We were pleased to meet so many Year 12 students at Open Day – UNE Business School’s Academic Manager, Nicola Speden and Rene Villano, Associate Professor in Economics, were on hand to answer questions throughout the day alongside our other awesome staff.

UNE’s Open Day for 2017 drew a crowd of high school students from across the region, exploring our Armidale campus and taking in all the tertiary education options on offer.

The UNE Business School was well represented at the Open Day stand in Lazenby Hall, sharing information across Accounting & Finance, Agribusiness & Economics, and Management.

We were also lucky enough to have a killer team of students broadly representing the UNE Business School disciplines for the “Hot Shots Big Data” presentation. Mikayla Bruce (Agribusiness), Cameron Dawson (Marketing) and James Pryor (Finance) delivered 2 sessions to students, demonstrating the impact of data collection through a live interactive survey of students in the room. Using the Kahoot! app, the team quizzed students on their preferences as potential customers of a new gym for the area. Statistics were projected to the screens in real time, with the app quickly visualising the date into animated graphs, and the team were able to draw key information, sharing observations with their voting audience.

This hands-on method of demonstrating the real-world impact of data collection and the relevance to business is one way in which next year’s cohort of undergraduate students are able to make important decisions about their study paths.

High School students visiting for Open Day 2017 were welcomed to Lecture Theatre 1 to experience data collection in action.

The presentation was followed by a Q&A session, driven by the audience, with our student representatives speaking about the broad range of unique skills and experiences UNE Business School offered them in an environment where a Bachelor of Business might look the same across several universities. James spoke to his experience being involved in college life, including extra-curricular activities that fill out his resume and differentiate him from the next applicant. James mentioned the value of experience gained from UNE Business School’s Overseas Study Tours, with a real emphasis on the real-world experience that set him up as a competitive prospect in the job market.

Cameron and Mikaela both championed smaller class sizes and a more personalised university experience as the stand-out aspect of studying with UNE. Mikaela shared the ultimate power of studying with a university allowing flexibility around elective units and additional opportunities, sharing that the selling point for her studying at UNE was that “you can really make your degree your own”.

The students did a perfect job of answering questions and representing UNE Business School’s strong curriculum, opportunities offered beyond the classroom and the importance of being part of university life to get the most out of the experience. We’re looking forward to seeing the next wave of enrolments from our regional high school students in 2018.