Sometimes the solution to a problem can be as simple as minding the basics, which is exactly what the Student Services team did under the leadership of Director of Student Services, Richard Dobek.

Confronted with a declining student load and a list of over 10,000 inactive students the team set out on a campaign to reconnect with the students and encourage them to return to university.

“In this instance the solution to the problem was obvious. Going back to basics, or Brilliant Basics as we refer to it, helped us to identify simple solutions that had a significant impact on enrolment and progression,” Richard said.

“Brilliant Basics are the foundation of the student lifecycle and therefore the student experience. By ensuring we have strong foundations, we ensure that we are positioned to enable innovation and build maturity”.  This underpinned the approach to student enrolment and support for Trimester 2.

The campaign grew out of the need to (1) contribute to the sustainability of the university and (2) close gaps in existing enrolment and student support processes. As part of the campaign, the team collaborated extensively with stakeholders within Brand Partnerships and Business Development, Finance, Faculties and Business Intelligence, resulting in extensive data capture, refined dashboards and monetary gains.

The team focused their initial efforts on two processes: identifying and supporting high-risk students during the enrolment process and re-establishing contact with inactive students. Key to driving this was Timothy Bartlett-Taylor, Senior Manager, Student Services.

About 650 students were identified as at risk during the enrolment phase. These students were asked to contact staff to discuss personalised support options such as course advise, scholarship information and study access plans.

The campaign to re-engage inactive students focused on two groups: those students who were inactive and had had no contact with the university for at least 12 months, and those who were on a leave of absence. Outreach activities were structured around positive messaging encouraging students to return to university, “give orientation a go and dip back in.” 

While targeting at-risk students during enrolment had a measurable impact with attrition for the cohort down by 4% compared to UNE’s average, outreach activities delivered the most significant impact – a whopping $2.59 million in return on investment.

“The numbers are moving in the right direction,” Richard said. “The $2.59 million is made up out of $2.12million in enrolments for T2 (post census) of which $1.7 million is derived from inactive students and $420k from students returning from students returning form leave of absence.”

“We have reviewed what we’ve done and how our processes can be improved with the aim of incorporating it into business as usual. As a result, we have expanded the campaign scope for T3 and we are working closely with our faculty colleagues.”

“Going forward, and additionally to inactive students and students on leave of absence, our focus in T3 will also include students who have finished their undergraduate studies and who may be interested in postgraduate studies and alumni interested in returning to study.”

In addition to focusing on Brilliant Basics to improvement load, the team has also developed alumni profiles to support lifelong learning goals and inform how we can engage our alumni effectively.

Activity is underway across our student services to deliver improvements (in collaboration with other portfolios) with a core focus on improving experience, including measuring student satisfaction. Some of the brilliant basics being worked on include: a new closed captioning and transcription provider, new capability deployed in Callista for communications, new tools for our counselling and psychological services, progressions process changes, policy updates and much more.

None of this would be possible without the significant efforts of many people, including Steve Gully, Joel Gilleland, Timothy Bartlett-Taylor, Anna Boston, Alahna Fiveash and team, Shaun O’Connell and many, many more.

Improving student load at UNE is part of an overarching initiative to improve conversion, enrolment, progression and completion.