some tips on how to complete those four questions and provide supporting documents. The next one was subject performance. So what we came to understand is not just your academic abilities across all subjects, which is reflected in all your year 11 results, but also specifically, your performance in STEM subjects. And as a result of that, the sciences technology engineering and math subjects that are available in the HSC that you study in year 11. We have points available for those subjects and for the sciences.
If you've got an A in year 11 then there are two points on offer or one point for a B similarly for the technology subjects at engineering studies, and advanced maths and extension one maths as an emphasised engineering and it isn't just about technical skills, you need those professional skills as well being able to communicate your ideas and your theories.
And hence, we also have points for English advanced English and extension one English and standard English, and also Business Economics and Business Studies. And a in those subjects will get one point up to a maximum of five points. Now you might notice that missing on this list is extension to maths and extension to English. And as I'm sure you're aware, those subjects are not assessed in year 11 completely. But we don't want to ignore or dismiss these efforts that you're taking if you're taking on any of those subjects. So completing the HSC for those subjects being extension to maths extension to English, or the vocational exams in technology and engineering.
All these are very important and very relevant subjects to studying Engineering and IT at UTS. So we're awarding points for those, those HSC subjects and your 11 subjects combined as a maximum of five points. But that's an important part of the Edge program as well, just to make sure that students who excel in those STEM subjects are fully rewarded. Now, the dates. This is where I'll not only explain the key dates, but also the process that we'll be going through. So from now, now that you've got the details of how to complete your edge portfolio, until September 12 is the window to prepare your your your portfolio on around about August 10 applications should be open on the UTS Early Entry portal. And that's where you can formally apply for early entry. And submit your portfolio.
And by registering for today's webinar, we'll email you more details about that when they come. September the 12th is sorry, in between those two dates is Open Day as I mentioned before on August 28. So drop that in your diary a great chance to hopefully come on campus and talk to some academics and see our amazing facilities here. Then formally applications close for early entry on September the 12th. So that is the last date that you can both get your application in and submit your portfolio.
Then we will assess those applications between September 12 and October the 5th and end out a conditional offer well before the HSC obviously starting 12th of October and then through into November.
On the 10th of December is the date I'm sure you're already aware when HSC for New South Wales will be released very shortly after we're saying here on December 13. We might even See if we can get it out earlier. But is the unconditional offers that will send? Now what's the difference between a conditional offer and land conditional offer? The only condition that we have to turn that conditional offer into an unconditional offer is that you make your TSS minimum matriculation level, which is an ATR of 69. And that's a number which is needed for all your GS for all pathways GTS for all courses. And so on the basis that you get HSC, an ATAR of 69, then, if you've received a conditional offer on October 5, and that will become an unconditional offer.
So I hope that's clear. If not, by all means jump in now and ask some questions about the process. Adjust and also set we're calling the portfolio. Those four questions. Some of you may already be aware, especially those that came to the webinars that we've had during April in May, on our courses of the engineering and it questionnaire. Now, that questionnaire was the process that we used last year, and in many years past, for providing some additional adjustment points to your ATAR. We're now calling that questionnaire, the portfolio. And the questions are actually exactly the same. But the new element is the ability to upload supporting documents as Ann has outlined. So if you're wondering what the difference between the questionnaire and the portfolio is, the portfolio is just the new name for the questionnaire with the added ability to upload supporting documents. I should also add that the early entry program is not about available for any of our scholarships.
There is a scholarship application process which is on our website so that for instance, the Bachelor of Information Technology as a scholarship program, the application process for that is quite different to the early entry. And similarly, the combined degrees of engineering and lower or It courses and law are also not applicable to the early entry program. But all the other courses in engineering and IT including combined degrees with business, or with the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence, those other combined degrees are part of this early entry program. Now, I want to also make it clear what the differences are between the early entry program Edge and the normal us application process. So as we've pointed out, the Edge applications are primarily going to be based on your year 11 results plus Edge points.
And as I'm sure you now know, subject performance portfolio, and the Women in Engineering and IT the way that the calculation is to get your threshold rank and threshold rank is simply the way that we will determine who gets conditional offers in October.
Very similar is the UAC applications in terms of process, but the really important difference is that your scope performance is based on your ATR and not your year 11 results. You applications also have adjustment points also with a cap of 13. Your subject performance is also up to five adjustment points.
But your subject performance for UAC applications is based on your bands that you achieve a band five or a band six. And those actually exactly the same subjects that I spoke about before other points that you can get adjustment points for your selection rank.
Similarly, the same portfolio is available to provide points for UAC applications. But in that instance, you get up to 3 points, the Women in Engineering initiative still applies. And so your ATAR plus those adjustment points equals your selection rank. So the two processes are quite similar in structure that clearly one the early entry program uses your year 11 results. So I hope that's clear. Also very important to understand that the Edge and the way this is structured is only or the Engineering and IT courses at UTS there will be Early Entry program for other courses at UTS outside the Faculty of Engineering and IT. Details about the pathways and what you need to do to apply to those courses will be announced shortly and be on the UTS website.
And as I mentioned before, the Bachelor of Information Technology scholarships and combined degrees with law and not part of the Edge program. Okay, so that ends the more detailed part of the presentation. There's a number of ways you can connect with us digitally. Our website is feit.uts.edu.au that has all the information on pretty much everything you might need to know that specifically for the Edge program uts.edu.au/edge is where the details are of the early entry program and of course, you can get in touch with us via Facebook or Instagram or any of the social channels for that matter.
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Kurt Cheng: Good evening everyone, and welcome to the 2021 UTS Law Awards. It's great to see so many of you joining us tonight. And although we would have loved for it to be in person, it's great to see so many familiar names logging in. Before I begin, in the spirit of reconciliation, I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation upon this ancestral land our UTS campus now stands. I'd also like to pay respect to the elders by past, present, and emerging, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this land. I'm currently joining from South Hurstville, the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. And I extended this acknowledgement to wherever you are joining us from tonight. A quick introduction, my name is Kurt. I'm a third year law student, and I'm also the student rep for law on the university's academic board and vice president sponsorship for the UTS Law Students' Society.
The past 18 months, as students, has been incredibly tough. Living in this pandemic with challenges for each and every one of us. For me, it's been caregiver responsibilities for my grandparents while studying and working from home. For others, this pandemic, and particularly this current outbreak, has presented unexpected challenges and uncertainty about our studies and future. But I think one thing is for certain, this period in our lifetime has taught us unquantifiable levels of resilience as we adapt and pivot by studying in a global pandemic. This will really set us apart in a post pandemic world, and in particular, for the many opportunities to come. As a dynamic and innovative law school, as students, we adapted to re-imagined course [inaudible] and exams, because our agility to new ways of working and commitment to lifelong learning has, and always will be at the core of everything we do here.
And as for each and every one of us here tonight, as students, staff, and alumni, we're part of a faculty that genuinely fosters a sense of community, during and after our time here. Our generosity in spirit and kindness has always defined us as a faculty. And I'm really, really proud to say that our approach to diversity and inclusion moved beyond principles of accommodation, but to a culture that celebrates and champions the unique contributions and success of every individual. Tonight's award ceremony reflects and acknowledges exactly this, the academic success and contribution of students and staff that make UTS Law such an amazing place to study, work and create life-long memories. So, without further ado, let's kick off. Because we're not able to be together in a room tonight, please use the chat box to share your congratulations with tonight's winners, if you see your friend, teacher, or a colleague.
It's always great to have some commentary, so please, feel free to use it. Next up, I know that we're out of class, but I promise this is a fun quiz to kick us off for the nines. Please head to menti.com and enter the code on the device that you're on, or perhaps even a phone. Staff and family are welcome to joining too. And the person who wins this quiz will also receive a $50 Booktopia voucher for textbooks, which is equivalent to about five pages. Points are calculated by getting the correct answer and how fast you respond. I'll give you about 20 seconds to log in and enter the code.
Fantastic. So, we'll kick off with question one now. Which of the following prominent New South Wales people are not UTS graduates? There's only one correct answer. Fantastic. So, I think the majority of people got that right. And the answer is, Tanya Plibersek. She wasn't a law student, but she completed a bachelor of arts in communications with honors in 1993 and still remains connected to UTS as the federal Shadow Minister for Education in Sydney. Now, onto the second question, who lost a high court challenge against Western Australia's... Sorry, who lost a High Court challenge against Western Australia's coronavirus border closure last year?
That's correct. So, the correct answer is Clive Palmer. Hotelier Julian Gerner was actually based in Melbourne and his case was thrown out, and [inaudible] are currently managing the High Court challenge. Now, have a quick look at the leader board to see how we're tracking. And at the moment it looks like whoever is Linzi. So, whoever Linzi is, feel free to pop your actual name at the end, if you do win. But I do hope you have a textbook in mind that you want to buy with that voucher. So, we head to the question three now, who is the most recently appointed Justice for the High Court of Australia?
Fantastic. So, most people got that right. It is Justice Jacqueline Gleeson, who is the oldest of four children of former Chief Justice, Murray Gleeson and Robyn Gleeson. And she's currently 55 years old. Fantastic. Now, on to the next question, when did UTS celebrate its 40th anniversary as a law school? That's correct, it was in 2017. So, back in 1977, we were known as the New South Wales Institute of Technology and it established the first law school in New South Wales outside the university sector. The UTS Law Students' Society was also established a few years later in 1981. And we're currently celebrating our 40th anniversary, making it older than UTS itself at 33 years old. Now, have a quick look at the winners. And overall, our winner for tonight is Miranda Kaye. We'll definitely be in touch with you for your Booktopia voucher, and I do hope you select a great textbook that you'd like to read. I'd now like to hand over to Associate Dean of Education, Maxine Evers, to award the Dean's Merit List for tonight.
Maxine Evers: Thank you very much, Kurt, and good evening everyone. And congratulations to my colleague, Miranda. I would like to congratulate all our Deans Merit List students who have demonstrated outstanding academic performance in their law subjects in 2020. The students' names will appear on the next couple of slides. Being placed in the Deans Merit List for last year is particularly commendable, given the challenges of study as a result of COVID. And the faculty takes this opportunity to congratulate all recipients. I would like to acknowledge two recipients in particular, who not only were placed on the Deans Merit List, but were also awarded the university medal. Lydia Watson-Moore was a university metal recipient in 2020, and Margaret Cai was the recipient this year. Usually the university medal is awarded at our fantastic graduation ceremonies. That wasn't to be last year, and unfortunately, again this year. So, this is our opportunity to applaud the exceptional achievements of both Lydia and Margaret. Congratulations, Lydia and Margaret. Thank you. Over to you, Kurt
Kurt Cheng: Fantastic. Thanks, Maxine. So, it's been an incredibly tough year as we've been studying in a pandemic, and the majority of us, we have not been on campus for quite some time. So, we've asked some students to send in how they're coping lockdown, and we have a submission from Philippa Clark. He says, "I've been coping with study during lockdown thanks to care packages from amazing interstate friends. Tonight I'm studying with homemade chai from a friend in Melbourne and a coaster crocheted in my favorite colors from a friend in Brisbane." And I believe that is a mug that says, just a hot mess under stress, with Gladys. It almost feels unnatural seeing the premiere not at 11:00 AM. And the next submission that we have is from Sophia Tonoli, who's also on the Deans Merit List and her caption is, "At least I'm not the only one who's lost the plot," with some very cute dogs. Thank you so much, Philippa and Sophie for sending those in, I'm sure many of us resonate on similar wavelengths.
I'd like to move on to introduce our guest student speaker for tonight, Sam Guzman. Sam was the 2020 president of the UTS LSS, who I was very fortunate to work with last year. He's currently a senior paralegal at Allens and the [inaudible] of his degree. I'd like to hand over to Sam to say a few words.
Sam Guzman: Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, Kurt. And I'd also like to extend a quick thank you as well to faculty for inviting me tonight. And of course, a big congratulations to my fellow award recipients as well who have plenty to celebrate. So, in preparation for this evening, I've been thinking quite a lot about what comes to mind when I think of my experience at UTS Law School so far. Now, if I'm being completely honest, the first thing that actually came to mind was dodgy dumplings, probably because it's something that I really miss during this lockdown, but also because it does bring back a lot of good memories from way back when we were located in building five. But upon some further thought, I think the better word, or the more accurate word that reflects my university experience so far would be the word opportunity.
So, if I may just quickly share a little story about my first year at law school, and I believe there's a slide of little me in law camp over there. So, some of you may already know this, and indeed I'm sure a lot of you may also relate, but I actually came into law school with quite a big case of imposter syndrome. I mean, I came in knowing absolutely no one, having no connections to anyone in the legal industry. And I came in not having done legal studies in high school. And so, I remember my first class, my first ethics class actually, when I came in, I was just so concerned because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. And sure enough, I remember exiting the room and thinking to myself, mate, what on earth have you gotten yourself into? I was so terrified about all of my peers around me who sounded like they knew a lot more than I did. And I was particularly concerned about having to speak up in class in order to pass the class participation requirement as well.
