Service Connect   

Service Connect is now Macquarie University’s integrated Shared Service centre. It is now the first point of contact for student enquiries, with faculty student centres now directing all enquiries to Service Connect.   

Service Connect partners with faculty Educational Services teams in providing services to students. Clear escalation points have been created where specialist faculty input or complex case management is needed.   

Service Connect is now the contact point for: 

• providing course guidance with the support of an online course guidance form and information that has been provided by each faculty 
• administering enrolments including unit enrolment, class registration, processes for special approvals (waivers) and credit overload 
• administering routine assessment enquiries for the University 
• administering special consideration requests in cases where standardised schedules have been provided by each faculty that can be applied to routine special consideration requests 
• coordinating all domestic and international student admissions and scholarships (excluding Higher Degree Research) 
• providing frontline IT services for students (and staff) through the IT Service Desk on 1800 67 4357 or +61 (2) 9850 4357, or the TechBar @ Service Connect on the ground floor of 18 Wally’s Walk. 

To get help from Service Connect, students can: 

• find answers to commonly asked questions at AskMQ 
• submit an enquiry at AskMQ  
• chat online using the Live Chat icon on the bottom right corner of the Service Connect webpage 
• call  +61 (2) 9850 6410 
• visit Service Connect on the ground floor of 18 Wally’s Walk

You will see pink signs around campus directing students to Service Connect. To help students find the support they need, you may like to download this 4:3 digital version to display in your teaching or student consultation spaces. 

Improvements to online services for students  

The new and improved eStudent and Student Payment platform was launched in October 2022. It provides easy navigation, is mobile friendly, and is more accessible for our 40,000+ students and our staff.  

The online Academic Progression Self Guidance Tool for students was released in July 2022. It was developed with students for students who want to improve their academic results. The tool links students with the resources and support identified to help them progress

Support in the Dean of Students  

The Dean of Students, Professor Mariella Herberstein, is responsible for key functions impacting student experience:  

• Student Engagement, Inclusion and Belonging – coordinates the delivery of activities that enrich the student experience, with a focus on engagement. The team works with faculties and other stakeholders to deliver key programs including first-year experience, O Week and graduations. 
• Student Wellbeing – develops and runs student wellbeing activities and services including accessibility support and wellbeing support. To access services (including on someone’s behalf), submit a care report. 
• Complaints, Appeals and Misconduct  
• Student Advocacy – to access, submit a care report (selecting advocacy) 
• Student Representative Council Governance 

Meet the leaders bringing our Student Services Delivery Model to life (This Week, May 2022)
 

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Rorden Wilkinson explains: “Our new approach is designed to support students to make the successful transition to tertiary study. It is crucial that our commencing students feel a sense of belonging to our community right from the start. We want them to know that we are as invested in their success as they are.”

To foster this sense of belonging, our orientation and onboarding experience has been redesigned and now comprises three elements: an online pre-arrival module, a ‘kickstart’ program and a refreshed orientation week.

Orientation will now begin with ‘MACQ2023 – Your student starter guide’, an online, self-paced iLearn module that all commencing students will complete prior to the start of session. This module is a practical introduction to iLearn that also provides students with information about their academic journey, their safety and wellbeing, as well as the employability services available to them throughout their studies. Students will be able to revisit this information at any stage during their time with us.

The new Kickstart program runs from 13 to 17 February 2023, and has been designed to provide a soft landing and focused transition for our domestic and international undergraduate and postgraduate students. Kickstart will feature face-to-face and online sessions that provide our students with in-depth information that complements and builds on what they have learned from MACQ2023. This includes important messaging about expectations for academic integrity, and fostering a safe and inclusive environment, as well as practical guidance about writing at university, study techniques and important faculty-specific information.

Much of the content delivered during Kickstart will be presented by student peer educators from later years to ensure that the material is authentic and relatable. Scheduled social activities have been designed to foster connectivity and provide informal opportunities for students to learn about our campus.

Our new Orientation Week will run during the first week of Session 1, from 20 to 24 February 2023. One of the highlight events of the week will be Convocation, an official commencement ceremony held in our Graduation Hall and hosted by Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton. Other activities will include campus and library tours, a parents and carers information evening, student club stalls in the Central Courtyard, ‘speed friending’ events and a host of social activities that students can attend between classes.

