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Politics, Planning and Performance: Good Governance Starts How?

AAIR SIG Forum

Canberra, ACT

26–27 July 2018

Visit the AAIR SIG Forum 2018 website

Photo of Professor Nicholas Klomp standing in front of a powerpoint screen

Zanne Van Wyk tells us all about it!

AAIR SIG attendees from Australia, New Zealand and the USA gathered in Canberra for the Annual AAIR SIG Forum, hosted by the University of Canberra and held at Rydges Capital Hill on the edge of the parliamentary triangle, only a few hundred metres from Parliament House. This SIG Forum encouraged networking and skill building with other members of the AAIR SIG community.

The University of Canberra’s DVC Academic, Professor Nicholas Klomp, welcomed us to the conference. He discussed the importance of governance and data quality to work towards integrated learning and enhanced student experience.

The keynote speaker and HECS Architect, Professor Bruce Chapman from the Australian National University, gave an engaging and enjoyable presentation. He explained the origins of HECS, the conceptual basis, changes and issues over the last 30 years, and international comparisons. Free higher education meant free to students, not to universities. A key takeaway from the keynote presentation was that HECS, an income contingent loan (ICL), was designed to take away contingency and anxiety. Imagine our surprise when we heard that there is a HECS board game!

The Politics, Planning and Performance panel discussion was chaired by Fiona Sutherland. Included in the panel was Catriona Jackson (Universities Australia), Phil Aungles (Department of Education and Training) and Lisa Bolton (Social Research Centre QILT).

Photograph of a presenter in front of a powerpoint presentation reading,

Our platinum sponsor (Altis) presentation by Chris Kearns and Mythili Baker was Hot topics in the data & analytics space – sorting through the vendor hype and bringing to bear the good bits for higher education. It was an informative session about big data, data lakes, artificial intelligence and geospatial analysis.

Mythili Baker’s presentation was about the relevance of geospatial analysis to higher education. The audience was intrigued by the University of Canberra, Microsoft Azure, Research Portal POC Architecture for a Data Lake.

Paul Leskovec and Leone Nurbasari from the Australian National University discussed the policy and politics of collecting and reporting academic staff metrics.

Serge Herzog, from the University of Nevada and John Stanley, University of Hawaii – West Oahu, received the award for best new presenters for their presentation, From descriptive reports to actionable predictive business intelligence: How to leverage institutional productivity in the age of ‘Big Data’.

The forum concluded on Day 1 with an animated QILT story told by Lisa Bolton, (Social Research Centre QILT). She elaborated on what they measure, why they measure it, the underlying assumptions, and how to interpret the QILT survey data to support quality, planning and performance.

‘… we are not predicting the future… we are causing it…’
Cathy O’Neal
(Author of Weapons of Math Destruction)

At the Forum dinner, AAIR President, Kathie Rabel, conferred a special category of membership (Honorary Member) to Chris Kearns for his support and outstanding contribution to AAIR.

Photograph of AAIR President Kathie Rabel in front of a podium reading, National Press Club. Chris Kearns from Altis is by her side.

Vicki Williams, Vice-President Finance and Infrastructure, kicked offed Day 2 of the forum with the University of Canberra host presentation.

The keynote presentation by Dr Marijke Welvaert and Dr Jocelyn Mara from the University of Canberra Research Institute for Sport and Exercise (UCRISE), Sports analytics and statistics at UCRISE: Data-driven performance, came as a welcome treat after a big night for some. Jocelyn said that the question to answer was – can we think differently about sports analytics?

Man pointing to charts on a powerpoint presentation

Marijke talked about how to apply statistics to make an inference.

‘Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.’
Albert Einstein

The next presentation was Moving the needle on benchmarking institutional outcomes for accreditation/quality audit, strategic planning, program review, and post-graduation student outcome assessment by Serge Herzog, from the University of Nevada and John Stanley, University of Hawaii – West Oahu. They presented excellent examples of BI reports to improve institutional accountability.

The best presenter award went to Ken Nelson from Loma Linda University for his presentation, Leveraging Microsoft Power BI for competency-based medical education at a health sciences university. He shared the CBME action plan, discussed the challenges, showed sample Power BI dashboards and planned enhancements.

Photo of Zanne van Wyk

Asheesh Gautam from the University of Waikato gave an enlightening presentation on Where’s my crystal ball… Using unstructured WIFI, Moodle and library data for attrition risk assessment – proof of concept.

And finally, Fiona Sutherland provided a wrap up of the 2018 AAIR SIG Forum and thanked the speakers, the chairs and participants for attending the event. Continuing the tradition from previous AAIR forums of donating our speakers’ money to a local charity, a cheque was given to UC Foundation, Ngunnawal Elders Fund. Fiona also thanked Leishman Associates and the local organising committee for their assistance in organising the AAIR SIG Forum.

Participants left the 2018 AAIR SIG Forum with new ideas and networking opportunities and found themselves looking forward to seeing each other again in Melbourne for the 2018 Annual AAIR Forum.

Links to speaker presentations can be found on the 2018 SIG Forum website.

Zanne Van Wyk

Business Intelligence Manager, Strategy, Planning and Performance
University of Newcastle, Australia

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