2024 Symposium Panel Session: Measuring the Impact of Student Voice and Partnership Initiatives

Welcome to our panel discussion on measuring the impact of student voice and partnership initiatives um my name is Trish bean and I'm the partner student Partnerships lead in the office of student life at the University of Sydney and I'd like to extend uh very special welcome to both our in-person attendees you guys and all our attendees online um we're really really excited to have representation from over 26 universities today and to institutes um that's very exciting for us so thank you all here and Online for being part of this really important conversation so as institutions increasingly prioritize student partnership um one of the challenges we see now lies in evaluating how effective our initiatives are and how we can ensure they drive continuous Improvement so today we'll explore methods various methods and metrics used to assess student voice and partnership initiatives and we'll discuss how these evaluations can enhance student engagement in decision making processes so we are joined by three wonderful panelists who I've had great pleasure to get to know over the last few weeks and each of them bring a very unique expertise um I'll start by introducing Satoshi Sada and Satoshi is a principal policy and local engagement officer at the Victorian schools Authority and Satoshi will offer us insights into how student voices are integrated into policy decisions particularly in the vocational education sector and how the their effectiveness is assessed uh then we have sabrin yes Sabrine is on the steering committee is a steering committee member of the global student forum and National welfare officer at the national Union of students and Sabrina is a student member on the UTS academic board and Sabrine is going to present to us a practical example from the University of Technology of Sydney where the impact of student voice has been measured through their student partnership agreement and finally we have Professor ker Lee CR um K Lee is chair of the higher education standards panel the in the Australian government Department of Education and K Le will share insights on uh using evaluations to inform strategic decisions and improve institutional culture in higher education so welcome welcome welcome so we'll dive straight in into this very critical discussion and I'm going to start um with Satoshi I'm going to pose a question to you Satoshi so um I'm the I'm am aware that the questions are not overhead which is good because they're long and Meaty so I'm going to go through them quite slowly and clearly so you'll remember them um so Satoshi your work at the Victorian skills Authority has focused on integrating student voices into decision making making in the vet sector at National State and institutional levels uh noting that some tapes and registered training organizations already have their own processes for incorporating student feedback in providing strategic advice to the government what feedback or indicators do you consider most valuable in ensuring these initiatives effectively Empower students thank you thank you Trac thanks everybody for having me here um just want to pay my respect to all the traditional owners of a land as a first first generation migrant in Australia that's a particularly important um thing for me to do so I want to talk about two things uh really quickly and there's more time for questions answers so I can um talk further as well so two things I want to talk about now is just to talk about quickly talk about the role of the VSA the Victorian skills Authority and specifically my role as a principal policy adviser and secondly we'll I'll tell you a little bit about sort of broad domains of metrics that we use to uh measure success in our work so first and foremost the Victorian skills Authority it's an advisory Authority that was set up in uh 2021 um within the Victorian government we reports to the minister of skills and T okay now Victoria is a really interesting uh scenario I suppose compared to other uh jurisdictions we've got 12 different tapes we've got four different uh jural sector that's universities and tapes together each one of them has a its own um chief executive board and also its governance structure right um the beauty of that is we can do a very what we call place-based uh response to the local skills need and so forth now the difficulty lies in the fact that I suppose there's lots of really interesting student voice initiatives that are occurring across the state but they're not necessarily joined up uh sometimes it causes duplication because similar sort of issues being raised across different campus and different campus sorry campus different institutions uh deal with them separately okay um and as as a sort of government that's sitting at the state level uh we don't really have a very clear oversight of what's been said what's been done and I think probably the most important point is that there are lots of uh issues or opportunities or risks which rightly sit sit at the institution level right but then there's also are issues matters that probably need to be dealt at higher level particularly given that vet system like like University system is nationally driven system so there's rightly again acknowledging there lots of really good stuff that's happening at the institution level is rightly things that we shouldn't expect institutions to Sol solve by themselves so at the state level that's where we coming um as a advisory authority to the Victorian government but also to the National level um uh government decision makers that's you know your job skills of Australia job skills Council for instance we have an ability to Leverage aage students voice so that they can actually meaningfully influence the policy decisions the program decisions that uh make a difference at at Large Scale so we have a distinctive role as a kind of it's almost like a an advocate at the sort of state level you know we got policies get made up up here at National level we got institutions that are doing all the good things down here well I shouldn't say down here that's very yeah I'm not saying we're we're higher or anything like that but but we we are in this kind of in between space where we interface we coordinate what tapes do but we also have a sort of influencing power at National level so so I'm I'm I'm leading the development of a strategy to actually enable that structure where we want where we want to get to is the point where uh we will actually directly engage as well as indirectly through tapes and dual sectors and to actually collate and synthesize the higher level policy level I suppose uh uh insights you know aspirations needs concerns by the students and use that to actually uh uh create a sort of really you know clear shared understanding across the institutions across the decision makers about what needs to change at the system level okay so just just want to clarify what we're doing is to to play the role in a government decision making space not at the institution level okay so up on the screen uh there there's a diagram that shows the kind of like a really truncated version of what we do um we have a document called Victorian skills plan which is been publicly announced by the minister of the skills and t uh which commits us to taking actions and action 12 of the plan which you can find online too by