And that's just one of the many times that I was convinced that I was ready to quit law school, which, thankfully, a few years down the track here I am today, still at law school, now speaking to a virtual room of some of the most brilliant people at UTS. So for me, it's really been interesting to reflect on how I made it to this point. And I think ultimately, in all honesty, it's all thanks to the different opportunities that I've been presented as a UTS Law student. And I could go on and on about the different opportunities we're offered from the get-go. I mean, there's additional learning sessions, such as U:Pass, that really helped me throughout my first year. We were offered so many mentoring programs, social events, career development programs, competitions, and let's not forget the many opportunities that are quite unique to UTS as well, such as being able to participate in the Brennan Leadership Program or the Neota Tech Challenge, or even choosing to undertake a legal tech major at UTS.
So, there are just so many opportunities available to us at UTS Law students. And I think looking back, it actually feels to me like I've taken up pretty much every opportunity that was made available to me, which according to my mother, is a few too many given the number of times I've complained about not having enough time to do anything. But it really is because of those opportunities and my decision to take those on that I feel like I've been able to grow so much and overcome that imposter syndrome and whatever other challenges or setbacks that I faced at law school so far. I also think these opportunities are a really good reflection on the different values here at UTS. From the very beginning, we're encouraged to be curious in the way we approach learning, to be proactive in the way that we pursue social justice initiatives, to appreciate the significance of technology and its effects on the law, and to be forward thinking in the way that we approach problem solving.
We also often learn in a very collaborative environment, one where it's really made a point of importance to value diverse perspectives. And I think for me, these are values that really to continue to inspire and drive my decisions up to this day. And I think, very fortunately for us, as a result of the opportunities that we're privileged to take on, we eventually leave the university being very well-rounded individuals, ones who are very well equipped for whatever opportunities we might come across in the future as legal professionals as well. So, with that said, I might just quickly end with a quote from the great fellow law student, Kim Kardashian, who I'm sure has provided a lot of us with comedic relief during exam study periods, who once said, and I quote, "If I knew more, then I could do more."
And on that note, I'm incredibly excited to see what the future holds for each and every one of us, what other opportunities we might choose to take. And I guess more importantly, what we choose to do with that knowledge and the experience that we acquire from those opportunities up until the conclusion of our degrees. So, thank you all once again very much, and let us continue celebrating all of our wonderful achievements.
Kurt Cheng: Thanks, Sam. It's awesome to hear about your experience with the different opportunities at offer and our social justice focus at UTS. I'm sure we can all draw inspiration from your reflection and more importantly, Kim Kardashian's very inspiring words. We'll now move on to the extracurricular participation prizes for tonight's ceremony. So, mooting is a flagship competition of UTS Law, and involves simulated court or arbitration proceeding, usually involving submissions and participating in oral arguments. We're known for our award winning moods, particularly the Pride Moot that was just last night, which was judged by the honorable Michael Kirby. And as for this year's winners, congratulations to the following competitors in these three prestigious moots, including The Oxford International Intellectual Property of law Moot, the Sir Harry Gibbs Constitutional Moot, and the Jessup International Moot.
Now, we move on to the Australian Law Students' Association Competitions. ALSA also runs annual competitions at a national level and the UTS LSS regularly sends students to represent us. Congratulations to these students for taking part in representing UTS in the following competitions, including Witness Examination, Paper Presentation, and Judge Recognition. Next up we have the First Year Peer Mentoring Program, run in conjunction with a UTS Law Sudents' Society. This program is tailored to ease new students in their transition into UTS Law. It provides a great medium for new students to connect with their peers and see new law students, as well as an opportunity to develop their legal study skills. Congratulation to this year's first year mentors. From my own personal experience being a mentor as well, it's been a great program, mentoring younger students coming in. I recall how much I benefited from this program in my first year, so it's incredibly rewarding to return as a mentor and guide new students finding their feet coming into UTS. I'd now like to hand over to Professor Lesley Hitchens for the remainder of tonight with the official deans welcome.
Professor Lesley: Thank you, Kurt. And it's very pleasing for us to have one of our students tonight as the MC for this event. And good evening to all of you, and thank you for your virtual attendance at our annual Law Awards ceremony. This isn't, of course, how we envisaged our ceremony this year. We didn't plan to be online again, but nevertheless we are. And I'm really delighted now to be able to welcome you here this evening, students, family, friends of UTS Law. And really importantly as well, our donors. Our donors who provide our prizes and scholarships. We're especially grateful for your continuing generosity and interest. Your support is more important than ever as universities are going to face increasing challenges in the years ahead, given the challenge of this global pandemic. I have to say that, for me personally, having the event online tonight is a disappointment.
I really love, every year, the opportunity to see the students receive their awards and to meet the families and to meet our friends and supporters. It's like a reunion every year. And I'm sorry that we're not able to do that this year. But nevertheless, it's wonderful that so many of you have tuned in this evening and that you're participating in the chat line on the chat line. And so, please, keep that going. So, why are we here tonight? Tonight is an opportunity to acknowledge the achievements of you, our students. I know that last year and this year have been really a test, a test of your resilience, adaptability, and your desire to succeed no matter what obstacles are put in your path. For me, one of the great privileges of working in a university is that we can see the successes of our graduates as they progress through their careers, and remain connected with them as alumni.
And as we've just seen from hearing from Sam who is just finishing off his degree, we've seen him pass through that period. And I envisage a really promising future for him as well. But that privilege that we have is why I'm also pleased that this evening we are able to have an alumni of UTS Law as our guest speaker this year. It's another opportunity to mark the journey of our graduates and to draw wisdom from them. I'm particularly delighted to announce that our guest speaker, Amani Haydar, is also our UTS Alumni Award winner for law this year. Amani, as you'll hear later in this event, has had an extraordinary life and she will speak about that to us. Welcome, Amani, and thank you for giving us your time tonight.
I want to also take a moment to acknowledge the faculty's academic staff. It is their excellence in research and teaching, supported too, by our dedicated professional staff that sustains the reputation of UTS Law. They give so much, they are so creative, so innovative, so dedicated to the work they do. But last year and this year has been incredibly impressive. And I'm so grateful for the dedication in the face of the pandemic. They have had to move between face-to-face and online teaching, facing the challenges that come through that as COVID has wreaked havoc. And many of them are trying to do that whilst, themselves, having to homeschool or care for young children.
Tonight, we are here to celebrate our students' achievements. Whilst we can't, unfortunately, celebrate with you in person and give you your moment to walk across the stage and receive your award, we nevertheless applaud your hard work and your perseverance. Your achievements reach across a broad spectrum. Many of the awards tonight will honor academic excellence, and that is important, we of course value that highly. But our awards also acknowledge other contributions. Some of them acknowledge success in skills. Success in skills is really crucial for legal professionals and their future careers. Many of the skills are embedded within our formal curriculum, but also beyond through activities and competitions that both the faculty and the student body organize. And you've seen some of those tonight already when Kurt read out the names and read out the various mooting competitions and other competitions. Our awards also recognized the service that many of our students have made to the faculty, the university, and to the wider community.
The recognition we give to these students is as important as the recognition that we give to the academic awards. It is what being a law student at UTS means. Disciplinary excellence, professional skills, critical engagement, and service. To our students, my congratulations to all of you who are receiving awards this evening, and to our donors, family, and friends, thank you too, for your support for the faculty and for our students. We really know how much it matters. Thank you. Now I have the pleasure to award two very special prizes. And next slide. Oh, and they are the deans. Sorry, I'm just having to switch between a number of different... Sorry. So, they are two special prizes, which I award and a small group of people in the faculty... I consult with a small group of faculty. The first prize is the Law Dean's Service Prize. And this prize is awarded to acknowledge a student who has made an outstanding contribution to the university, or the broader community, demonstrating leadership through service with particular reference to social justice. And the award tonight is to Erica Serrano.
Erica is currently the Law Student's Society Social Justice Vice President, but she has actually undertaken a number of other roles, particularly in relation to our Brennan Justice and Leadership Program. She's also a Law Ambassador for us. Erica has given amazing service, both through her leadership and through humility as well, to the faculty and the student community. And it's a great pleasure, Erica, to be able to acknowledge you in that role this evening. The other important prize... Next slide. Thank you. The other important prize that we award is the Dean's Leadership Prize. And this is to acknowledge outstanding student leadership that enhances the quality of the student experience and relations between students and staff within the UTS Law community. You've already got a taste of our winner for this award, Sam Guzman, because you've heard him speak and you have gained a great sense, I think, already of the qualities that Sam has. But one of the reasons I was particularly keen that this award should be given to Sam this year was his leadership as President of the Law Student's Society last year.
That's always a one term presidency. And of course, the students start off with many plans and so forth that they are going to undertake during their term of office. Sadly, of course, the year did not go according to plan because we went into lockdown in early April. And I was so impressed by Sam's leadership. He didn't get disgruntled about that, he didn't get fluffed about the fact that he wasn't able to realize his plans. The Law Student's Society, under his leadership, adapted to a virtual existence. And not only that, they really tried to also adapt in a way that would support the students in the difficult circumstances that they were in. So, they did lots of fun things, they looked after their wellbeing and so forth. And they also did some of their more formal work that they would undertake as well. Sam did an absolutely outstanding job as the LSS president last year. He's undertaken many roles, but for me, that was a real standout.
And so, I'm delighted, Sam, that you are this year's recipient of the Dean's Leadership Prize. And I'm very pleased to hand over to our Director of Students, Professor Tracey Booth, who will present to you the subject prizes.
Professor Tracey: Thank you so much, Lesley. And congratulations everybody, tonight it's just been great so far. Listening to you, Sam, and hearing about everybody's achievements. As you can see behind me, I am coming from Gadigal land. These are the swans at Sydney Park, my very particular friends. And I do want to acknowledge the elders past, present, and emerging and acknowledge that it is Aboriginal land and has not been seated. So yes, I would love now to award the subject prizes, so let's move on. Now, if we were in person, I would be standing here beaming at you all, and the room would be full of goodwill. I am still beaming and there is still a tremendous amount of goodwill. And I'm allowed to read it out, which I'm very excited about. So, first of all, the Australian Insurance Law Association Prize has been awarded to Connor Morton and Lara So.
The Ashurt Litigation Prize has been awarded to, David Baran. The Blackstone Waterhouse Lawyers Prize to, Georgia Chinchilla. Blanchfield Nicholls Partners Family Law Prize to, Nicola Magyary. The City of Sydney Law Society Practical Legal Training Prize to, Rebecca Coorey. And the Clyde & Co Prize to, Timothy Sawers. Well done all of you. Next slide, please. Julian. Okay. So, the David Toolern Memorial Prize goes to Nicola Magyary. The Fragar Prize in Environmental Planning and Development Law has been awarded to, Allegra Parker. Harmers Workplace Lawyers Prize in Labor Law to, Jack Fox. Harmers Workplace Lawyers Prize in Employment Law to, Courtney Hunt-Madden. The King and Wood Mallesons Prize, Lydia Watson-Moore. The Law Partners Personal Injury Lawyers Prize to, [inaudible]. Well done.
Next. Thank you. The Law Society of New South Wales Prize to, Celine Stylianou. The MinterEllison Prize has been awarded to, Jack Fox. The Norton Rose Fulbright Prize has been awarded to, Luke Scrimes. The New South Wales Bar Association Prize has been awarded to, Sophie Crowe. The Peter Egri Memorial Prize goes to, Georgina Hedge. And the Robert Greenwood QC Memorial Prize goes to, Juanita Kelly-Mundine. The Banking Law Prize has been awarded to, Molly Windsor. The Competition Law Prize goes to, Hugh Pearce. The Hon. Helen Sham-Ho Law Postgraduate Prize goes to, Xuelun Chen. The Hon. Helen Sham-Ho Law Undergraduate Prize goes to, Ben Fong. The Hon. Michael Kirby Voiceless Prize for Animal Law has been awarded to, Alana Meaney. And the Thomson Reuters Prize for Advanced Commercial Law goes to, Jemma Stevens.
The Bird and Bird Sports Law Prize has been awarded to, Jordan Bramis and Olivia Wakeling. The Veronica Pike Prize goes to, Alice Jones. And the Thomson Reuters Prize for Media Law has been awarded to, Nathaniel John Van der Reyden. And can I just say, congratulations everybody, what a superb effort. Really, yay you. Thank you. And I now hand you over to Associate Dean Maxine Evers. Thank you.
Maxine Evers: Thank you, Tracey. And can I please also pass on my personal congratulations to all students. And a particular thanks to our donors who continue to support and sponsor our students. It is so important to us as a faculty, that we are able to work with you to ensure that we have such a great quality of our education and fantastic ambassadors in our students. So, I have the pleasure this evening to announce a couple of awards. Two of those are student awards and one is a teacher award. So, the first award I would like to announce this evening is a David and Catherine Barker Mooting Prize. And this prize is donated by our former Dean, Professor David Barker and his wife, Catherine. And our congratulations for this award to, Sarah Avery, who happened to be in the law camp photo that we saw earlier on this evening. So, well done, Sarah.