Under the leadership of Dean of Students Professor Mariella Herberstein, the Macquarie Kickstart and Orientation team are engaging with key stakeholders and subject matter experts from across the institution to operationalise this new approach to orientation.

You can support Kickstart and Orientation Week by helping the team to recruit 150 current students as Student Belonging Activators. This paid position is an excellent opportunity for students to give back to the Macquarie community, develop skills and make new connections. If you know anyone suitable, encourage them to apply via our careers and employability portal Employability Connect.

Our most recent achievement in this area is the implementation of an enhanced student enrolment solution and a new payment platform.

In late 2021, the Student First Program Board and the Student Journey and Experience Taskforce approved the ‘Enrolment Tactical Solution’ project, funded by the Digital Transformation Program.

Vice-President, Professional Services, Nicole Gower explains, “One of the main aims of the Digital Transformation Program is to provide a seamless and modern student experience, including during the enrolment process.”

And that is exactly what our staff delivered.

eStudent, the system students use to enrol, register for classes, view exam results and other administrative tasks has been successfully upgraded. This new version of eStudent was designed with the student user in mind. It’s intuitive to navigate, is more accessible and is now mobile friendly, a feature much appreciated by our device using students.

Other features of the upgraded system are a tasklist that easily, and visually, highlights tasks students need to complete related to their enrolment or eStudent record. Not only is this feature an improvement for students, but it eliminates the need for our staff to send reminder communications to students regarding outstanding tasks.

Another key feature is an integration between the upgraded eStudent and Syllabus Plus, our timetabling system. This integration allows timetabling information to feed into eStudent and provide the information students need to plan their study and class registration inside the system. This simplifies the user experience as they previously would have located this information by navigating a variety of systems and resources. They will have what they need to enrol, and choose classes, at their fingertips in the system they are using to complete those tasks.

The final key feature implemented as part of this upgrade is a new fee payment platform. Again, this new platform has a user centred design that will make it easier for students to understand what they need to pay, and how to pay it. User expectations of online payment processes and systems have changed significantly in the last few years and this new payment platform will provide an experience for our students much closer to what they expect, and experience, of online financial transactions and accounts.

All of these enhancements make it faster and easier for students to do what they need to do. It’s very close to a one stop, user friendly, admin shop for our students.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor S. Bruce Dowton highlights this latest successful implementation as further confirmation of our institutional wide commitment to improving our student experience “These system improvements are another example of how our staff continue to provide excellent experiences and outcomes in every dimension of students’ interactions with the University.”

Dr Brad Windon, Head of Student Shared Services explains the secret of the successful implementation, “We had an experienced, results driven project team working with engaged stakeholders from across the university that actively, and enthusiastically, collaborated to make this implementation a success.”
To see the improvements for yourself watch this quick video that was designed to introduce the newly upgraded system to our students.

Jobs Happy Hour has been designed to provide our students with exclusive access to employers who are currently recruiting for a range of roles, from Christmas casual jobs to graduate roles. This event is part of the new approach the Employability and Graduate Success team have taken to actively engage students in their career journey.

Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning and Teaching, Professor Dominique Parrish explains, “it can be challenging to get students to engage in career planning before they graduate, but it’s crucial to their success. Our approach this year has been built on bringing the services, resources, and networking activities to our students in a way that we’ve not previously tried. We are actively seeking out the students and engaging them face to face in popular on-campus locations.”

Jobs Happy Hour, which is taking place on 19 October between 2-4pm at the white marquee near 1CC and the Chancellery, will present a select group of industry partners who are currently seeking to recruit Macquarie students. Industry partners get exclusive access to our talented students and our talented students get exclusive access to jobs being advertised by partners in the Macquarie Park area. The informal and fun event will help students make their job search interactive and efficient.

It’s not the traditional careers fair – there’ll be a DJ, career caricature portraits, professional styling tips and happy hour activities for our students to enjoy.

Whilst the atmosphere will be light, this is a professional event and the Employability and Graduate Success team will be preparing our students in advance to help them make the best possible impression.

Kylie Ebert, Director of Employability and Graduate Success explains,  “Once students register, our team connects them to the available jobs through the Macquarie Student Employment site in Employability Connect. The Careers team then provides resources to help students prepare their resume, practice their elevator pitch, and find out more about the employers. Our students will be well prepared to engage with, and impress, our industry partners.”

Jobs Happy Hour is supported by a comprehensive student communication plan but if you would like to contribute to the success of this initiative, please encourage our students to register and attend this strategic event. You can find out more about Jobs Happy Hour on the website.