the way um says that we we'll be setting up an inclusive vet system which aims to provide a stronger student voice into Education and Training reforms that's quite a strong claim coming from coming from the state level minister right um now the qu the question then becomes falls on to people like me think how do we actually do this exactly now having worked in student voice space in the past so I come from secondary education space uh initially and uh there are lots of issues and limitations of uh or precautions I might say of doing student voice which I'm not sure I don't need to tell you all about uh so what we have is a four broad domains of measures which again I'm not going to read that you can you can read on screen the reason why we have these four things there is is because there is a kind of almost like a reflexive relationship between some of these enable what we call enablers versus outputs and outcomes right so of course we're trying to measure the outcomes of the student uh voice and engagement but we need to think about what are the outputs we need to kind of get to the outcomes and what are the enablers that allow us to get to the point now once we start start to actually talk think about doing student voice you realize that some of the enablers are actually um enabled by some of the outcomes if start Mak sense so for instance and and to to put into really concrete terms for students to feel like they can feel psychosocially safe and speaking to the government decision makers and and actually also to think that well it's worth my time to actually come in speak to the government right we need to be able to show to them that we are empathetic we're responsive we got Integrity we hold out of the account all these kind of things right um so in other words by having some kind of early success then we can sort of promote a more opportunity for learner engagement and collaboration which creates more opportunity for greater number of stakeholders to have an experience interacting and working with Learners right and these these these will probably continuously sort of a kind of positive feedback loop in driving better practice over a long period of time now we also note that in a particular third box there is is a response to some of the kind of early feedback we received from our stakehold saying that well we're doing all kinds of well there's already lots of really great uh student voice learn engagement stuff happening but then we all all always hear from the same voice we're talking about this kind of role role model type of students who've already got a lot of experience in exposures in the past they've got you know typically they've got their able bodied typically they've got uh uh English as the first language uh they've got sort of great high level literacy and problem solving skills and so forth and that's that's really excellent these students can certainly advocate for others but um you know if you speak to say for instance our first Nations colleague for instance right if we if we can change the system in the way that works for uh most marginalized groups in the society then the system can do a lot for every student so in terms of like return on investment uh right like there's a lot we we as a government we need to be actually doing the best we can to speak to the most marginalized voice and make sure that these students again feel psych psychosocially safe to to come and speak to us so we need to make make our uh make sure that we are trusted so the way we think about that is the these four domains are like a you know it's a barel analogy right the system is only as strong as the its lowest common denominator you can only fill up the water to the lowest Stave that you've got uh so we believe that uh these four domains uh should be um pursued measured all at the same time I don't think we can leave any of these behind now I'm going to just stop talking but yeah there's a there's a bunch of things that sit under each of these domains which I don't have time to discuss but as I said I'll be around so please ask questions please please catch me later on um and talk further thank you so much Satoshi um and we're going to have plenty of time at the end of this session for Q&A so feel free to make some notes of you if any questions um I'm going to move on to Sabrine your turn awesome great sabr um at UTS the student partnership agreement has been instrumental in fostering collaboration between students and staff St can you discuss with us the process of its Inception challenges that you faced and how effect how the effectiveness of the student partnership agreement has been evaluated since including any methods or metrics used and how these evaluations have supported voice within the university awesome it's a big one for five minutes but thank you all for being here um I'd also like to acknowledge that we're on gadigal land um I'm going to tie myself because my friends and colleagues know that like to speak um but essentially what I'm here today I'm going to talk to you about is a very practical example of student engagement and student partnership so um what you're seeing here is the kind of preface of the uh Spa UTS so student partnership agreement and this was implemented two years ago and what our student partnership agreement meant to us um and which was one of the very first ones in New South W the first one is it's essentially a shared list of priorities between uh University and the management and student groups um and what this did was essentially codify um the goals the the aims um the obstacles that we wanted to face for the next two years as a university both students and staff um so again a lot of this came down and I'll talk more about this as we go in and hopefully get some questions was about co- collaboration co-design and authentic partnership um and if you look at some of the things I've highlighted or you I'm sure you all know how to read but um it essentially covers what we as students really wanted to acknowledge at UTS which was about genuinely recognizing students as kind of uh as Engineers of their own learning as Leaders as um people who again students um know what they want students know what needs to happen to evaluate their learning alongside staff and so essentially the Inception of this came out of a very fortunate year we had a lot of kind of strong student leaders who were at the end of their tenure you know about to graduate had given a lot to the university Over The Last 5 Years um had been president of the Student Union had sat on academic board and wanted to be able to give back to the university and make sure that the students who followed them got the same opportunities that they did um but a lot of what they had relied on in previous years and this is including myself was you know personal connections networks knowing your staff being involved in the University space um so it's was a very high barrier as satosi mentioned people who are already kind of involved to get um to get to that point of you know student leadership and partnership um so this document was essentially created as a tool to formalize these structures formalize student partnership um and over the last years we've spent uh evaluating uh the effects of this and we're currently working on 2.0 um which is a bit different which I canot reveal yet some of the changes because we're still in kind of negotiations and again I we take this