The second student prize that I'm delighted to be able to award is a Tom Sylva Award. This award is donated by Christine Sylva in memory of her son, Tom. And the recipient for this award is, Morwarid Faiz. And congratulations, Morwarid to you as well. And finally, it gives me absolute pleasure to award the teaching for quality and excellence, the Lyndal Taylor and Emma Holt Teaching Award. This award is established in memory of our colleague, Lyndal Taylor, who passed away several years ago. Lyndal was a great advocate for education in the faculty. It's also a memory of her daughter, Emma Holt. And the winner of the Lyndal Taylor and Emma Holt Teaching Award is our colleague, Renata Grossi. Congratulations, Renata. Thank you. Thank you, Lesley.
Professor Lesley: Thank you, Maxine. And I'd now like to mention some of our particular scholarships, which are so important as well, as I mentioned earlier. So, the first scholarship that I want to refer to is the Erik Dreikurs Scholarship. This scholarship was established by the late Erik Dreikurs, who settled in Australia from Vienna in 1938. It provides support to an undergraduate student with demonstrated motivation, initiative, and financial need. And the scholarship is to the value of $6,000. We might move the slide on. And the awardee for the Erik Dreikurs Scholarship for this year is, Trinity Stockwell. The Ezekiel Solomon Scholarship was established by Ezekiel Solomon, a senior advisor and former longstanding partner at Allens. And it provides support to an undergraduate student with demonstrated motivation, initiative, and financial need. The scholarship is to the value of $5,000. And I'm delighted to say that Saragina Khochaba is the recipient of that scholarship.
The Faculty of Law Equity Scholarship is one that provides support to an undergraduate student with demonstrated motivation, initiative, and financial need. The scholarship is to the value of $20,000 paid over four years. And I'm very pleased that Raphaella Revis is the recipient this year of that award. And finally, the Law Dean's Scholarship is one that recognizes academic excellence and is awarded to a first year undergraduate law student with an [inaudible] of 98 or above. And this scholarship is to the value of $10,000. So, congratulations to, Kristina Dang, the recipient of the Law Dean's Scholarship.
And now, it's my great pleasure to introduce, formerly, our guest speaker for this evening, Amani Haydar. And I think when you hear Amani Haydar speak, you will see that in many ways, she captures the essence of what we continue to really care about in the law faculty. We care about the importance of understanding law, the way that it works, but also the impact that it has on people's lives. Amani is a lawyer, she's a writer and artist who has made a remarkable contribution to the community through her professional, volunteer, creative, and advocacy work, despite having faced incredible trauma. She takes a multidisciplinary approach to raising awareness about gender based violence, law, policy and the effects of structural inequality on women. Last year, Amani was named 2020 Local Woman of The Year for Bankstown and was a finalist for the New South Wales Premier Woman of The Year Award.
She has contributed to a Walkley award winning journalism series, and she has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize for her painting. Her debut memoir, The Mother Wound, was published by Pan Macmillan in June, 2021. I'm delighted now to introduce, Amani Haydar. Thank you, Amani.
Amani Haydar: Good evening everyone. And thank you so much, Professor Lesley Hitchens for that introduction and for inviting me to speak this evening. And a big congratulations to everyone who's won an award tonight. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands from which we are gathering. I'm zooming from [inaudible] Country and pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. I recognize that the land I live and work on has never been seated. And I'm mindful that there's a long way to go in the remedying of injustices committed against first nations people, particularly the trauma that the cast rule system inflicts on Aboriginal families. My talk will, as Professor Lesley mentioned, touch on the topic of domestic violence, as well as some lived experience of that. And I encourage anyone who feels that this brings up issues for them to contact 1-800-RESPECT and seek support.
I've got some slides together that we'll go through, but hopefully I won't take too long, and I'll be sharing some of my story with you. So, if we could go to the first slide, please. I finished my studies at UTS in 2012, I graduated with a bachelor of arts in communications and a bachelor of laws, and a fiance in tow. I had already entered the legal world via a summer clerkship, and the path ahead gleamed with opportunity. I could participate in the delivery of justice, build a career, build a future. It was empowering. I come from a family who migrated to Australia, having experienced war and Israeli occupation in the south of Lebanon. My mum was young when she married my father and came to Australia, and had not had the opportunity to attend university. My maternal grandmother had been killed in war while I was a teenager. Like many children of migrants, I saw it as my responsibility to live up to my parents' sacrifices. The privilege of an education drastically changes outcomes for women, and so I also saw it as my role to work towards generational change.
By 2015, I was practicing as a commercial litigation solicitor. I had been exposed to a range of litigious matters involving insurers, public authorities and private commercial clients. I had been able to assist in proceedings in the Supreme Court and the High Court, and was also appearing in the lower courts. In March, 2015, however, I lost my mother, Salwa Haydar to domestic violence. She was the 30th of 81 women to lose their lives violently in Australia that year. If we could just move to the next slide, I'll share an illustration that was published by the ABC at the time of my mom, and her mother, back in Lebanon. In order to deal with the grief and upheaval of that loss, I took time off work indefinitely. The journey ahead would expose me to a side of the law from a vantage point I had never anticipated, that of the victim of crime.
I found myself confronting a lot of the structural barriers that women face because the law does not always reflect the diversity and complexity of our experiences. An example of a systemic barrier that I contended with was in relation to accessing paid parental leave after the birth of my first child. I was five months pregnant when I lost my mom. The time I had taken off from work after my mother's murder meant I was no longer eligible for my paid parental leave. I had fallen outside of the work tests set in the legislation by five days. Using skills acquired through my education and legal practice, I was able to advocate for myself and eventually after my local MP, Jason Claire, and the minister at the time intervened, I was able to access my entitlements. However, the legal loophole was not fixed. And I promised myself that I would write and speak about it wherever I could, until it was. I would go on to appear at my father's trial in 2017 as a witness.
I would be cross-examined and I would also read out the victim impact statement. Along the way, skills and knowledge I've gained in my degree were crucial. I found myself reflecting on the nature of law and justice and remembering a slide that used to be showed at the end of every lecture in one of the subjects I took at UTS. It said, "Don't confuse justice with the law." Next slide. Despite my understanding of procedure and the time I had spent in courtrooms myself, my experience of giving evidence was incredibly disorienting and re-traumatizing. This drove me to think about how other victims might encounter the legal system. What if they have language barriers? A lack of understanding about how the system works or lack of access to trauma informed support. How do people's identities and circumstances, race, gender, and disability intersect to shape the way they experienced the courtroom? As I recovered from that experience and started to participate in advocacy in the domestic violence space, I thought about the role of sentencing and punishment, character references, and how the rules of evidence shaped my own courtroom experiences.
I found myself thinking about not just what the law says or intends, but how it affects people's lives when they're experiencing upheaval and trauma. I even looked at the operation of laws, like the forfeiture rule that we had learned about in real property. Rules we think exist in discrete and rare circumstances but actually have a dramatic impact on people's everyday lives. Next slide. Over time, my thinking around lawyers and legal systems has shifted owing to my professional and personal experiences. I have started to think creatively about the role of the law in my life and career. I'm not currently practicing law in a traditional sense, but I share my skills in various ways by volunteering on the board of my local women's health center, helping to advocate for the rights of victim survivors of abuse, and incorporating legal analysis into my writing. Even my art making practice is heavily shaped by reflections on law, justice and human rights. I encourage students here to think creatively as they embark on their careers. You're not one dimensional. Your job is not your sole identity. And there are multiple paths to justice. Next slide.
I want to finish on an optimistic note. I mentioned earlier, the barriers that I faced regarding the paid parental leave entitlements back in 2015 after my daughter was born. After agitating for change at every opportunity I could, just yesterday I received a call from a local member of parliament, Jason Clare, who had taken my story to parliament, informing me that the law had finally been amended on Tuesday evening to provide for special circumstances. And as mentioned in the explanatory memorandum, those special circumstances will include domestic violence. He had read out my story in parliament on multiple occasions and this small but important change had finally been passed, making it easier for people who find themselves in my shoes to access their entitlements. To me, this type of change is an example of what can be achieved when we think about the social functions of the law, looking beyond individual cases and advocating for creative solutions, flexibility, and better access to the law for everyone. Thank you.
Professor Lesley: Amani, thank you, so much. I wish we could somehow give you a standing ovation. But it was so inspiring to hear from you. To have been through such a traumatic experience, and yet the way in which you've used that and brought to it your skills and experience, and to put yourself then as well in the experience or the place of others who don't bring those skills and experience and knowledge to those situations. And the work that you've done and are continuing to do is, as I say, a real inspiration to us. And it was wonderful to hear from you tonight. And I hope that there'll be opportunities for you to meet and talk to a broader number of students in the future, and that we can continue to be inspired by the work that you do. And I hope too, that there might be ways that we can support you too, as one of our alumni, as one of our family, our UTS Law family.
But thank you, so much. That was just a wonderful, wonderful speech that you've given us. And I can see the chat, everyone is talking about how inspiring it was and so grateful that you were willing to share that tonight. So, thank you.
Amani Haydar: Thank you, Lesley. Thank you for having me.
Professor Lesley: That brings us to the end of our event tonight. And it's been really wonderful to share it with you. Sorry, if I was particularly the person who fluffed lots of lines because I couldn't find bits of paper on the screen. But that's what it is, and that's the world that we live in at the moment. But I'm really grateful to all of you who've been able to join us tonight. And I particularly want to congratulate our students, all of you and your achievements that we've acknowledged tonight. Thank you to Kurt who did a really wonderful job of emceeing this event. And I also want to acknowledge Belinda Carson and Julian Ferguson, whom I noticed was also on the Dean's Merit List, who you haven't seen, but they've been in the background making sure all of this would work tonight.
I'm afraid I've just got to finish on a practical point. And that is, that everyone tonight will receive a printed certificate in the mail in the coming weeks. For those of you who received an award or a subject prize, that will be included on your Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement, which when you do graduate will accompany your testamur, as another document that goes with that. So, finally, thank you very much for joining us here tonight. We wish that you will be safe, and we wish you, particularly our students, that you are able to have a really good experience as the year progresses. Sadly, we're not going to be face-to-face for the rest of this session, but we hope that nevertheless, you will really be able to experience the wonderful work that you've been doing, that you'll be able to continue that as the year proceeds. So, thank you all, and good night.
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GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: A warm welcome to everyone. As we begin tonight, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of our land, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. I'm on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Some of you are on lands with different traditional owners and I also acknowledge those owners.
Thank you very much to everyone for being with us for tonight's Allens Neota Logic UTS Law Tech Challenge grand final. Members of our audience this evening include our challengers ‑ the students ‑ and their Allens mentors, family and friends, our judges, supporters of the Brennan Justice Program, UTS staff and esteemed guests from Allens, Neota Logic, Women's Justice Network, Respect.Now.Always, ISS Australia and Aspect.
In these difficult times, it is important for us to remember that inspiring work is still being done all around us. The Allens Neota Logic UTS Law Tech Challenge is both a mouthful and a program that enables students to use the Neota Logic platform to build apps for social justice partners to help them to perform their important work. This year our students have worked hard to support social justice with brilliant clients from Aspect, ISS Australia, Respect.Now.Always, and Women's Justice Network.
The Law Tech Challenge was first held in 2017 and has always been unique for the close involvement of lawyers from Allens in the projects using the Neota Logic platform. 2021 has been yet another year of fantastic involvement between our UTS teams, Neota Logic and Allens.
The Law Tech Challenge is also special because of its integration into the UTS Brennan social justice program and you'll see tonight that this year the students have taken their work for social justice to a new level with amazing social media campaigns that raised awareness about their projects and the important work of our clients. I hope that some of you are already aware of that because you've seen their work on social media.
Tonight you can be a part of that by voting for the best social media campaign. You can also get involved by tweeting and posting throughout tonight's grand final using the hashtags #lawtechchallenge and #utslaw that you'll see on the screen. You can also access live captioning for this event following instructions in the chat box.
This evening the teams will present their apps to three esteemed judges: Lisa Kozaris, the Chief Innovation & Legal Solutions Officer from Allens; Beth Patterson, the Director of ESPconnect; and Professor Lesley Hitchens, the Dean of our Faculty of Law at UTS. I now invite Professor Hitchens to present her opening remarks.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: Thank you, Genevieve. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to present, but I hope for all your sakes I'll be brief. It is such a great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight wherever you're located and to be able to run the challenge this year despite the difficult circumstances that almost across Australia we find ourselves in at the moment, and in a way that added something even more special to the students and the role that they are performing and the projects that they've undertaken during this as part of the challenge this year.
I just want to also acknowledge both Allens Legal and Neota Logic for their continued willingness to partner with us on this and especially at this time when every organisation is facing COVID challenges and that has been just so special to be able to continue this relationship and to have the challenge run this year.
