After nearly a decade of intermittent engagement with UNE as an employee, Megan Aitken is taking a new perspective on the institution as a member of the University Council.
Currently an advisor to a number of education institutes and the Pillar Lead of UNE’s Digital Plus strategy, Ms Aitken carries strong credentials into her Council role.
During the initial arc of her career she managed public affairs, M&A communications and marketing for investment banks and finance institutions regionally and globally, including JPMorgan, UBS Warburg, Westpac and Fidelity. The latter appointments saw her managing staff and executive portfolios across the Asia-Pacific as well as Europe.
Ms Aitken was Director of UNE’s Strategic Projects Group, before taking up the role of Regional General Manager for TAFE Digital, where she was a member of the executive team, responsible for managing TAFE’s online education to more than 100,000 students and driving the institute’s digital product and delivery strategy.
More recently she formed a consultancy, successfully specialising in supporting education institutions with digital transformation and innovation – including the past two years running UNE’s Digital Plus program.
As she moves to her new role on Council, Ms Aitken will leave the UNE payroll and adopt a broader perspective of the University and its place in a fast-changing world.
Pulse spoke to her about the challenges and opportunities for a University that made its name in distance education at a point where most of the world’s universities are rapidly building their own distance education models.
Pulse: What qualifications do you feel you bring to your position on Council?
MA: My experience at TAFE gave me a very practical understanding of education governance, online education and digital technologies. I also learnt very quickly what’s required to successfully manage a fast-paced educational institution in a new digital era. I established and managed TAFE Digital which is the largest online vocational provider in Australia, so I saw first-hand how scale, data analytics, and product innovation can transform traditional education.
I also have a number of years experience in executive management, having worked in large multinationals in Australia and overseas in a range of leadership roles, so I can share some of this commercial experience and business acumen.
And of course, I have worked for UNE over many years so I understand its challenges, opportunities and the way it works.
Pulse: What are the ingredients of successful online education?
MA: Firstly, I’m not an advocate for 100% online education. I believe the future is one where we provide students with choice. Our students should be able to choose how they wish to be educated, and when —within quality assurance guidelines and a regulatory framework of course — but we need to be better aligned to their lifestyle and learning needs.
One of the key ingredients is that the student experience should be designed with input from students, for students – the ability to listen, refine and sometimes pivot strategy and systems based on this ongoing, dynamic student input is critical in a new digital era.
Another ingredient is scale — to succeed digitally, you need scale — and the final ingredient is to use technology as an enabler and not the stand-alone solution. Digital initiatives are about people just as much as they are about new technology.
Pulse: COVID has sent most of the world’s universities online. Up until this point, UNE has been distinguishing itself through its history and expertise in distance education. What does the University do now that virtually all universities are expanding their online offerings?
MA: That’s the million-dollar question.
There is no doubt that society has much higher digital literacy skills now, post Covid, and expectations about what a good digital experience looks and feels like are also higher. Students expect a seamless experience when they interact with any organisation online. They want a very quick response. They have little patience for systems that aren’t intuitive and they have much greater choice now in terms of distance education from universities.
For UNE to maintain its leadership in flexible learning, we have to be able to find and invest in opportunities that will leapfrog us beyond the competition – the education market is just too crowded now for us to maintain a steady, business-as-usual approach.
I believe the Future Fit strategy will get us there, and the various strategic initiatives flowing from this are now well defined, funded and starting to gain momentum.
We have enormous strengths across the institute. We’re far more innovative than most universities; we’re smaller so we can move faster; we have the appetite to partner with others if we need to; and we have a consolidated and clear strategy over the next ten years.
But we do need to move at a faster pace than we have before the pandemic. A lot of universities are spending significant amounts of capital, time and energy into uplifting their products, developing new platforms and looking at new partnerships and/or ways to improve the student experience – here and internationally – so it’s becoming more competitive for funding as well as new enrolments, as we all know.
Pulse: A lot of talk about digital education refers to students and their needs. But what about academics? Can online teaching support great teaching without subsuming academics under demands to be always delivering to an always-on market?
MA: Using technology to enhance the relationship between an academic and the student, and the access a student has to that academic — at the right times — is fundamental to our success and in my view, will be the area we need to master if we are to lead the market.
Technology will never replace the connection between the academic and the student in the learning process, but it has enormous power to transform and improve that connectivity.
New technologies can shine a light on those students who need intervention, help determine what intervention is best for their specific learning behaviours, and personalise and adapt their learning to their experiences and knowledge. It can crystallise concepts and theories across a larger cohort of students during the learning process; it can facilitate more peer to peer learning and self-help models; it can ensure that the academic or teacher’s time is utilised by those students who need them most; and it can provide dynamic feedback to educational teams to refine and finesse unit content, learning and curriculum design.
Digital technology is providing us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Pulse: Is there a danger that Higher Education will one day be delivered online more effectively by software platforms than universities? Traditional media has been badly undercut by social media, for better or worse. As education moves increasingly online, what is to prevent a software platform partnering with big-brand universities and offering a slicker, lower-friction educational experience than the universities themselves?
MA: This is already happening with LinkedIn Learning, providers such as Open Universities and Udacity; you’ve got Udemy, Google Education, Future Learn – and there are plenty more start-ups on their way.
Udacity is an interesting model. In the States, they’ve actually partnered with Google and Mercedes Benz and a number of other large multi-nationals to co-design courses that are a pathway into university degrees. But they also allow you to seek employment or internships with those companies that co-design the curriculum, essentially making the student ‘future-proof’ from an employment standpoint. For some disciplines, this could very well negate the need to complete a degree at a well known university in the future.
The educational sector in Australia will continue to be redefined. The way that it looks and feels today will be different in 10 years’ time and our new strategy really does ensure that we are prepared for this.
But I believe UNE has a unique offering. We provide school leavers, mature learners and those in regional communities with qualifications that will either protect their current career, enable them to reskill; or pursue new career opportunities – to be ‘Future Fit for Life”. This is a really strong proposition.
We also have an exceptionally strong brand, both as an innovator and in the delivery of distance, online education. And that’s where the opportunity lies; to leverage that really deep and trusted brand recognition that we have already in the market.
Pulse: What does sitting on Council mean to you?
MA: It gives me a chance to continue to be part of a truly unique institution, which has a great future, and share my expertise where I can.
As one of NSW’s oldest universities and an established leader in distance education, I feel honoured to be a part of UNE’s future growth and am deeply aware of the important role it has within the region and more broadly, Australia.