process which I touch on it was a very serious process it wasn't let's just draft a document and and sign it was genuine negoti ation you know we had each student group in the room so we've got our Student Union we've got all the students who sit on academic board um and then all the students who run uh the clubs and Society it's called activate at UTS um and essentially each of these student bodies um and two of them specifically have their own Council and that Council needed to vote on this these these conversations that were had happened over a course of months um where we were deciding our priorities where again this level of accountability and buying um was so so key to the Inception the student partnership AG agreement and it's following success um so essentially I might just touch on what you mentioned the challenges were uh so as I uh briefly alluded to we are a university in UTS has a very thriving kind of social um student social space where a lot of the student leadership kind of comes from quite organically and again everyone had their own priorities um there was some overlap in in say uh services that Student Union provided and services that the clubs and societies provided so it was very interesting time where they could kind of sit in a room and be like okay what are your obligations what are my obligations who does UTS acknowledge as being the real student Representatives so a lot of these questions that allowed for the students who had kind of been elected into these roles maybe it was to put it on their CV maybe they genuinely cared about this aspect of you know Student Life um but it made them kind of sit down and evaluate what their like true priorities are um and again because they had to make those representations and almost again they almost had to justify themselves to be able to um kind of put their name on this paper that is something that was quite formalized like we had the vice Chancellor sign on I think there's a the pr there's a quote from him about um student partnership agreement and again this is quite a a big jump up um from kind of the informal channels that we had previously when it came to student leadership um and again some of the other challenges were that for the staff obviously you know letting go of some of the um kind of the the the steps they were able to take without kind of Consulting students these were real formalized processes that they they had to come to the students same for the students they had to fit their campaigns and their initiatives within kind of the formal Frameworks especially um uh hopefully you're familiar with the staff fee that all students have to pay and student unions get a portion of that fee um but what that money is spent on is very um OB obviously has to be transparent transparent sorry but it's very important as to um deciding what the priorities for the student union is that year and the good faith that came with the Student Union working with the university is another kind of outcome of this agreement but essentially when it came to evaluating the success um we had three main channels so first um uh following this the signing of this agreement a student Advisory Group was set up with the deputy Vice Chancellor of Education Kylie readman at UTS and I will have to say that some of the successes of initiatives such as such as this depend on the personalities it depends on do you have student leaders who are engaged who are willing who you know want to give up their time who believe in the process and do you have you know management or staff who want that genuine um collaboration with students because they know that it actually tangibly impacts the outcomes for students on that campus um or are they looking for a tokenistic you know piece of paper which again that was some of the push back we got um when it came to like voting on it and and passing it through councils was this is this is just going to you know be put up and collect dust and it's going to make you know the UTS look good and it's going to do nothing for students except bind us to this agreement um again I won't get into the weeds of it but there was a lot of um because it was a it was a formalized contract a lot of safeguards put in place um and one of them I might start from high level is the fact that this agreement is reviewed every two years so there is an option for the students or management to opt out after two years they can say it's not working no one did anything the last two years I I I don't think we need to part of it and and they can decide not to renew it however again that is what allowed us to properly um evaluate the agreement because right now we're in the process of it to do the second edition um is that we are now evaluating the successes of it so we are looking at um and I've got examples of some things that were in the agreement um we've been able to track the changes in policy within UTS that have actually come from the agreement so there was one thing about sexual assault and harassment so something that was originally agreement was that if a case is brought up um it should there should be one point of contact the student should shouldn't have to go through multiple different people you know counseling the clubs and societies the UTS report um service they should go to one person to avoid retraumatization and we saw that policy implemented so we could track and and evaluate that things like sustainability measures and I'm sure in your universities we've all had a lot of discussions about AI we created a UTS ethical AI policy um which was also including that agreement very early two years ago we were ahead of our time but um so that things like that we have reviewed and tracked and essentially that getting to the data of it all we've um kind of collated what's been done what hasn't been done and we've allowed each student stakeholder to go back to their groups um and and give their perspective through you know surveys and and informal channels um as to what they felt so then now when we come to the negotiation table again um we can review that um we also I'll probably end on this is um we we have a student council liaison group at UTS where the student elected students make representations to UTS Council I think that you said it's um the Senate um not sure but uh this is where again because a lot of these things the onus is on the students we wanted to make sure considering the power imbalance in some senses we wanted to make sure that both uh groups were reporting back so um the deputy Vice Chancellor will come and bring to council um and report back on where they are on each initiative and then at the student council the aison group uh she will come back and have a written piece of paper saying where they are on each priority students will put back and that continuous work and collaboration again very it's very high level but you can see how this takes genuine work it takes genuine um effort engagement and buy in um and it's a lot more than just like a piece of paper which is really what we try to avoid and um I'm sure I hopefully get lots of questions but this initiative has truly transformed the way that student ship has been able uh to operate at UTS and obviously management initiatives and now as I hopefully graduate at the end of the year um we've created a system and a structure where student voice is genuinely genuinely recognized um as being important to um the university