If I could just take a moment to say when I think about the challenge, it epitomises everything that we are trying to do at UTS Law through the legal education and the research that we undertake here in the faculty. First of all, it is of course above all about social justice and that is something that's absolutely core to this law faculty and the Brennan program itself is just a wonderful example of students really being part of that endeavour through their student activities.
But it does more than that. If we think about the legal education that we want our students to undertake here, if we think about the skills that they graduate with, this challenge, as I say, epitomises so much of that.
A key theme at UTS Law is law and technology and we want technology to be used responsibly. We want it to be used for good. So this challenge, with the support of Neota Logic and the mentors of Allens, really gives students an opportunity to understand and to engage with technology, but also to do it for a purpose that is for the public good to support these NGOs.
What else does the challenge do for us? It develops the skills for students of collaboration and team work, something that increasingly is so important for law graduates, and as well and, most crucially of all, I believe, it reminds the students to remember that at the heart of all legal work is the client and so students through this process had to learn to listen to the clients, had to work with them, had to really understand what their particular context was and their concerns and then build something through that listening and through that iterative process.
And above all, what they've delivered is something authentic, authentic because it's not just going to go on a shelf, it's not just a fun thing that they've played with for a few months, but it is designed to be implemented for the NGOs, and I just want to say to the NGOs I had the chance to meet most of you early on at the start of the challenge when we could meet face to face, but particularly I hope that this has been a good journey for you and I hope that through this endeavour, this challenge and the work of our students it is something that will be really lasting for you as well and help you in your important work.
So for anyone who hasn't experienced a challenge before, a grand final, I can tell you that it's exciting and I hope that brief welcome gives you a sense of why we see it as so crucial for our students and just such a wonderful experience.
So please enjoy the evening ‑ well, I was going to say I look forward to talking to you afterwards, but of course I won't be, but thank you.
I'm sorry, I will now introduce Liza Greenwood, who is Head of Innovation Services at Allens, and Julian Uebergang, who is the Managing Director of APAC, Neota Logic and they will just speak in turn as well.
LIZA GREENWOOD: Thanks, Lesley. I don't think I can improve on that or add to it.
So I'll be brief. It's great to see so many people here. It's really exciting and we're really excited to be here as well.
I just wanted to reflect really briefly on why the Law Tech Challenge is really important for Allens. So we really believe that having a sound understanding of emerging technology that's really becoming a vital competency for lawyers of the future, but perhaps more so is learning to work with clients and work with them collaboratively to develop solutions that solve real problems, solve real problems and solve things that matter. So we think that's critical for the future of the legal profession.
So not surprisingly, our mentors at Allens ‑ I know that they've been really thrilled to work with future lawyers of the next generation of the legal profession and they've been loving the combination of law and technology and really that part about benefiting our community partners, which I guess just makes it all mean something at the end of the day. They've shared some surprising learnings around collaboration and how you need to communicate, clear lines of communication, and even some learnings around demystifying legal techs and apps and their capability, so that's been exciting. We can't wait to see the apps, of course, and learn more about how they're solving real problems that really matter.
All I was going to say was thank you so much to the cast ‑ I won't say thousands, but the cast of many who put this together. There's been many, many people involved in lots of hours of work and it all culminates in tonight. So good luck to the teams. Thank you to the mentors, thank you to Genevieve and everyone who's had a hand in putting the program together and I will pass straight over to Julian. Thanks, Julian.
JULIAN UEBERGANG: Thank you very much and unfortunately, I'm not with you in person tonight to see the tremendous energy that is normally in the room when I've attended these grand finals in the past.
So my name is Julian Uebergang. I'm the Managing Director for Neota Logic in the APAC region. Neota Logic is the market leading platform of expertise, documents and processes.
I just wanted to say a few words about this program. We are very proud to be involved with two iconic institutions, UTS and Allens. We've been involved with this program for a number of years and we're always blown away with the enthusiasm, the quality of the apps that are produced, the organisations that we work with in terms of the end client. So thank you very much for continuing this program and working with us. We really are delighted to be involved and I'm delighted to be here tonight.
To the students, I just wanted to say well done. Tremendous resilience to get to this point, particularly in these challenging times. It's always difficult to work in groups and collaborate virtually, but you've done really well and I'm really looking forward to seeing the work product and looking forward to seeing a winner tonight, but I'm sure we'll see some great applications.
There's a few people that I just wanted to thank ‑ in particular Genevieve and Crystal for organising this event, coordinating things up until this point and putting together tonight's challenge with the grand final. I think it's been a tremendous effort, particularly in the circumstances, so thank you very much.
I'd also like to acknowledge Kevin Mulcahy, who I think is tuned in from Brooklyn in the US, in New York. He is Head of Education and Community Programs and he has done the lion's share of the work with students to get them through and support them to this point. So thank you, Kevin.
I think that's enough from me, so I'll hand over now and look forward to seeing all of the presentations. Thank you once again.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Thank you so much for your remarks, Lesley, Liza and Julian, and I also want to thank Kevin, who I think it might be 3.43 in the morning in New York and he is still tuning in, which I think reflects his fantastic work with our students. So thank you, Kevin.
I think that those remarks help to remind us that the relationship between UTS, Allens and Neota Logic for this challenge is the foundation of it and so it was great to hear from each of you. But the challenge also would not be possible without our wonderful student teams and their amazing social justice partners, so tonight we will hear about the apps that have come from this collaboration.
Throughout the challenge, teams have worked closely with Kevin Mulcahy, from Neota Logic, and learnt to use the platform. From Allens and UTS colleagues, students have learned about principles of intelligent technological design, social media communication and working with not‑for‑profit clients. Each team member has been given a different role as a project manager, client liaison manager, app designer, user experience manager, and quality assurance and communications controller.
Teams have then worked closely with their clients to design an app while being mentored by Kevin and a team of brilliant lawyers at Allens ‑ Daniel Taha, Dominic Keenan, Sophie Leitch and Jack Baldwin. The teams have built and tested their apps, received feedback and refined their apps to optimise user experience. It has been a busy year.
So you can see what has been done throughout the challenge from the comfort of home, teams have developed eight‑minute videos to explain the objective that they were trying to help their social justice client achieve and explain the way that they develop their apps to respond to these objectives. As long as technology stays on our side, you will shortly see these videos. After each video, the judges will have five minutes to ask each team live questions and hear their responses.
While the judges are deliberating over the grand final winners, you will hear more from our challengers, who will each have three minutes to explain to you their fantastic social media campaigns. You the audience will have the chance to see the presentations and vote on a winner. This will not be an easy task. Nor will it be easy for our three judges who are tasked with choosing between our teams to decide on tonight's overall grand final winners.
We're extremely lucky to be joined tonight by an expert in legal technology, UTS Honorary Industry Adjunct Professor Beth Patterson. Beth has been involved in the Law Tech Challenge since its inception. This year she has moved from helping to run the program to the challenging role of judging the teams.
She'll be ably joined by another technology expert from our international law firm partner Allens Legal. Lisa Kozaris is the Chief Innovation and Legal Solutions Officer and she leads the innovation and digital solutions team for Allens, so she's deeply aware of the importance of technology for law.
You've already heard from our third judge, UTS Dean of Law, Professor Lesley Hitchens. Lesley has been a champion of this challenge and the ground‑breaking Legal Future and Technology major at UTS. We're very lucky to have all three judges here tonight and I wish them luck in this difficult task.
It is now my great pleasure to introduce the first team, Ciana, working with International Social Services Australia and mentored by Sophie, Jack and Taylor. Welcome, Tristan, Molly, Brydon, Hue, and Stella. (Video played):
TRISTAN SALINATRO: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Ciana presentation. Firstly, the story of Ciana was much more than creating an app. This journey saw us streamlining services to assist families suffering from international child abduction. Molly will now begin with an overview of our non‑profit.
MOLLY HUDSON: Our non for profit is International Social Service, or ISS, of Australia. It provides inter‑country social work and legal services for children and families separated by international borders. In the Australian office, highly qualified lawyers provide the assistance for families experiencing international parental child abduction.
NEW SPEAKER: According to Child Recovery Australia, over 250 children are abducted in or out of Australia by a parent every year. The Hague Convention is a treaty that has been signed and ratified by multiple countries. It seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of wrongful removal and retention across international boundaries. It also provides a procedure to bring about their return by providing templates that the ISS lawyers can use to create applications and accompanying affidavits.
Both documents contain key details such as the names of the children, the current habitual residence, the date and circumstances of their removal and the parenting arrangements or plans organised between parents. The documents are categorised depending on whether the child was wrongfully removed to a country or if they are currently being wrongfully detained.
Thus, it was essential that the Ciana application obtained these key details from the parents no matter the situation and auto populate a draft of the Hague affidavit, an application template associated with the child's situation. This would then be sent to the ISS lawyers after the parent finished the questionnaire.
Moving forward, this revised the context for the systematic obstacles that we would then identify after initial meetings with ISS.
MOLLY HUDSON: After meeting with ISS lawyers Rebecca and Jenny in May, it was clear that their main problem was receiving the information from the client required to create an affidavit and an application for the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The original questionnaire is an extremely lengthy document that was often returned to ISS with missing questions and not enough detail. This resulted in back-and-forth phone calls and emails to correct and/or collect the information. These obstacles prolonged the entire service, resulting in both parties being frustrated. This lengthy process could stop or push back justice being delivered to the parents.
BRYDON TRUONG: Initially, we envisioned an app that enabled parents to navigate the often confusing and frustrating process for applying for international affidavits. As we progressed, however, the app concept evolved to include even more functions which would conflict with the initial concept of the app.
As a result, we had to ensure the app would accommodate the necessary functions required whilst addressing the common problems with the previous process. This ultimately culminated in the design and creation of an app that was based upon the usage of consistent colours and thematic messages which would help the user complete their applications without feeling overwhelmed and reducing the back-and-forth communication regarding missing details. Hue and stella will now go through our application design and its various features.
STELLA XI: The UX Has been customised beyond the standard Neota theme. Everything you see on the front end is custom CSS coded. You will notice that the app design is highly emulated on the ISS webpage. Everything from the buttons, the font, colours and even the placement of text elements has been based of the ISS home page.
Although this ultimately added days to the design process, I chose to pursue this given the degree to which the app would be integrated within ISS's end‑to‑end process. I wanted to make sure that this was an app which ISS could feel a sense of ownership over and one that looked as though it was properly integrated as part of ISS's operations.
NEW SPEAKER: Since our application is information heavy, we created a checklist for users. A checklist of information is provided for the user to assist them in answering the question form. Our application also asks users to answer a series of questions split into five sections. These questions concern the personal details of the wrongfully removed or retained child and their parents, habitual residence, rights of custody, circumstances of the removal or retention and any applicable defences.
NEW SPEAKER: We've also recognised that the questionnaire is quite long, so to make sure the end user knew what they'd be doing and what to respect, we've tried to make sure that they were properly oriented before starting the questionnaire by including time estimates.
It was important that we acknowledge that the end user is likely going to be stressed given the reason they're using the app is to retrieve a child. An example of how we've addressed this is the graphics on each page ‑ the soft colours of the landscapes. Cool hues and soft tones are deliberately chosen to create a calming atmosphere.
NEW SPEAKER: After ISS tested our initial application, we incorporated multiple instances to allow the user to complete our application for multiple children. To complement the multiple instances, we created text objects with in‑line conditions in all aspects of the application, including the generated affidavit and application to reflect how many children the user had. This created a very seamless experience for users.
NEW SPEAKER: We too factored in the end user experience when building the form pages. We've got a hover effect over questions, adequate spacing and text boxes that have been deliberately sized in order to guide the end user on the expected length of questions.
NEW SPEAKER: The answers from section 3 onwards were also incorporated to act as prompts to give the user an example of ways they can answer the questions. And after answering the questions, the application generates an application and affidavit in accordance with the Hague Convention and provides the user and the ISS lawyers a copy of the user's responses. The user email also includes instructions for the next steps.
As you have seen, all of our features have improved the speed and quality of draft applications and affidavits, freeing up time for ISS lawyers and reducing the time for their clients in the initial stages of building their application.
BRYDON TRUONG: As part of our quality assurance process, we created a feedback form for our early test users which would give us an insight into their thoughts on the application and where it could be improved. Additionally, Rebecca and Jenny, from the ISS, provided their own critical feedback as well as feedback from their own clients.
Based on feedback, we simplified the language of the introductory session by removing hard to understand or legalistic language. We also changed the clarity of the questions and included default answers to reduce the overwhelming nature of the large number of questions.
We also ensured that there was a clear explanation of how the parents' information was being used during the privacy disclosure section. We also ensured an email would be sent out to the parents detailing the next steps that would occur after completing the questionnaire and how the situation was being looked into.
TRISTAN SALINATRO: After a month and a half of testing and feedback and further updates before the final presentation, the link to the application has been included within the lawyer's email templates to their clients. Additionally, Molly has provided a written and virtual face‑to‑face handover with Rebecca and Jenny so they may add or edit any questions they wish.