Confirmed industry partner attendees so far include

• Achieve Australia
• Amazon Web Services
• Apprenticeship Careers Australia
• Aspect – Autism Spectrum Australia
• BOC
• Campus Life
• Catholic Education, Diocese of Parramatta
• Child Speech Therapy
• Fujitsu
• Jones Partners Insolvency & Restructuring
• Metcash
• MLC Life Insurance
• Optus
• Prensa

Vice-Chancellor Professor S. Bruce Dowton explains, “during the last two years the Student Journey and Experience Taskforce (SJET) has focused on gaining insights directly from students about difficulties they experience. It’s been encouraging and rewarding to see these insights translated into achievable solutions that improve student success.”

The next evolution is to increase coordination, resourcing and effort to accelerate progress for students by establishing a Student Experience Program. A Student Experience Program will build on the success of SJET, the Macquarie Way led by the Education Strategy Committee and the PiVOT group, the new Student Service Delivery Model, including the service uplift activity currently occurring in Shared Services and Faculty Educational Services teams and our digital transformation agenda.

While still in design phase, the Student Experience Program will seek to align activity, effort and focus in four key areas: the Service Experience of our students, their Learning Experience, their Community Experience as members of our community and beneficiaries of our thriving campus life, and their Digital Experience.

The Student Experience Program will bring together work already happening in the Dean of Students’ portfolio, a new portfolio led by Professor Mariella Herberstein, focused squarely on student experience, as well as the initiatives of SJET, work in Student Shared Services, as well as in the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) portfolio, and in the digital transformation space.  A small program team will be established to provide additional support to fast track these initiatives.

To recognise the expertise and leadership of our own people, we will be drawing on the talent from within the University for this program team, supplemented by external subject matter experts where required. This team under the joint executive sponsorship of Professor Rorden Wilkinson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Nicole Gower, Vice-President, Professional Services, will be responsible for delivering the program of work over the next 2-3 years. Expressions of interest will be sought soon for a Director of the Student Experience Program to lead this team.

As this program takes shape in coming months, consultation will occur with relevant areas but in the meantime if you have ideas on how to improve the student focus in your work area, please send your ideas through to your manager or leader, discuss it with your colleagues and contacts at Macquarie and in other institutions and put it on the agenda of your team meetings.

Those three years and 30 significant ‘go-lives’ have finally ended, with the team taking a collective deep breath and deserving huge congratulations from the Macquarie community. Let’s look back at some of the highlights and achievements of this immense program.

After a busy 2018 procuring a new curriculum management system (CMS) and investing in the existing student management system (SMS), in 2019, the Beacon Board recognised that the streams of activities required to launch the new curriculum were interdisciplinary and created 6 sub-projects:

• Curriculum Management System (CMS) and Coursefinder
• Student Management system (SMS)
• Student Curriculum Implementation (SCIP) – Technical
• Student Curriculum Implementation (SCIP) – Student migration
• Student engagement and communication
• Organisation readiness and change management

By this stage, there were about 30 people on the Beacon team. Their aim to transform business enabled by technology was a new approach that brought together business and technology areas of the University.

This team of busy people completed over 30 project milestones, such as MQ2020 curriculum transformation and management, Coursefinder, Double degree advisor; personalised Mystudyplan; technical and student migration, implementation of the WAM (weighted average mark), TCSI (new event-based government reporting implementation), AMIS single sign-on (SSO) for staff and students, deployed the Applicant Portal/Enhanced Admissions, incorporated HDR management into one system, and integrated MI studylink with AMIS to assist with applicant management. The team even managed to build a small automation bot for HDR Scholarships for the Graduate Research Academy.

The AMIS single sign-on (SSO) was celebrated by our students as it removed the need to use a separate password to access eStudent – a pain point that had been reported by our students for years but never successfully solved. By deploying the MQ OneID, students also no longer need to contact the Helpdesk to constantly change their expired passwords.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Beacon team also provided support for issues such as moving teaching and learning online and the early enrolment push; in addition to the projects they were slated to deliver. They delivered all the student and staff engagement and change management. They also improved 62 process pain points noted by staff while coming in under budget and delivering more than they were established to deliver!

“I congratulate the Program Beacon team on its work,” says Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton, “What has been achieved to date is of foundational importance for the ongoing work in modernising our approach towards an outstanding student experience in every way.”