and how it operates so yeah so much Sabrina and um I do remember when we first spoke and you told me that you were developing version 2.0 it just made me really think that you guys have jump jumped right in and assessed this measurement measurement and and taking everything so um seriously and the amount of work that is going into this is fascinating so I hope you'll get lots of questions others at the end um can you hear me now okay I'll speak up a bit um okay so thank you so much and I'm going to um uh pose a question to K Lee um so K Lee uh drawing from your leadership experience how can the evaluation of student voice and partnership initiatives guide strategic decision making and Foster sustained improvements in student engagement and institutional culture within higher education well we don't have all day but we really do need all day I think we could listen to the the work that you're doing Sabrine all afternoon fantastic segue to uh how to actually uh look at this work strategically I'd also like to acknowledge uh the land we're on today and also members of the First Nations Community who may be with us and whom we represent here in our um many University uh institutional settings it's fantastic to see so many people here and uh just as a a a quick sideline I was around when student voice uh australasia was in an in its infancy and it's come such a long way and well done to all those who have taken part in uh in the growth of that and Sally's here and uh well done to Anor and the the team who have brought together this program today so you can see on the slide there um a couple of things to build on all that has gone before in the presentations today the uh the big idea really is a focus on learner centered leadership and I'm uh talking talking to you as a group both in the room and online as Leaders combination of student leaders staff leaders and leaders who are Learners or who should be Learners I think the biggest mistake we make in looking at the student voice and student voices is thinking that it's someone else's job or uh they must be some special group that um that makes this happen but my focus really and my my key message is that you start with a mindset it's very easy to jump into actions and uh initiatives and this conference today and yesterday has highlighted many terrific initiatives really good and uh congratulations to all who have presented both posters as well as through the day but what I want to encourage you to do is uh to start by thinking about what is the mindset that we have as an institution and this is right across the institution sain's example gives a a great uh instance of a learner centered mindset where you bring together uh in humility a group of students staff and leaders all around the same table no one has privilege over anyone else and making sure those voices are as diverse as your population is at the institution and I really want to emphasize here that while most of of us are from universities it's great to hear about the student voice initiative in the TA sector in the vocational sector and uh as I I mentioned one of the points to come I think we have so much to learn from one another this is not just a university thing but uh in terms of making sure that you can have an impact at a whole of University level if you take the student partnership agreement as a as a case study some of the key principles there are what I've built into this slide first of all making sure that it's evidence-based and before jumping into let's evaluate with a survey or let's do x y and Zed let's just step back and say what is our mindset here are we focused on learning from one another or are we focused on just getting a survey done so we can report are we focused on having a partnership in terms of co-presentation of the findings or are we simply focused on ticking the kpi box at the end of the day so I encourage people just to step back before jumping in and to think about what's the mindset driving this and then from there you actually have the space to be able to look creatively and that word creative is really critical because yes we have surveys we have a stock standard set of evaluation measures and they have stood Us in good stead but I really encourage you as a collect Ive to be thinking about what are the more out of the-box ways of monitoring the outcomes and I love the question earlier today uh from Western Sydney to Ryan to say how do you measure the outcomes because that is exactly the question we need to be asking ourselves and I encourage you to think about creative ways to do that and the only way to be creative is a to create the space and B to bring diversity around the table and that's not just students that's not just staff that's not just people with the title of leader that's actually a collective so Contin creativity and continuous Improvement means we're continuing to learn about how to uh Implement strategy and how to do the three steps I've got um to follow just want to leave you with these practical steps the connection um this is a great way to connect with people people outside of your institution but what I also see is connections among portfolios within institutions often we work in silos right so how are you going to play a role on Monday when you're back at your campus to help to build connections is it over Zoom or teams is it bringing a group of people not The Usual Suspects together around a table for a conversation if you're a leader who has the um authority to create a committee then you know you might do it that way but you don't necessarily need the authority right the student voice is just so powerful so how do you creatively build connections and I'd like to unpack that in in a moment in the Q&A I want to build on something that has been mentioned both in Ryan's keynote as well as in many of the presentations so far we've talked about co-creation and co-design but I really want to push you to think about co-implementation and co-evaluation and sabr's already touched on that you know not just uh the DVC academic reporting back to council but holding one another accountable that's such a great example of the student leaders and the staff leaders reporting back to the governance leaders right and then having a joint conversation around the table and then uh finally this was mentioned earlier today as well this is all about cultural change that takes time and the courage and the creativity and the culture side of things often and the mindset these are tacet we don't see them necessarily they're not out there and we don't necessarily talk about these things all the time I think the student Voice work that you're doing is about bringing the testet into conversation and saying how are we doing culture-wise how are we know and I'll happy to share some suggestions about ways to at least monitor culture uh and uh to take the Pulse from a cultural perspective to see how we're doing as an institution but there are a few ideas to start the conversation thank you so much k um do we have time for yeah so this this might lead quite nicely into what you just said K Le I have a question before we go to Q&A I have one question that I want to pose to all of the panelists together um so considering your diverse experiences in policymaking student leadership and higher education governance what future directions do you see for refining assessment practices and enhancing the impact of student voice