Thank you for being with us on this journey. This is the story of Ciana, the story of families reuniting.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: What an absolutely fantastic app. Please turn on your cameras, Tristan, Brydon, Stella, Molly and Hue. It is now time for the judges to ask you some questions.
LISA KOZARIS: Great. Well, well done to the team. It's a really impressive solution you've developed for ISS Australia, so thanks for taking us through it and again, well done to you all.
The first thing that struck me, actually, is that you've really considered the end user in the design. For me it's through the use of the colours, the default and sample answers that I saw there a moment ago and even the way you've modularised the questionnaire, I thought that was a really great way so as not to overwhelm someone during what would be a really distressing time, as you highlighted.
My question, however ‑ you noted that it's quite a detailed application process, there's a lot of information that an individual needs to go through and some of the sections take quite some time to complete, so my question was is an individual able to save their work and come back to it at a later point when they're completing the questionnaire as well as are they able to sort of upload pre‑prepared information or other documents?
STELLA XI: Hi, everyone, I'm happy to take the question in relation to the save progress feature.
So during our initial testing with ISS, this was definitely an issue for users because since our application is really information heavy, ISS found that a lot of their users couldn't finish the application in one sitting, so they definitely wanted a save progress feature so that users could complete the application in more than one sitting and since this wasn't functionally possible on the Neota platform, our team sat down and we discussed ways we could address this problem without that feature and that's where we came up with the checklist feature.
So essentially by adding that to our application, our application is now two applications and this checklist feature, what it does is that it prepares users to complete the application in one sitting by telling them what documents they need to have on hand before going through the questionnaire. We also implemented a landing page with time estimates to ensure there was transparency and to better prepare the user to complete the application in one sitting.
LISA KOZARIS: Terrific. Thanks, Stella.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: Thank you again for the team. It was great work. One thing that it would seem likely is that often the users of this application may also be from non‑English speaking backgrounds and I wondered if there was any discussion around the possibility of translation, of providing the service in other languages.
TRISTAN SALINATRO: I can take this answer. So on the Neota Logic platform there's actually an option through Google Translate to provide translation services when the client is completing the questionnaire. So that's something I think all teams have integrated into the Neota Logic platform.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: That's very helpful. Thank you. And one of the things that is really lovely is that at the end of your demonstration you showed the little girl and how that application might help her and her name was Ciana, which of course helped to explain the name of the application as well. I wondered if you'd thought at all about putting that right at the front of your presentation.
TRISTAN SALINATRO: I'll take this question. So I think the idea was our presentation was analogous to that of a story and it was our idea to have a happy child at the end of the story, of the epilogue you would say.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: Good, thanks very much. Thanks.
LISA KOZARIS: Terrific. Well done, team.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Great work. Thank you, Ciana.
Now we're going to move on to our next team, Appollo. They are working with Respect.Now.Always and have been mentored by Dan and Jack. Welcome to Tutti, Chris, Deepali, Nick and Rania. (Video played):
TUTTI COPPING: Good evening. We're team Appollo and today we're going to discuss the application we made for our client UTS Respect.Now.Always. My name is Tutti and alongside me in the zoom you'll see my excellent colleagues: Nick Borovik, our client liaison; Rania Joudeh, UX specialist; Christopher Cruz, our app developer; and Deepali Patil, our comms and quality assurance specialist. Before we go into our app further, we'd like to introduce you to our client UTS RNA.
NEW SPEAKER: UTS RNA was created in response to the National Survey on Sexual Assault at university campuses. UTS RNA has two aims. The first is to be a student‑facing initiative that promotes discussion around taboo topics such as consent. The second is to be a corporate‑facing entity that promotes training and initiatives at a higher level at UTS. Broadly, RNA can be defined as progressive, inclusive, bold and unafraid.
Our client's problem was that they had no existing infrastructure to onboard new volunteers, know who was volunteering or keep track of who wanted to update their details. The current scenario is entirely ad hoc, meaning that our client often does not remember who is volunteering or what events they volunteered at. Our client also raised the fact that they are not digital natives, meaning they wanted a solution that required as minimal technological impact from them as possible. With this problem in mind, how did we create a solution for RNA.
NEW SPEAKER: Our solution has three pathways. Let's take a look at how they work.
Meet Alex. She's in her first year of a forensic science degree here at UTS and is also a member of the SOUL award. Alex begins her journey through the volunteer intake program. Alex must agree to the privacy statement in order to comply with both New South Wales and UTS privacy guidelines.
The volunteer intake has been designed using universal design theory. This theory posits that instead of individuals having to go out of their way to identify their preferred name or preferred pronouns, it's already included in the app. Our goal was to make the app as accessible as possible by including these kinds of questions.
As Alex is moving through, she can recognise this app as part of RNA as it matches the branding RNA uses.
This page welcomes Alex using her preferred name. If she doesn't enter a preferred name, the logic will change to her first name. This is another way we achieved inclusivity and utilised the concept of universal design.
This ice cream flavour question Alex is answering is something quite unique. Ice cream is a key part of RNA branding. Whatever flavour Alex chooses, she'll get a personalised ice cream horoscope in her confirmation email, making the process that extra bit special. The logic in our app also means if individuals don't click on an option to participate in events, they won't see this events page.
Alex can now check and confirm that all her details are correct and she can proceed to the next page. Alex can see she's one step away from completing the volunteer process and she just needs to confirm and commit to the agreement above.
Once Alex has completed the form, both her and RNA receive an email. Alex receives an ice cream horoscope, information on how to join the RNA Facebook group and a link to refer a friend. RNA also receives an email and can copy the details into their volunteer base.
Let's see how Taylor goes when he logs his hours.
NEW SPEAKER: Meet Taylor. Taylor is a Law and Communications student and is part of the Brennan Justice Leadership Program. He volunteered at RNA's orientation for spring session and wants to make sure RNA has a record of his time at the event.
Taylor goes into the RNA volunteer hub and clicks on the already a volunteer option. Before proceeding, he must agree to the privacy notice as we are collecting his information. He adds his contact details and begins to add the events he volunteered at. He volunteered at multiple events and had two different supervisors, so instead of submitting a form twice, he can add extra events in the one submission. He can select between the events in case he needs to check for errors.
This sends an email output to both Taylor and RNA containing the details of Taylor's submission as a PDF attachment. This means RNA has a timely record of events Taylor wishes to claim for the Brennan program without the hassle of back-and-forth communication.
Let's look at Oli.
NEW SPEAKER: Meet Oli. She's second‑year Bachelor of Business student and has been a longstanding volunteer with RNA for the past year. She has recently decided to become vegan and also changed her mobile number. She would like to let RNA know of this information before volunteering at their next event.
So instead of mentioning it offhand at an event and risk the busy team forgetting to update her details, she can now go into the hub and enter the updated details herself. This enables individuals to update RNA on changes to their personal information that may be sometimes too difficult for them to raise in person. Utilising universal design thinking principles, we included this section to enable volunteers to update their details without fear of being discriminated against or judged.
As Oli steps through, she's given the option to update various details. Once this is done, RNA receives an email output which notifies them of Oli's updated details and prompts them to reflect those updates in their databases. This again reinforces our focus on the universal design theory.
NEW SPEAKER: Our solution assists RNA in its record keeping for volunteers and also ensures there is consistency for the team in terms of how they collect volunteer information in a sensitive and appropriate way.
Firstly, our app complies with the relevant New South Wales and UTS privacy laws. As our app is sitting within a university, there are more stringent privacy requirements that apply. We were able to spend time negotiating with UTS Privacy in order to get the best outcome for our client in the timeframe given. We have structured our app to ensure that RNA won't have any problems with UTS privacy regarding the retention of volunteer data.
Our app also meets our client's goals as it's easy to maintain. There is no need for our client to go into the back end of the app and change variables unless there are changes in the law or with how RNA will operate. We strategically avoided any temporal indicators in the app, which ensures longevity and means it requires minimal updates.
Our app is in line with branding and messaging, which is incredibly important for RNA as they need to maintain consistency across platforms. We achieved this through designing our app using a universal design lens, which means instead of making individuals go out of their way to tell RNA about their accessibility needs, their preferred pronouns or preferred name, it's already included in the app. As a result, we have created an inclusive, accessible and unique app that provides RNA with the infrastructure to achieve their goals.
NEW SPEAKER: Moving on to our testing solution, we underwent three rigorous rounds of QA testing, where we utilised laptops, mobile phones, tablets and four different types of web browsers. This allowed us to make sure our app was optimised across different devices that our audience might use.
We undertook external testing which involved in‑depth testing on 16 individuals. This required each team member to walk through the application with an individual and note down any feedback. We had 27 individuals do blind testing, which consisted of getting top‑level, generic feedback on the app.
Overall, we have consistently tested the app ourselves with a total of 243 submissions made through our app while also testing alongside our client throughout the development stage to make sure we consider all their requirements.
CLIENT (Catharine Pruscino): I have to say I had no clear vision of what was going to come out of this project, but I am thrilled beyond words with what they've produced.
NEW SPEAKER: Now we're looking forward to hearing and answering your questions.
LISA KOZARIS: Wow.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: Well done team Appollo. There is so much I loved about your presentation and your app. I thought your presentation was amazing. Loved the way you introduced the team at the beginning and made it personal to the team. Also loved the way you used personas for the solution. Loved learning about Oli and friends. I think that makes when you're explaining a solution much more real. So well done. And I loved the video, the client video. If you want to demonstrate impact to a client, having a video makes it again really real. So well done on lots of fronts.
My question ‑ I have two questions and one is around the metrics for the problem and the impact and I wondered if you were able to get even rough estimates of how many volunteers this app has affected or will affect say by the month or by the year. I know it sounded like the data problem ‑ you didn't have a lot of data to work with initially, but I just wondered if you had considered maybe presenting some numbers.
NICK BOROVIK: I can take this one. In terms of the amount of volunteers that will be processed, we don't have a concrete number. The numbers always change with RNA and who wants to volunteer. But with regards to metrics, it was important for RNA to be able to keep track of all the volunteers they had and any volunteers that subsequently either graduated university or no longer wanted to. So with regard to metrics, this at least allows RNA to have a more accurate vision of who is volunteering with them. But in regards to actual metrics of volunteers going through the app, we don't have a concrete number.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: Sometimes it's good to even give rough indications, knowing that you can't get exact, but were they in the hundreds? Are there hundreds of volunteers in a year?
TUTTI COPPING: Yes, I can take this from Nick. That was something we really discussed with our client because obviously the way we've designed our outputs, we don't want to be sending hundreds and hundreds of emails to her every day with new volunteers coming through and that was something we really wanted to keep in mind because our client does only consist of two people and they have a lot to do, so we didn't want to give them extra work to do. But I think currently they have around 60 active volunteers, but obviously it does change.
Lots of students will come in and volunteer with RNA through something like the Brennan Program or the SOUL award, like we saw, but obviously when we're in person on campus they have more active volunteers for their events, but I would say from our discussions with Catharine, she said she usually sees around potentially six new volunteers a month in a relatively busy period.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: That's great. That gives us a sense of impact. Fantastic. My last question is, is it installed on the client platform, so are they using the app now?
CHRIS CRUZ: I can take this question. So we're in the process of handing over the information to our client in terms of logging details for the Neota platform, but we envisaged the app to sit within RNA UTS's main page and we hope that the messaging around it would be more than just, "I want to volunteer" because this is a hub, we want it to be a place where volunteers ‑ like a general place for volunteers of UTS RNA where they can update their details and log events as well.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: Thank you.
LISA KOZARIS: Thanks, Chris. A quick question from me if I may. I echo Beth's comments, professional presentation and the app looks terrific. Well done to you all. I saw once a volunteer had completed the form ‑ I understand that RNA then receives an email with the volunteer's details and then they're able to copy and paste those details into their volunteer database, as I understand it. I'm interested to know whether your team explored the possibility of integration, you know, whether that final step of updating RNA's database could be sort of automated in any way to sort of eliminate that copy‑paste piece of work.
NICK BOROVIK: Certainly, I can take this one. So we did consider a database option for RNA, but because RNA is a UTS organisation, they have to adhere to the policies of UTS privacy and so to have a database which could be updated required approval from a lot of different bodies within UTS, including Privacy and Legal, and would require RNA to enter into a contract with Neota Logic. So in the timeframe that we were given through the challenge we wanted to produce something that our client would be able to use as soon as the challenge finished and so we opted for this version. So we did consider both options of the email output and the database extensively, but in our chats with both UTS Privacy and with Neota, we opted for our email output.