It’s no surprise that the Program Beacon team have received the recognition they deserve. Dr Brad Windon and Roz Howard were nominated by ATEM (Association for Tertiary Management Awards) for Excellence in Practice awards; was highly commended in Innovation; and the Team also won the Universities Admissions Centre (UAC) Award for Excellence in Student Engagement.

Team members Nerida Lithgow, Kylie Ebert, Lilia Draganov and David Indge were particular called out by the UAC for establishing the Macquarie Rovers – an initiative that engaged students to support students through authentic messaging and visibility around curriculum changes. The Macquarie Rovers was seen as an excellent and sustainable engagement model that enhanced the student experience through peer support approaches.

Pictured: Two of our Macquarie Rovers team in action on campus in 2020, speaking with students about the curriculum changes.

“I am so very proud of the Beacon Team for delivering all our significant milestones,” says Roz Howard, Program Director for Program Beacon.

“It has been such a privilege to lead and have worked with such passionate, can-do and resilient colleagues. Thank you to past and present project teams, business colleagues across the University and Executives for your unwavering support.”

This will be rolled out in October 2022 in time for the 2023 commencing student cohort.

What improvements are being delivered?

The new eStudent will simplify the way a student moves through their enrolment tasks providing a modern interface that is easier to navigate.

Staff will have real-time access to student enrolment information within the new eStudent, aiding ‘first-contact resolution’ endeavours for student enquiries.

What has been the progress so far?

• Project governance is in place and working group meetings are underway.
• Requirements gathering continues.
• Exploration of the new system is taking place.
• Baseline configuration and unit testing is in train.

What are the next steps?

As we near the end of 2021, our focus will be on preparing the new eStudent test environment for extensive configuration and testing in 2022.

We will also explore the capabilities of new functionality such as; mandatory tasks, class waitlisting, multi-class allocation, a new payment platform and form workflows.

Student representation will be included in the working group from February 2022 and student communications will occur from June 2022. Forums and training videos will form part of the overall project Communications strategy approaching Go Live and beyond.

Staff familiarisation and preliminary training will commence from June 2022.

Further communications about the progress of the project will be issued at regular intervals throughout next year.

When will I see the new system?

We have already begun to show the working group some of the functionality of the new system.

Staff will see more of the product from Q2-2022 for training and testing of the new system.

When will the new eStudent be delivered?

Go Live will be in October 2022,

New terminology

Terminology to become familiar with:

• Ci Anywhere – the technology platform that the new eStudent is built on. Currently we use Ci.

If you would like any further information on this project, visit the ETS project webpage.

In order to address this transformation, a key outcome of the ‘Students First’ priority area of the University’s Operating Plan 2020-2024, was to establish an Employability Strategy. Developed by the Employability work stream, under the Students First Program Board, the draft Employability Strategy 2021-2025 is now available to download and view via the Bulletin Board.

An Employability Framework has also been conceptualised to support implementation of the Employability Strategy. This Framework is intended to guide curriculum design and align extra-curricular activities and services to enhance students’ employability outcomes and equip them with skills for the future world of work, and career success.

Consultation across the University and subsequent refinement of both the strategy and framework is planned throughout November. All interested staff are encouraged to provide feedback on the draft strategy and framework by Monday 22 November 2021 via the Bulletin Board.

“The University’s focus on employability and the alignment of this focus through an Employability Strategy, I believe, will have positive outcomes for students and contribute to the University enhancing its performance in relevant university rankings,” says Professor Dominique Parrish, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching).

Faculty of Arts General Manager and Chair of the Employability work stream, Neil Durrant, believes the framework provides an exciting opportunity for Macquarie, as it develops a distinctive approach to employability that is both pedagogically sound and unique within the higher education marketplace.

“While many universities around the world work with the various components of the framework, very few universities seem to have implemented all of these elements in a comprehensive, integrated and distinctive way,” says Neil.

“There is real opportunity here – for Macquarie graduates to accelerate their careers and make a contribution both as employees and future leaders – and also for Macquarie to cement its position as a leading university in teaching and learning.”

View the draft Employability Strategy 2021-2025 on the Policy Bulletin Board  (scroll to the heading ‘Draft Documents for Comment’). 

Questions related to the Employability Strategy and Framework can be directed to Professor Dominique Parrish: dominique.parrish@mq.edu.au