and partnership initiatives across different educational sectors I might start with you because I think I think that's a just touched on that actually K so focus on refining I think there is a lot of good work already happening but for me refinement looks like two things one is more sophisticated approaches to understanding different ways to bring together evaluation metrics and uh by that I mean not relying solely on our tried and tested surveys by sophisticated to me means you actually bring together together what you're already doing push yourselves to think about uh alternative ways to use technology to use ai go digital bring people around the table uh to look at the examples that Sabrine has given building on uh the those examples look at ways to hear student voices differently and and you know by that I mean not the usual student feedback mechanisms but let's go to where there are silences where are we not hearing student feedback to me sophistication is about saying we've got some gaps here let's figure out how we hear those silences uh and and what voices are in the void if you like um and secondly I I think um I go back to my second point it's not just about having students and staff and leaders come together at the design phase it's about a commitment to holistic evaluation from beginning to end and right back to the beginning again thank you so much um Sabrine Satoshi Sabrine yeah Happ to go um so I think I I definitely agree with car Le in terms of there is the wider and the rest of the student body that tends to not have a voice when it comes to again if we're talking about assessment design and practice a lot of kind of the experience I had was that you know I've got my peers and my friends and I'm getting feedback from them but none of it is particularly going anywhere and it's only because I was involved that I felt like I could go and and take those things to the subject coordinator or the lecture or the law faculty board and things like that um and again that does I think we do need to move away from you know we've all got the the SCS survey those feedback surveys we always talk about closing the feedback loop but I do think as universities and as institutions and where we're heading we do need to be more Innovative and creative with how that works and that can be a whole day um conversation but I think on that front um we're not kind of seeing that work in a lot of University spaces um and the second thing I would probably say is when it comes to things like the student partnership agreement like of course I would love if every University had something or something thereof that was similar because like knowledge at every University space is different you've all different structures you all have different staff and student um structures and and representation but I do think having that as a starting point can make all the world of difference um even when it comes to you know formalize relationships or having those channels where students and Staff feel comfortable sharing that feedback um and again it's not coming out of nowhere it's not coming as a critique or criticism at a opportune time it's coming because staff and students have agreed to engage in a continuous process of um learning and updating and and being able to provide that feedback so I think a form or something similar to an Spa acknowledging the uniqueness of each institution um is definitely a good starting point to be able to give feedback and continue that work thank you so much sabrin I'm going to respond as a a policy wonk so my response is going to be much drer compared to um what you know King is saying um as a policy person right so the way the way I look at the world is who's standing to gain power who's who's winning who's losing right and policy is a process of allocating deliberately allocating power to different people and one of the uh really nice moment I think in sain's initial response was that the moment where students realized that the initial Agreements are being getting close to agreement but then who's actually winning here right is it the university Vice chancellor who whoever that might be is is it an institution that's actually you know uh who's gonna sort of stand to gain more from this interaction or is it actually been done for students and the students were able to push back and say well look this is actually you know not benefiting us right so they it had all the forms of student voice and engagement but then the affect of that was potentially dangerous so the fact that the students were able to recognize that and also have that feedback being heard and then then renegotiate the contract um is a is is a credit to students of course but also to the leadership as well University right so that's what I wanted to talk about in sort of capability side of things now staying on this kind of topic of power and uh and I think I I think it's probably important to recognize that in year 2024 the notion of student voice has been both right and wrong reasons have been heavily performa tized in other words we we know we starting to see a lot of people on LinkedIn posting stuff about you know importance of student voice and I'm a student voice practitioner and all this kind of stuff right and that's dangerous because it again rais the question of who's actually gaining power here right and that's a that's a that's a bit of sort of you know like the post Colonial lens I'm putting into here right who who's who's looking better as a result of all this kind of things so I think speaking of The Next Step that you know the future directions I think we can actually acknowledge that there's a kind of there's there's both a a greater recognition of student voice but then there's also greater risk that it it continues to be even more performa tized and then as a result of that the student voice becomes tarnished into a institutional um instrument right to to to push whatever the um the initiatives that they want to and look I I used to work in sort of secondary school student voice field without going into too much details a lot of um School councils in Victoria did exactly that so principles often had the policies or whatever decision they want to put through they recruited students to school councils right and they they they picked handpicked students so they they they will support whatever schools were going to do anyway and then you know there's there's a sort of power relations there's pressures and all this kind of stuff so the students are not going to not many high school students going to stand up and go like no that's you know that's BS we're not going to do that right um so I think I think it's really important recognize there's a healthy resistance to student voice not not resistance to student voice but student voice being performa tized and being instrumentalized and exploited so I think that's a really important thing for us to real realize in the context of 2024 and one of the discussion we've had in the Victorian uh context in the sort of skills side of things um was that I think there's a greater need for us to have a greater scrutiny uh over you know whose voice or rather how how do we actually construct student voice so what voices do we give more affordance to what voices do we celebrate what voices do we suppress right so we talked about silenced voice and all these kind of things we do that as in as as a system owners or institutions or