Hi everyone,

2023 has been a big year in the Teaching and Learning Space. When I started acting in this role in May 2022, I was advised that we should anticipate a decline in our numbers, but a recovery was anticipated in 2024-2025. Ever an optimist, I review student applications across the Faculty each week hoping for an uptick in trends. There have certainly been success stories throughout the year, such as in the widely-celebrated Diploma of Modern Languages and the new Master of Arts structure, and we’ve seen about a 20% 2023 application growth in the Bachelor of Education (both K-6 and K-12) compared to 2022. The innovative design of the new Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education and Care) was also lauded by members of other Faculties and areas, and I’m excited about ongoing developments in that area. I’m also hopeful that we’re now seeing early signs of a broader recovery and growth in interest across even more courses.

I’ve been immensely fortunate to work with a team of outstanding scholars in the First Nations Success Program, and I’m very proud to report that we’ve worked closely with Oorala and other stakeholders to increase our Indigenous students’ success rates by over 7% in 2023 compared to 2022 figures. In HASSE alone, we’ve worked to improve Indigenous students’ success rates by over 10%! There’s now only a 7.79% gap between UNE’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous student success rates, compared to the 15% gap of 2021! This is, of course, in addition to a huge range of community activities and UNE procedural developments that have taken place in our wholistic approach to change.

We’ve also seen a range of fascinating systems innovations that have been designed to improve staff and student user experiences, and to improve rates of student applications, retention, and success. MyLearn was launched, and UNE’s Uplift project (inspired by HASSE’s Commencing Student Success Program) sought to introduce common teaching elements that are designed to improve the student experience and support student retention. The ‘Majors, Minors, and Specialisations’ work package within the Digital User Experience [DUX] project has resulted in a substantially improved user experience with the Prospective Student Catalogue [which, in general, should make it much easier for prospective students to find the courses relevant to their interests]. And of course Atrium continues to be a wonderful tool for UCs to reach out to at-risk and/or in-need students, and further developments are expected for 2024.

UNE’s Growth Team was also formed in 2023, and already they’ve been of immense value to HASSE in providing market/sector analyses for our course ideas. They regularly produce high quality detailed reports to us on these ideas, and they’re helping us to shape and refine these ideas and convert them into robust course plans.

Much of the work in the Faculty of HASSE has also taken place in consultation with UNE’s Student Experience Team. For example, Kirra, Kerryn and colleagues in the School of Education worked with the Student Experience Team to develop comprehensive work around ‘Unit Waiver Precedents’, the results of which will streamline the waiver request process and reduce the associated workload for staff. While being rolled out in the School of Education in the first instance, it is anticipated that all other schools across UNE will follow in 2024. Great work is also being undertaken to reduce our teach-out obligations, and work is underway to help manage the mandatory student declarations of Majors and Specialisations, focusing on the School of Education as UNE priority area in the first instance.

As we head towards TEQSA re-accreditation, UNE has become even more attentive to the policies and procedures we follow. Within the Faculty of HASSE, we’re looking in particular at inconsistencies or gaps in the way we do things, and are always thinking about how we can improve our functions. For example, from the start of 2024, we’ll see new consolidated HASSE reports coming from FEC, TLC and CC, to help keep everyone in the Faculty more informed on developments and discussions taking place.

And as a Faculty, we’re more alert to the ebbs and flows of student interest, the activity of our competitors, and the need to recognise that content and curriculum development is an ever-changing process. Marketing and Brand Partnership have reinforced to us that many courses have a pattern of growth and decline, and we should always be alert to the need to revise our offerings and/or consider new offerings to meet student interests.

Overall, throughout all of the above activities [and the many, many more that I don’t have space to list] I’m particularly encouraged by the spirit of collegiality and optimism that drives all this work. I’ve long believed that HASSE’s greatest strength is the character of our staff, our passion for quality teaching and learning, and our desire to be on the lookout for ways to ‘do things better’. Fuelled by that enthusiasm, I’m confident that 2024 will bring even greater things to the Teaching and Learning space in HASSE. Thank you everyone for a wonderful year, happy holidays, and I hope you enjoy the break!