LISA KOZARIS: That makes a lot of sense, Appollo 2.0 perhaps. Thank you, Nick.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Fantastic. Now we move on to team number 3, which is Moral Code, whose client Autism Spectrum Australia, also known as Aspect, has worked closely with them as well as with Taylor, Daniel and Dom, their Allens mentors. So welcome to Dana, Emma, Jordan, Amelia and Annie. I'm looking forward to seeing your video. (Video played):
NEW SPEAKER: Fundraising is a critical source of income for not‑for‑profits, or NFPs. With more than 50,000 NFPs registered in Australia, it is essential for these organisations to ensure that the fundraising process is manageable and easy to understand. In the 2015/16 financial year alone, an estimated 14.9 million Australian adults gave $12.5 billion to charities and NFP organisations, but what precious time and resource are being taken away from NFP organisations when they attempt to navigate through the matrix of legislation that exists for fundraisers from state to state within Australia?
Well, that's exactly what Nikki and Josan, from the Community Fundraising Team at Autism Spectrum Australia, Aspect, came to us about. Aspect is Australia's largest autism spectrum service provider with one of the biggest autism‑specific school programs in the world. Aspect provides people on the autism spectrum with the opportunity to realise their unique learning potential as well as providing support to their families, carers, friends and colleagues.
All of this support is done in part with the assistance of fundraisers through the Community Fundraising Team. It is therefore integral for Aspect to ensure that their fundraisers are aware of all of the legal requirements in their state or territory and that the process to undertake a fundraiser is simple and streamlined. However, Nikki and Josan were finding that they were being inundated with questions and queries about how to host a fundraiser. Aspect is a nation‑wide organisation and therefore understanding how to comply with all of the legislative requirements of each state is difficult and time‑consuming, especially for non lawyers. Not only that, but the current manual administrative process of both applying for and approving fundraisers is complicated and laborious.
Initially, we wanted to focus on the gambling and gaming rules across Australia, but given the timeframe of this app, it just wasn't possible. Instead, we focused on one type of fundraising activity, raffles, which was identified by Aspect as the most useful to tackle. Now we will demonstrate our solution to this problem where we'll meet David, a potential fundraiser.
AMELIA QIOSESE: David is a teacher who lives in Brisbane whose son Michael was recently diagnosed with autism. David did research into organising a raffle, however was overwhelmed by the process. He came to the Aspect website and was referred to the raffle fundraiser assistant.
David is presented with our welcome page. In discussion with our client, we wanted to ensure inclusive practice was throughout our app. This can be first seen with the inclusion of a translation tool that can translate our content into 98 languages.
David is made aware of the fact our app does not offer legal advice on our disclaimer page given the context of Aspect's privacy policy which is presented in a text box to minimise information overload as well as an easy to read document and thus begins the first part of the app's function.
This is the beginning of the assessment of David's eligibility to host a raffle. He's asked whether he understands what a raffle is, what state he will hold his raffle in, as well as questions relating specifically to the laws that govern raffles within Queensland. David would answer three to six questions prior to being informed of his eligibility to host a raffle based on his answers to these simple questions.
We chose to use a broad testing group made of individuals of all ages to help us refine our questions as well as to understand how accessible the raffle information would be to a variety of people. This led to our team rephrasing sentences as well as using an Aspect‑specific tone in the information sheets we created.
Now that David has progressed through the first part of the app and has come to the end of the eligibility phase, he is informed that he can host a raffle with a permit, where he is given a link to the permit application for Queensland as well as an information sheet which is also provided in an easy‑to‑read format which highlights his obligations to host said raffle. These documents were created by the Moral Code team. These documents were created in accordance with W3C standards to further expand the accessibility of our app.
NEW SPEAKER: At this point David is forwarded to the document automation section, where he will submit his proposal to host a raffle to Aspect. On this proposal form he will need to provide specific details about his fundraiser. This process was initially tedious. However, after much discussion and feedback from our testers, we were able to rephrase our questions and add in text boxes which explain specific content and aided our user.
After just a few pages of information, the user is taken to Aspect's waiver, which also includes a hyperlink to their fundraising guidelines. This element was included to provide the client with an engaged and informed user who was aware of their duties to Aspect and to the law.
Finally, David has come to the end of the fundraiser assistant, where he is given feedback on his eligibility to host a raffle as well as created a proposal application. This highlights the efficiency and informative full service our application provides.
It does not only provide this to the user but also to the client as upon completion of his journey through the app, Aspect's community fundraising team will receive his application in real time. This includes his proposal form as well as a draft authority to fundraise form that was completed with the details he provided in the app. By drafting and automating this authority to fundraise, we are helping Aspect minimise their workload and eliminate a step in a bureaucratic process.
NEW SPEAKER: After months of intensive work, we are happy to announce that our app has been finalised and is ready for upload. It will be embedded in the Aspect website using a separate URL. We have also completed the maintenance instructions, which includes advice on what to do if and when fundraising legislation changes in the future to ensure that the app stays relevant and up to date.
In terms of impact, this app has significant timesaving capabilities. It will allow Aspect to refocus their energy away from complex legalese and bureaucratic technicalities towards impactful work within the community. Why should they have to waste time on difficult administrative tasks when the raffle fundraising assistant can do the work for them?
In the testing stage, many people were surprised that an app like this hadn't already been created, highlighting in particular the ease and efficiency of the process. Last year Aspect received $7.6 million from community fundraisers alone. By removing the legal technicalities from the fundraising process, our app will allow this donation tool to grow, thereby providing Aspect with freedom to continue doing amazing work they do.
NEW SPEAKER: Ultimately, our app was built to inspire. Due to our extensive research and automation processes, we have already formulated the solution to tedious tasks, providing a strong base for further expansion without the challenges. We believe that there is a real potential to expand and scale it to other organisations as they grapple with the same problems Aspect was experiencing. This is particularly the case since many charities operate on a national basis and must deal with laws across multiple jurisdictions.
But this is just the beginning. At the moment it only captures the law as it applies to raffle fundraising, but it can be adapted to cater for all fundraising events, such as fun runs, private event proceeds and even more novel circumstances, like selling Pokemon cards on eBay.
Through our tireless work, we are proud to be providing the not‑for‑profit sector with an innovative solution that will help channel more donations towards these vital community organisations.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: So thank you, Moral Code team. That was really tremendous and I think you've already got some potential clients through the chat section I was noticing.
I think that one of the ‑ so just a few general comments. The presentation was very good and I really liked how you put the problem up there very clearly, what was the problem that you were trying to solve. It was a really good statement of the problem.
I liked the fact that you used a persona, so we knew about ‑ I've forgotten his name, David ‑ David's situation and his use of the app and it looked very well designed, very clear, and so forth.
I thought particularly impressive was the accessibility features built into the app. I thought that showed a real respect for the clients of Aspect and the fact that they may be using it as well, so that was great to see. So well done.
And one thing ‑ it would be great if you'd introduced the team at the beginning of the presentation. That would have been really nice to know who was ‑ see the faces of everybody. But overall it was a really, really interesting presentation and obviously a great app to have.
You touched on it ‑ one of the team members touched on it at the end, which is the ability to use this app in so many different ways and I wondered whether you might just comment on do you see that as ‑ have you identified other ways, other types of organisations that might be able to use this type of application and also what might be some of the challenges in doing that?
DANA RUTNER: Yes, I'll take that one. So it is something that we had discussed right from the beginning. We knew that once we started to narrow down just to raffles, there was so much opportunity just to expand.
Our team spoke specifically about expanding to other not for profits because we know how important fundraising is and how difficult the process is. One of the challenges that we did find doing this app ‑ and I'm sure would be if we were to expand it ‑ is that the legislation is quite extensive, so it can be quite time‑consuming for just, say, us to go through it and figure out what we actually need to do in the process, but once that's done, it's quite ‑ as you saw, quite a straightforward app. So I think that would probably be our biggest challenge if we were to expand. Thank you.
LISA KOZARIS: I can second that, Dana. I agree with that statement.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: I may have missed it, Dana, but I just wondered if in that does it require then, if the legislation changes, you've got to go in ‑ is it a fairly simple operation to change the data?
DANA RUTNER: Yes. We have handed in our handover sheet and in it we've put processes into what happens when legislation does change. We have also included a layout of our app which is very easily structured so that if wording does need to be changed, someone can go in quite easily and change that.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: Well done.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: Thanks so much, team Moral Code. I absolutely agree with Lesley's comments. I really loved the way you set up the client problem and you started from the broad this is a problem in all of Australia and then I think often it's hard ‑ people want to tackle too much and I love the way you said, "This is what we're going to do and this is what we're not doing." Often people forget that "this is what we're not doing". So it gave me a really good sense of the scope of the problem you're trying to tackle which, as you said in answer to Lesley's question, is quite a complicated area of law.
Loved the output and the simplification through doc automation of the proposal and the draft authority to fundraise. My question is again trying to get more detail on the impact of this app because I think it could have a phenomenal impact across the not for profits, but I wondered if you had a sense of how many fundraisers your client might have in a year and what kind of time impact this might translate into for them and the people donating to the organisation.
EMMA HILTON: I can speak to ‑ I think maybe Dana can speak to impact, but I would love to say something about the sort of time‑saving capabilities that this app provides Aspect.
So as was sort of mentioned in the video, they were experiencing problems with being inundated with questions that they didn't quite know how to answer and because community fundraising is such an integral part of not‑for‑profit organisations, for example, for Aspect it's where they receive the most donations. So if the community fundraising team's time is being caught up with answering these queries that they're not 100% sure is correct because obviously, you know, they're not lawyers and sometimes they don't know where to start when answering these queries and basically our app completely helps them out with that. It takes the confusion completely out of the equation. It means they can refocus their time and energy on, you know, promoting their organisation and sort of focusing on more important aspects of their role. So ultimately, yeah, our app just ‑ it automates that entire process for them.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: That's great, thank you. I love the way ‑ to Lesley's question ‑ that you thought about the broader audience and application plus not for profits. Thank you.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Fantastic. Great to see the apps, the questions and also keep the audience engagement coming. It's really fantastic to see.
We move on to team number 4, Empower Her, and they have been working with Women's Justice Network and mentored by Dom and Sophie. So welcome Shay, Gillian, Vidya, Patricia and Jay. (Video played):
Hi, everyone. We are the Empower Her team.
Over the past few months we've had the privilege to work with our social justice partner the Women's Justice Network. The Women's Justice Network is committed to advancing the wellbeing of women and girls affected or at risk of the criminal justice system.
Through facilitating mentoring sessions, the Women's Justice Network has been able to successfully empower some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged women and girls within our community. These mentoring sessions have provided women and girls with the opportunity to learn coping mechanisms, new skills and confidence, whilst encouraging them to make positive choices and lifestyle changes.
NEW SPEAKER: After speaking to our client, we found that the Women's Justice Network faced three main problems with their current feedback reporting system. Firstly, there is currently no consistent way for mentors or mentees to submit their reflective reports and as a result, they're never delivered to WJN in a timely manner. Secondly, as a result of this inconsistent reporting, the Women's Justice Network and its case workers have been unable to track the progress of individual mentees and their overall mentoring relationship. Finally, we saw that mentors and mentees did not have a confidential way of reporting any concerns to the WJN leadership team, which impacted greatly on the experience of both groups throughout their involvement in the program.
Our app has revolutionised this process and helps Women's Justice Network adjust these three key problems by creating a streamlined reporting process. Our app has three main user groups, the first being mentors, who we have divided into mentors with mentees living in the community and those with mentees in custody.
The second user group are the mentees, who'll answer more reflective‑based questions about their experience in the program. We've also incorporated visual question formats to address any gaps in reading and writing capabilities, which was an issue raised by our client and in testing. Finally, the app will be provided to a third user group, which consists of the WJN case workers and the CEO in the case of confidential concerns.
NEW SPEAKER: After extensive testing and feedback, we developed our final product. The Empower Her web page allows users to quickly identify their roles and either report catch‑up feedback or a confidential concern. As per our client's request, we made sure that users had to agree with the guidelines and privacy policy before progressing.
Our app design is consistent with the WJN's current website and marketing material, with customised logos, colours and imagery. We also included an acknowledgment of country throughout the app. A key feature we include in our solution is the additional resources and donate feature in the footer, which can be accessed throughout the app.
Mentors will provide feedback via a range of survey‑style questions, inspired by the current WJN reports. An additional feature we included was the photos for all case workers, which allows users to easily identify who their relevant caseworkers are.
The questions we asked were split into specific catch‑up feedback and more general mentoring relationship feedback. Once mentors are finished with their form, they can review their answers and submit the report. This report is sent to the WJN, caseworkers and the user's email address. Users are also able to download a PDF copy onto their device.
As a mentee, the reporting system is very similar. However, our testing sessions showed that mentees preferred shorter and more reflective questions and wanted a more engaging app experience. To do this, we used Neota's reasoning features for both mentor and mentee questions. Users are able to interact with the slider and rating scale and our app will immediately provide suggestions based on their inputs.
Another highlight of the mentee reporting system is the additional resources tool. We have designed the question to allow mentees to select whether they would like further resources on sensitive issues. As this question and the resources do not appear in the final report, this provides a safe and confidential space for mentees to find out more information on issues which they may be experiencing.