governments or whatever it is we we we we know we pick and choose which voices get Amplified and what not so I think it's really important for us to make an econ M and then you know we need to actually uh do do better job at validating not so much validating sorry rigorously testing I suppose our own orientation to voice and that's what makes this work really complex but it's also interesting very impactful thank you thank you so much satos I can see a lot of people nodding in the audience well a lot of what you're saying is resonating very deeply there um I think we have time we have Q&A now and I believe that we have the opportunity for the online online attendees to ask some questions as well um so Anna might Ro around with the microphone so if you'd like to raise your hands and perhaps introduce yourself and tell us where you're from and ask your question that would be great yeah um thank you so my name is Janna and I am the student president at Fus University Student Association so I'm myself I'm an international student so I'm also the elected representative pick representative for all students at lender so with the role comes a lot of student voice student representation within University outside of University as well but um I'm also on a student visa which means that I have to study full-time um and and also perform all of the relevant duties all while you know keeping myself afloat it's been a very challenging year especially with the time and um with the changes in the policy making or International students you know the the importance of student voice from International students or you know have become you know more important uh than ever so so um my question is that you know when I looked into other countries and what they do countries like UK when International students do become the elected Peak representative for the student body um the students are allowed to underload for a year or even um you know take a break from their studies to do the representation work and get back to studies so as policy makers do you think Australia will head to a sustained direction or what do you you think if an international student does get elected into one of those Peak representative role which has lots of commitments and lots of duties and responsibilities what do you think we should do do you want to give the student perspective first Sabrine yeah no I'm I'm happy to I think I definitely agree in terms of being an international student I've worked with a lot of international student um leaders and people who represent not only International students but domestic students um and the workloads always been different for them they've always had even issues in terms of and we had this issue when we were negotiating the spa is that International students um obviously you know when it comes to things like negotiation you want to be a bit Fierce you want to put things on the table but there is always that thought at the back of their head that I'm on a Visa I'm at the whim of the Australian government even the university if it really gets to that point um so again they've always unfortunately had a bit of a different playing field um and I guess I would love to see in the future the UK model where uh if you are in a official student leadership role you were able as an international student to to move away from your studies and do part-time I don't know how that would look in terms of you know our legislation right now the government's priorities but I think if there is a way and I'm sure L of discussion after in terms of as a student representative in the National Union we can work towards putting that on the table and making that a priority but again we've always I've always lamented with International students some of the um you know extra responsibilities they have but again that's why they're such important Advocates and why we need those Peak bodies and then people like you in that in that role well thanks for what you do that's the first thing and uh you're carrying a number of responsibilities I think um it's a a vexed question in many ways because institutions have their own policies in terms of uh support for student leaders and uh and then you've got at the state level uh and the federal level so I can't answer the question about you know what will happen in the future but I think the starting point is recognizing the the combined challenges of leaders who are carrying multiple levels of responsibility and I think a starting point is for institutions to figure out you know how how can they improve the support provided for leaders building capability uh and resourcing is always a challenge so you know there's a limited amount of money to uh to share around within universities so I'm not going to say here that universities must give more but I think the starting point is is hearing that perspective so if we really want to empower and give agency to our student leaders then let's figure out how we do that holistically across an institution and I think one of the best ways of leading the way is the example of UTS and others this is not the only University doing great things but it's a fabulous example and you know once we get examples of great practice share those showcase them and show others how it can be done that is one of the best I'm trying to listen culture right so uh I think you know there's some of the things get make sure people e I can only speak to the University of Sydney because I'm uh this is where uh I I study and work um but at the University of Sydney on our Senate there are only two student members who are fellows of senates there may be a maximum of 22 there are currently 15 there's only one elected undergraduate and one elected postgraduate and as far as democratically elected staff there are only three members of that staff so are there any and in my mind as like thinking about policy if we're wanting to enact high level changes to Bringing student and staff representation to the highest levels of University management wouldn't be an elegant solution be to in the legislation it says the UN the university Sydney Senate may have have to up to 22 fellows of Senate more student and staff represent voices at these high levels um so have there been any conversations uh at UTS your experience or is this a conversation that say the national Union and students is interested in having great so I will start with the UTS level and then go to what's kind of happen happening nationally because I wear two hats the UTS academic board and then National Union so with UTS and its kind of structure a little bit bias but we we the students have over 13 positions on academic board it is a board of 50 however we have always felt that because of the work of great student leaders before me that there is Genuine Voice there for example you don't show up at academic board with 50 other staff members and you know you're just there as students knowing you're you know not Valu what do I do I'm not really going to speak up in in front of all these Deans and vice chancellors and provis and everything so what was implemented a couple years back was um the academic board chair does a briefing the Monday prior to the academic board where students talk to the academic chair they have the papers they read the papers they ask all the questions they want if there are things they want implemented or change they have this forum to be confident enough to walk into