Finally, we have a concern reporting function which was recently added to the app after feedback from multiple user groups. This feature allows mentors and mentees to report any concerns they are having in a confidential setting, with the outputs being sent directly to the CEO of WJN. Users can either describe their concerns in the form or choose to be contacted directly by Gloria over the phone, as users will be contacted within 10 days of report submission, in line with the WJN's reporting policies.
NEW SPEAKER: After users have completed the required sections, the app will generate a PDF report and an email will also be sent to both the user and their caseworker. We assured that the report was easy to read and provided additional resources in order to provide tailored support.
When designing the email, we ensured that the subject line included key details such as the user's name and the date of the catch‑up session. This ensures that the reports are easy to find at a later date and helps WJN to track progress.
Our app has simplified the reporting process for the WJN system and increased accessibility to important information.
NEW SPEAKER: The team ran virtual testing sessions involving three key user groups ‑ mentees, mentors and caseworkers. The first round of testing involved seven mentors and two mentees. From this round of testing we made two key changes. The first key change involved adding an additional questionnaire for mentors who have mentees in custody and the second key change involved adding more visual elements, such as the smile emojis and slider scale.
The second round of testing involved all WJN caseworkers. From this round of testing we were able to develop the final iteration of our app, which included the concerns page and the mentee resources.
As most mentees were using Android devices when filling out the form, we decided it was crucial to test the compatibility of our app. We achieved this through circulating a Google form amongst family and friends and this allowed us to see how the app operated on a range of devices such as various iPhone models, Androids, iPads and Macbooks. From this we were able to flesh out any glitches present within the app, mainly in the email output and the final report, and we were able to resolve them. We will now hear testimonials from our client.
NEW SPEAKER: The app is going to be what we consider to be a game changer for us. It's going to make our mentors be able to report quickly, efficiently and provide our caseworkers with a quicker process of keeping up to date with the women that we're supporting.
NEW SPEAKER: This is much better. It used to be a Word document that I'd have to open on desktop, type it out, save it and resend. This is a massive improvement.
NEW SPEAKER: And I think it enhances our program so very much by simple filing processes and it's just a wonderful, wonderful asset to our organisation.
NEW SPEAKER: So what's next? After this challenge, we will hand over the app from the Neota Logic Workbench to the Women's Justice Network. We have created a detailed maintenance manual with instructions on how to change existing features and questions in the app. This will ensure that all information and reporting questions will stay up to date within the app.
We are excited for the mentors, mentees and caseworkers of the Women's Justice Network to start using our app. We hope that our app will help empower women and girls who have been impacted by the justice system and create a better mentoring program experienced for all users.
To keep up to date with our app and find out more about the amazing work at the Women's Justice Network, please follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. Thank you.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: Well, Empower Her, fantastic. Great work. Loved your presentation, loved so much about it. You were really tackling a complex problem with three specific types of users, so that's quite a complex user challenge to solve and loved some of the things that you did.
I particularly was impressed with your testing rigour. I'm a bit of a stickler for testing because an app is no good unless it works once it gets out there and was impressed the number of platforms you tested it across and the number of iterations and the fact that you tested it with all the mentor group I thought was fantastic.
I absolutely loved the testimonials. The fact that you were able to get three of your clients to actually speak on video, I think it speaks to the importance of your app for their organisation and the impact that no doubt it will have.
But my question is again going back to you had three really specific types of users that you had to cater your app to. How did you actually gather the user requirements for those three different groups?
PATRICIA VENG: I might take that question. In gathering I guess the requirement for each user, as we mentioned in our presentation, we did have multiple meetings with our client. So initially we met ‑ we fleshed out we had the three main user groups and we got a lot of feedback actually through our testing sessions and we made sure we were able to test with all three of our user groups, so mentors, mentees and also the caseworkers as they had quite different requirements for each party. So as you could see, we had a lot of different iterations after all the feedback we got, so we made sure to really accommodate everything they were telling us and making sure we were balancing all the requirements they were, I guess, providing us through each testing session.
ADJUNCT PROF. BETH PATTERSON: Well done. It really shows the importance of iterations that you're not going to solve the problem in one go and the fact that you interacted with your client, so well done.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: Thank you, team 4. I'd also echo Beth's comments. It was a really lovely presentation and so well thought out.
I've got a question that I want to ask you, but just before I do that, I really just would like to generally make a comment about each of the teams and their presentations and the work that they've done. You know, NGOs work with such limited resources and yet do so much important work and we see that through each of those applications tonight, you know, serving a student community with Respect.Now.Always in a really important issue about making sure students understand the significance and the meaning of, you know, consent, and so forth.
We saw it with Ciana, an international program that does really crucial work in no doubt absolutely heartbreaking and complex situations; with Moral Code, where not just the resources that might be needed to answer those legal problems but the importance in terms of the reputation of the NGO to be able to make sure that all of their fundraising also complies with the law and doesn't damage their reputation, and again really important work for a significant part and valued part of our community to help make their lives better; and finally Empower Her, or the Women's Justice Network, another great example of really trying to make lives better for women who may have unfortunately had to go through the criminal justice system, but how do we make their lives better post that and no doubt again a group that might not attract support, and so forth, in the way that some other NGOs, charitable organisations, might.
So to each of the teams I really just want to say how much we appreciate the work that you've done. It's been valuable for you personally as well, but I think it's a kind of ‑ to see the opportunity for each of you to engage with these NGOs to really work with them and to improve the work that they are trying to deliver, the services that they're trying to deliver, and I really ‑ I think we all really appreciated, and you can see it through the chat sessions, how much genuine commitment you made to this project, the integrity that you brought to it, the listening, the understanding of the position of the client and the clients that those NGOs served as well.
So I just wanted to take a moment ‑ I think I can speak on behalf of the other judges ‑ to really say thank you for the work that you've done and really it's uplifting, particularly at a time when we are in a really difficult public health crisis and we see political squabbling, and so forth. It's so valuable to see this kind of work. So thank you for what you've done and we do hope the NGOs are benefited through this.
Now, after that long speech, team 4, I just want to come back and ask you a question and it's really about did you think ‑ and I can imagine it was a little bit complicated in this situation because you had three different client groups, as Beth was talking about, but did you think about creating personas in order to explain how it worked for each of them through your demonstration?
PATRICIA VENG: I might also take that question. Yes, so when coming up with the presentation, we were considering whether or not to use personas in explaining how each user was going to interact with the app, but I guess our team ended up not using the personas just because we were aware that the I guess environment surrounding our users was a bit sensitive, especially for the mentees, and we really didn't want to I guess imply anything or add any information which might, I guess, detract from like the work that we were doing. We didn't really want to, I guess, impose on that.
So we chose not to use personas in the end, but we really hope that we were able to demonstrate I guess the users' input through the feedback we got and through demonstrating how we actually changed the features of the app, instead of using the personas, we were still able to include them in our presentation showing we interacted with them through the testing and feedback we got with them.
PROF. LESLEY HITCHENS: Yes, definitely, so thank you for that and once again showing the sensitivity to the client and to the NGO. So thank you.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Thank you, Shay, Patricia, Vidya, Jay and Gillian for another excellent presentation and thank you to everyone involved in presenting and also for the judges for their questions. It was great to get some more insight and just hear the teams speak to their amazing apps.
Congratulations to all of the teams, their mentors and their social justice partners. I'm so impressed to see the way that you've used the platform to create your amazing apps.
I'm now going to send the judges off to make what I will expect to be a difficult decision, so thank you Lesley, Lisa and Beth. It's time to confer.
But wait, there's more ‑ not for the judges, but for everyone else. We're now going to move on to the presentation of the social media campaign. So the four teams are going to give you a snapshot of their social media campaign over the past few months. Each team has three minutes to give you an overview of their work and hopefully I won't need to cut them off, but they have done a lot of work on social media, so there is a lot to talk about.
Once you've heard from all of the four teams, it will be time to vote via a Zoom poll for your favourite social media campaign and I know that the teams are very excited to present their campaigns, but also very excited to see what the audience thinks about these different social media campaigns.
So let's head back to team 1 to Ciana and Ciana, hopefully you are going to be able to share your slides.
BRYDON TRUONG: I can't turn on my video for some reason, but that's okay, I guess. Yes, there we go. Hi, everyone. My name is Brydon and I'm a Communications and Quality Assurance Officer at Ciana and along with Tristan, Project Manager, we'll be presenting impact of our marketing campaign during the journey of Ciana.
We'll begin with the foundations of the marketing. Firstly, we utilised Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to market to the 20‑ to 40‑year‑old age group, which captures our cohort, both young and mature age professionals in the international rights and legal industry and parents experiencing international child abduction. Specifically, LinkedIn and Twitter provided a useful platform for the International Social Services Australia, ISS, to share each other's content as well as professionally market on international rights and child abduction groups.
Additionally, we envisioned the name Ciana as it doubled as an empathetic name for parents and a professional name to symbolise our message and journey ‑ the story of hope. The name Ciana means light and we wanted this to embody the journey of the parent and child, that of finding the light and the end of the tunnel, an end to the journey.
We accompanied this with a slogan "Find Your Way Home" to express the narrative of our marketing, a motivating call to action that inspires hope. In that, we utilised a light blue hue and a child‑like iconography in the logo as well as in our marketing. This is in parallel to our application's purpose, which is to relieve anxiousness and establish hope within the parent. I will now pass on to Tristan to take us through our marketing campaigns.
TRISTAN SALINATRO: Thanks, Brydon. Moving on, we devised four main campaigns ‑ Progress, Awareness, Application Development, and Final Sprint ‑ as well as a website for our followers to find more information on the journey. This aligned with each of the different phases of the project cycle as well as our personal uni schedules.
The Progress, Application Development and Final Sprint campaign highlighted the design and conceptualisation of the application as well as an interview with the ISS. Our marketing consisted of two media formats primarily in the form of infographics and videos.
The Awareness campaign, which we are most proud of, presented the problem and key statistics surrounding international parental child abduction. We presented how over 250 children are illegally abducted by a parent out of Australia each year and we also noted the seriousness of the issue, as nearly 46% of abductors have a criminal record, as well as 14% of any abductions involving physical force.
Finally, to end the campaign, we enforced how there was a 64% return rate of any actions enforced by the Hague Convention, which aligned with how our application was assisting the ISS to speed up their consultation process. We wanted to spread the word of this serious issue in Australia as part of our application initiative and in that we're proud to say we achieved an average net engagement rate of 25% and an overall reach of over 500,000 people on all platforms combined with a LinkedIn following of 127 followers.
Thank you for listening and we'll now move on to the next team to present their social media campaign.
DEEPALI PATIL: Good evening, everyone. I hope you're ready to find out the engaging personality behind our strategy.
Our strategy was measured using three simple questions ‑ what Appollo wants to do, how Appollo will do it, and how Appollo eventually did it.
Please use the raise hand function if you have an Instagram account. That's not surprising that most of you do as you sit within our Gen Z audience. We knew that one of the audiences we wanted to engage with our brand was Gen Z, so targeted this audience by utilising Instagram as research shows that 89% of this audience prioritises Instagram for social media, with a close 56% using Facebook.
For those of you who might be on the other side of 30, we didn't forget about you. We also used LinkedIn for our social media campaign. This platform was used to target our corporate audience as we know you're not a fan of the socials. We posted more "teachable content" less frequently on LinkedIn to capture and engage this audience.
In terms of posts, we split them into three categories. The first is personal posts. This enabled our audience to get to know us as a team and help to establish our brand identity, making Appollo come across as authentic and real. Gen Z are able to sense unauthentic material online, which we were able to prevent with our personal posts. This is reflected in our stats, where we saw a 43% increase in interaction from our audience on Instagram between our first personal post to our recent personal post.
We also wanted to create engaging posts. RNA's branding and content is focussed on drawing attention to their cause using unconventional methods and we wanted to reflect this. We found that our quirky content did 95% better than our other recent posts and of course we checked with our client before posting this.
Finally, we created insightful posts. We recognised that there was a likelihood that our followers wouldn't know about our client RNA. As a result, we aimed to educate our followers. And did it work? Just ask our friends who follow the page and are now experts in talking about RNA.
Now, you all must be across the latest trends on Instagram, right? If you're not, we'll get you up to speed. We used stories and highlights to feature and attract our followers. We had polls for our audience to virtually interact with us. We also had board posts which was created to make a grand reveal of a client and, lastly, Q&A sessions for our followers to ask any questions they had. This helped us stay on trend and up to date with what engages people on Instagram. Appollo has made sure to adapt RNA branding throughout each post in order to create a persona that our audience is familiar with and to associate ourselves with RNA.
So what do you think? Will we be seeing you on Appollo social page? We certainly hope so. Thank you. I'll now hand it over to the next team.
JORDAN ROODS: The social media campaign allowed us to get creative and think deeply about how we want to brand moral code to the world. In terms of the content being shared, not only did we want to make it clear what our app would be able to do, but also wanted to demonstrate the social justice implications of it.
One of our most recent and successful posts on Instagram speaks to this. It included a testimonial from one of Aspect's fundraisers, Ashley. Ashley's son, Logan, was diagnosed in 2014 as being on the autism spectrum and in 2016, through the services Aspect provides, Logan was able to receive fortnightly occupational and speech therapies. For this family, being able to raise funds for Aspect was an opportunity to raise awareness and celebrate autism as well as to honour all the unique things they love about Logan.
We think this testimonial post was so successful because it highlighted to our audience exactly why it is that raffle laws are so important, allowed people to understand our app, through the process of removing legal technicalities from the fundraising process, allows organisations like Aspect to continue to do the important work that they do.
As well as this, we wanted to have fun with what we were posting so included features like interactive stories, Q&As, a raffle quiz and even a zoom bloopers reel. The content and stylistic choices of the posts reflected our core values as an organisation. The quality of inclusivity was probably the most important value for our team.
Similarly to the way we designed our app, it was important our social media campaign also included accessibility features ‑ for instance, the colour scheme for our profiles was taken from the W3C accessibility standards, making the profiles more user friendly for people on the autism spectrum. In terms of technical accessibility features, we made use of audiovisual cues and included closed captions in videos we posted.
You're probably wondering how we fared. Let me list a few stats for you. On Facebook we have 120 followers and have reached a total of 2,616 people over the course of the competition. On Instagram we have 156 followers and our testimonial post that I mentioned earlier received 85 likes, representing engagement for the majority of people who currently follow us.
On LinkedIn, we have 88 followers and our network locations are not confined to Australia alone. We have a global reach, with individuals engaging with our content from New Zealand, Fiji, the UK, US and even Tonga and we're followed by leaders from a wide range of industries.
For our Twitter profile, we recognised early on it wasn't going to get the kind of traction we originally planned for. This caused us to think on our feet and readjust the campaign. We decided to channel energy into other platforms and instead use Twitter as a way of following interesting people and organisations within the not-for-profit sector.
Ultimately the success of our campaign owes largely to us coming together as a team unit and learning to appreciate the value and fun involved in running your own social media campaign. I now invite the next team to speak about their social media campaign.
VIDYA KATHIRGAMALINGAM: My name is Vidya and I'm the Communications Manager for the Empower Her team. The Empower Her team chose to use social media with the key objective of promoting our app, raising awareness for WJN's mentoring programs and advocating for the cause.
When creating our strategy, we first considered the question who is our audience persona. Through liaising with the marketing team at the Women's Justice Network, we figured out that we would be marketing to women affected by the criminal justice system, advocates who are passionate about women's rights, professionals and UTS students as well as the staff at WJN.
We conducted an audit of WJN's social media and found that Facebook had the highest following, but Instagram had the highest rates of engagement. We chose to focus on gaining a following and posting to these two channels and we also created a LinkedIn in order to engage our professional target audience.
In creating a brand, we created a logo that utilised the colours of the Women's Justice Network so that we could remain consistent with their branding and we also focused on a theme of pastel colours and lavender flowers to evoke a theme of self‑care.
A key strength of our campaign was the creativity of our posts. In the initial stages of the campaign, we focused on posts that would be able to explain who we are, provide information about what our app aims to do, as well as informative posts and explainers about the issues that we would be helping to tackle.
The next stage of our marketing campaign aimed to really put a face to the team as well as the women that we would be helping. We achieved this through posting the stories of actual Women's Justice Network mentors and regularly posting about our progress. We were also able to gain more engagement from people affiliated with the Women's Justice Network by collaborating with their marketing team to repost each other's content.
As part of this stage, we also launched the successful Meet the WJN Women video interview series where Women's Justice Network employees had the opportunity to speak about their role, why they're passionate about helping women involved in the criminal justice system, as well as why they're excited for our app. We were able to reach over 100 accounts through this series, with 53% of these accounts not previously following us, which shows that this initiative was really successful at extending our reach.
In the prelaunch period we aimed to really hype up our audience. We posted user testimonials, we initiated a countdown, and the team members posted reflections on the challenge as well. During this period, we were able to increase the number of followers to our Instagram by 50% and the number of people reached on Facebook also increased by 904%. We were able to conclude the challenge with 147 followers on Instagram, 72 followers on Facebook, and 88 followers on LinkedIn.
Overall, our campaign was largely successful due to the fact that we focused on launching a creative and unique campaign on a few channels that we knew our audience would engage with. Thank you.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Thank you, teams, absolutely amazing work from all of you and I'm so pleased to see all of your campaigns and all the engagement and seeing the comments to hear that people are really responding to your campaigns and that they want to go and look and see what you've done and learn more about your organisations.
We now are going to give you a very short period of time to vote for the Social Media Champion award. So what I would like you to do is I would like you to cast your vote on the Zoom poll that is just about to come up. I'm going to give you 2 minutes, so please cast your vote.
We've got 10 seconds to go and 184 out of 200 people have voted. Okay, we're going to end the polling now. And we do have a clear winner, which is fantastic to see and so I'm now going to share the results and congratulate Moral Code and their client, autism Spectrum Australia, on receiving 34% of the vote. So congratulations to Moral Code. That is a fantastic result and you should be so proud.
All of the teams should be so incredibly proud of your social media campaigns, your efforts for social justice, the amazing work that you've done and the amazingly creative campaigns. So well done and congratulations.
So I've been told that the judges have in fact come to a decision, which is very exciting. So I am going to hand over to Lisa to perhaps first congratulate Moral Code on winning the Social Media Campaign award and then to announce the winner. Thanks, Lisa.
LISA KOZARIS: Thanks, Genevieve. And yes, the judges are back in the house. We have been busy conferring in another room. But yes, firstly, well done to our social media champions Moral Code, a terrific, terrific result, and well done to you all. Prizes will be headed your way shortly.
Look, because of the nature of this event, Beth, Lesley and I did actually have a sneak peek or a preliminary look at the videos, but I must say seeing them tonight and just hearing the way you all navigated the Q&A and some pretty curly questions, it was a really difficult decision and it really made us reflect on our initial thoughts, so really stress test our initial thinking about our decision. But we have made a decision tonight.
The first thing I actually said to Beth and Lesley when I saw the videos is I couldn't quite believe that these solutions had been put together by students and non‑practising lawyers as well as people that weren't trained technologists. I see solutions regularly as part of my job at Allens and I must say the standard that you've all reached in such a relatively short period of time is incredibly impressive, so hats off to all of you for your work.
In sharing the feedback a few moments ago, Beth, Lesley and I, we all reflected on the fact that what was clear is you've all thought deeply about your client and who's ultimately going to be engaging with the apps that you've created on a day‑to‑day basis and that's really, really come through in the design and the ultimate end solution. And we've also been, as has been touched on a little already tonight, so impressed the way you've all seamlessly pivoted to this virtual environment as well, and in fact with more than 200 people on the call tonight, I think it's been a roaring success I've got to say.
However, I won't hold you up any more. We have arrived at a winner and our reasons for that, we really feel the winning team developed a solution that clearly solved a tangible problem for their client and a reoccurring problem. It attempted to navigate a number of challenges, included catering to a number of different jurisdictional requirements, which isn't an easy thing to do, and they were able to really develop an app which we think would have much more application than existing case use, so really exciting.
I might take a pause and ask all the teams to pop on their videos, please. And as you do that, on behalf of the judges this evening and Allens more broadly, UTS Law and Neota, I'd like to award Moral Code as the winner of the challenge for their app for Autism Spectrum Australia. Well done to you all, team Moral Code, terrific job and your awards will be arriving in the not too distant future via snail mail, so stay tuned for that. But I'll hand back to you, Genevieve.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much, Lisa, and congratulations to Moral Code on a brilliant outcome. You've done so well and I am going to ask Dana, the Project Manager for Moral Code, to have a few words.
DANA RUTNER: Thank you. Wow, I'm in complete shock, but my heart is pounding, but I am very, very grateful for this opportunity and I'd just like to say some thanks yous, to our mentors Dom, Dan and Taylor, to our clients at Aspect, Nikki, obviously to the most amazing team. It has been a privilege for us to be able to put together an app that has such real‑life uses and that can expand to so much more. It was an incredible journey and we're thankful for all the support along the way. Yeah, thank you to the team as well.
GENEVIEVE WILKINSON: Fantastic. So the teams, every single one of them, have heard me say so many times throughout this challenge that no matter what the outcome will be, they will all be winners. So congratulations to Dana, Emma, Jordan, Amelia and Annie, but I also want to say congratulations to Shay, Gillian, Vidya, Patricia, Jay, Tutti, Chris, Deepali, Nick, Rania, Tristan, Molly, Brydon, Hue, Stella, you have all been absolutely amazing. So thank you to every team member, every mentor, the wonderful clients, Gloria, Nikki, Josan, Rebecca, Jenny and Catharine.
There has been an enormous amount of work in developing these apps. The teams have been supported by Kevin and Gillian, from Neota Logic, and generously benefited from presentations and support from Liza, Amanda, Katie, Rose, James, Isabelle, Caitlin and Nicky from Allens. They've also received expert insights from Kevin, Julian, Jane and our fantastic Law Tech Challenge alumni Rachel, Ethan and Tamim.
So behind the scenes at UTS there has been absolutely tremendous support from Associate Dean Maxine Evers and great help from Belinda Carsen. This year the challenge would not have been possible without the tireless work of Crystal McLoughlin. She has worked magnificently behind the scenes to bring tonight's event together and worked with Bec, Monica and Thomas, who've all done a fantastic, fantastic job to make this possible. So thank you, everyone, sincerely for all of your hard work.
Thank you to the audience for your support of our teams and voting for our social media champions. I particularly want to thank our expert judges Lisa, Beth and Lesley for your support and your hard work tonight.
So it's incredibly rewarding to come to the end of this and I want to say thank you to our audience for this fantastic result, but I also want to say to the members of the audience who are part of the Brennan Program, who are thinking about being a part of this tremendous program that we will shortly be letting you know about the dates for the next iteration of the Allens Neota Logic UTS Law Tech Challenge and I hope that you will consider being a part of this challenge because it is an amazing, amazing opportunity to see everyone working so hard together for social justice. These are challenging times, but programs like the Law Tech Challenge remind us that we can all support each other to do absolutely wonderful things.
So good night, everyone. I hope that we see you next year. But before then, I hope that you have a good week and stay well. Thank you.
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The Brennan program is a free voluntary program driven by the ideals of justice
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consciousness idealism and a sense of service. In accomplishing this award it
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developed students capacity for professional and personal leadership and
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service. Since 2011, the Brennan program has accrued over two thousand and fifty
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members. My favorite part of it was probably the connections that I made and
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the people that I met. My main goal in joining the Brennan program was to get
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more involved in social justice. What I love about the Brennan program was I
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really got to meet so many different people and do a wide range of tasks.
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I was doing things from volunteering at immigration center, to helping the
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elderly use IT. So if you're a UTS law student I would suggest that you just
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give it a go. It's a fun engaging and diverse experience. Being surrounded by
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people who are driven and who really care about social justice issues really
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inspired me as well and it just reminded me that it's possible to create a better
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world
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If you use another person's words, concepts, results, conclusions, images, sound or videos and pass them off as your own, then you are plagiarising.
There are many forms of plagiarism. The most obvious is when you copy or paraphrase any part of a document without acknowledging the source.
This includes copying and pasting, photocopying or even memorising.
Submitting an assignment which you have copied or bought from someone else is also plagiarism.
And never allow another person to submit your work as his/her own.
Let’s say you have an assignment for individual submission (not a group assignment). If you decide to work together with another student and if you then both hand in work which is similar in content and language, then this is also considered student misconduct.
Remember, plagiarism can be accidental – the result of poor note taking; not keeping enough details of the source. It can be as simple as referencing incorrectly or forgetting to use quotation marks. However, this is still plagiarism.
Plagiarism is a breach of academic integrity and UTS actively checks for plagiarism. For example UTS students now submit assignments using Turnitin.
UTS treats any form of plagiarism very seriously. It can mean failing the assessment task; or failing the subject; or being suspended or excluded from the university. These are serious consequences but don’t worry, avoiding plagiarism is easy.
Check out our next video to see how.
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Maxine Evers, Associate Dean (Education), Faculty of Law: UTS as a law faculty is different from other law schools because it's very much a practice-based education program.
We also offer a range of general postgraduate courses that are very much designed to start with a small offering, such as a graduate certificate up into a master's.
Speaker: There are no large halls and long lectures and 100% exams. It's giving students small-group experience, a number of assessment tasks spread across a session, designed to replicate the sort of authentic tasks that you will do in practice.
Speaker: Flexibility timetabling was really key for me. UTS offered a lot of classes on the weekends during summer and winter and it actually made working part-time and studying a lot easier.
Speaker: The advice I'd give to anyone considering postgraduate study in law would be just to give it a go. I think you'll be surprised to find that it's quite manageable once you actually start.