academic board feeling like they can speak with context and understanding of um the university and and how they can Implement these changes so they're bringing an informed voice to academic board because then because again sorry there's 600 pages of academic board papers and no student is really going to feel confident um reading that and feeling that they have all the information to speak in front of 50 other academics so when it comes to specific governance structures um that isn't something that we have had discussions with because R com with Place one more thing about UCS actually is a couple years back um right before I kind of joined we wanted an extra student spot for IND indigenous student and that was something led by the students we said all right we've got one from each faculty um we've got the Student Union President we don't have any indigenous student representation and unfortunately they tend not to be elected in those member roles for for very variety of different reasons and and that got elect that got passed through the governance procedur spoke to the academic chair spoke to the Secretary of the university did the vote and so we've been in pushing those reforms but again I come from a very UTS Centric perspective however in terms of the National Space um are you all aware of the University cords that have been happening recently um hopefully generally so that's where a lot of the conversations has happened about the university structures in general I will say that we didn't touch on governance of universities because even as a student I can admit that there potentially would be some overreach there because each university has their own um kind of institution institutional structure that is already decided and is connected to the various forms of leadership that they have there but within the Accords um I can't remember the exact wording but they did touch on student leadership there was a lot there that I won't get into that was really like for example the student Ombudsman that is being set up to uh explore examples of sexual assault harassment on campuses complaint systems things like that the national Union was very involved in especially something we are very very happy with and again this is going to change the landscape of student unions and student representation is the minimum requirement that a student union or Association has to get 40% of Staff fee so for example um again I won't go on too much but right now UTS we only get 11% so we get 11% of that that fee and then we have to spend that on student services free food um you know counseling things like that um but now the minimum is 40% and there are more stringent requirements requirements on how we can spend that however that has absolutely given power to the students when it comes to student money in student hands um so again all those conversations were happening with universities as an institution however I think when it comes to the actual governance of each University that is going to be quite University specific and I do I would hope that um students have space to have those discussions but if they don't that's where things like an Spa student partnership agreement comes into it and comes into play thank you saine um do we have any more question yes we have a question over here we probably have time for maybe two or three more thanks s thanks thank you um my name is K Lee lock here I'm from the University of South Australia another K Lee um it's a strange experience for me um my question is around evaluation in general um so evaluation I feel is a bit of an edged word because it implies that there's an outcome uh and the people that are being evaluated when it comes to sort of student voice initiatives uh tend to be the students or how they experience a student-led Initiative for an example so I'm just wondering how we can preserve uh I suppose that information as it travels and gets recontextualized through the process of evaluation so that students or those who are being evaluated still have power over the outcome great question K Lee thank you Satoshi yeah so um so just want to clarify is the outcome of evaluation is what you're say y yeah and I speak as a government employee I mean the you know not going to say anymore but you know about sort of have governments employ uh evaluate things and their vested interest and whatnot I'm not going to say any more than that um um I think yes so uh your your point that uh the students are sometimes you know put under kind of not so much put on the microscope but there there's a kind of like unfair amount of Burden that's carried by students and it's already you know it already happens in sort of program level and if if happen during evaluation level noting that some student you know some students may be willingly you know um participating this kind of evaluation process to say particularly talk about you know the these I was bit disappointed by this or whatever not it was right so and it's first answer is to make sure that these uh sort of critical right not not the negative but critical constructively critical comments are actually properly captured and that falls onto the capability of people who are leading evaluation right so as a government employee I can contract evaluator to do the work I can tell them to suppress any negative you know uh information I mean that's that's an Integrity issue on my part right so I'll make sure that evaluation is actually being done to evaluate the program so that's that's on us um one way to do conduct evaluation in a way that doesn't place the sort of unfair you know epistemic buring on students is to actually take a fairly scientific approach in um uh the sort of program design implementation um what's a good example I can provide anyway what I what I mean by scientific is is kind of you know basically when you start the program the program areas in this case government uh should be actually articulating what are the sort of clear initial problem statements are right what are the sort of problem we're facing here and what our current starting hypothesis on what might make a difference so you you make you make the sort of like make sure these things are clearly documented as a initial hypothesis and all this kind of things and as we carry out the program and assuming that you know we do the right things by engaging students and collaborating students all all that kind of stuff we make sure that the sort of what are the sort of inputs made by students uh along the way they were and then what are the changes that are made to our those problem statements in hypothesis are so in other words how do we actually use student voice to test our own assumptions um uh to make sure that sort of there's a kind of Greater Fidelity or there's a greater impact or to realize that we are kind of uh heading in in sort of wrong direction so therefore therefore we have to Pivot all those kind of things that's probably um that's probably like a neat way of doing it without actually requiring students to speak to the evaluators and you know say you know we made this impact or whatever because there's as I keep saying there's there's always um danger of kind of perform performation right people say things that people want to hear and all these kind of things yeah so I think I think just to make things as as scientific as possible and yeah having a really clear documentation of how things have evolve over time including through the engagement students but also uh as sort new data and evidence become available um is probably um yeah my suggested approach I maybe I'll add something from this perspective see um one thing I think that worked really well because that was a real risk that the onus was going to end up on the students for doing this work um and again you know it was just there as a piece of paper that UTS got to you know flaun we we we signed it um and it really came down to the simple fact of delegation like on the PowerPoint slide that had some of the initiatives we had who was responsible and which area so we had the dbc's office the Student Union um uh UTS Marketing in terms of we wanted more engagement with our student elections and things like that so we said it's up to you know UTS marketing to actually take a role and through their channels um support that um and something we're actually working with 2.0 that we noticed again after the evaluation period is that when we put things like the DV DBC office or even UTS Market we actually needed specific names one of the issues was actually that you're giving it to kind of a um you know a team when one person doesn't take um own um initiative or accountability um then it's very easy you know like generally with teamwork people experience that unless you allocate it to someone it might not get done because it's across too many hands so that's something we did to be able to avoid um you know the owners being on one person or one group thank you so much sabr and I think we have a question or two oh yeah also this will be the last one but there will be time to mingle and network outside so I'm sure yeah thank you hi my name is Melisa zanini I'm from the University of Wong gong I just wanted to look back to something that um kly opened when you spoke you said that you might be able to give a few um checkpoints or things that you might think about when you're considering culture which I think is so incredibly important so I guess it's for all three of you but you know what are some of those things that we can keep an eye on um yeah so it's a fascinating area because often people say oh culture is just you know it's it's nebulous and uh how could we possibly look at how it's demonstrated well the first thing is to actually sit down and say what does culture look like in our institution and it does take the leadership of the institution to own that but if they're not doing that then certainly anyone students and staff who want to have this conversation can uh figure out how to start the ball rolling and ways to do that uh are first of all holding one another to account around the espoused values of the institution and it starts with values all of your universities have a statement about their mission and their purpose go back to that as number one often they are accompanied by a set of values what we stand for go to those and then very quickly say so how do we know what does that look like what does it look like in practice and simple ways of bringing that to the Forefront and bringing that to the surface include where do we see people actually living out those values let's talk about that let's tell the stories about that let's celebrate that let's also and this is where leaders really are the starting point they've got to live the walk the walk and talk the talk if those values are not being lived out and exhibited let's figure out where we see examples of that and do something about it and it can be as simple as one value a week one value a month whatever it is that you you um as a leadership group or as a student leadership group you can talk about the fact that you're focusing on culture by starting with values celebrate it and um feature it you know in whatever communication you have start using the words that you say about yourselves as an institution that matter start using those words and put flesh around those to to bring them to life and as I said holding yourselves to account when things are not working and owning that don't try to sugar coat it uh make sure that there is an honesty about the conversation and you know leaders I have to say play a key role in in um demonstrating how to do this at the start of meetings that I chair for example uh naming a value and saying okay where have we seen that in action just taking time out of the daytoday busyness of a university student leaders can do that you can do that in academic board you know naming the things that matter that's where culture starts and we all know examples of where culture goes wrong and when we see examples of culture not being lived out and played out but it's about bringing the tacet into real conversations making it as simple as possible as well because all too often people say cultures out there and it's someone else's problem actually this is about culture right we're living the culture of valuing a collaborating conversation around student voices and working together and you know let's name it very simply that's starting point thank you so much K was your question about the indicator of cultural change is that what you're asking about yeah yeah um I'm just gon I'm just I'm think thinking out loud right yeah uh so complaint uh data is an interesting one so we tend to treat it as a quantitative measure right how many complaints has XY Z received and that's a dangerous way to go about it because what matters is actually content of the complaint right so think of a uh misuse of pronouns for example something that probably people may not have complained about 10 years ago right in in the same way as mistreatment of uh students of color or whatever it may be gender diverse students whatever right a lot of uh marginalized groups may have self-governed not to make a complaint because and exactly as you were saying you know International students may feel that they not in the position to do so right so in some sense the rising number of complaints as long as we we can analyze the qualitative data on that side of things right it could be actually good indicator of how the culture is changing in other words what do people accept on this campus that's much more important than actually leaders sitting around talking about you know we value respect we we we are empathetic people we value XY Z right that's that's that's all in well but I think particular the students particularly those in at the margins are they know when when those things lip service so you want you want to have a kind of some way of actually capturing that and actually giving you know create an opportunity for people to express that well yeah somebody's not being very genuine when they talk about respect and inclusivity for instance or diversity whatever maybe right so yes I think it's I think I think we need to kind of like look at the new way of thinking about um um kind of complaint or whatever data as a sort of indicator of change of the culture as opposed to yeah thank you satosi I might need to gently come to a close and we could go on and on um thank you so much and for our online attendees as well so today's panel discussion was on measuring the impact of student voice and partnership initiatives and I did say at the very beginning that um our panel brought with them um very unique expertise and I think now you might understand why I said that so I can't thank you enough it's been honor to get to know you um ladies and gentlemen our wonderful panel