5. How can people connect with Explorance?
To learn more, please visit Explorance.com. We also invite you to connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter @explorance or reach out to me direct at tbrennan@explorance.com.
Five Questions with Tim Brennan
General Manager Asia-Pacific, Explorance, Australia
1. Tell us about what Explorance does and the specific assistance it offers its customers.
Explorance is a provider of People Insight solutions. We empower universities, government agencies and corporations with actionable decision-making by measuring students’ and employees’ needs, expectations, skills, knowledge, and competencies. Through scalable automation with tools including Blue, and expert-based services, Explorance facilitates continuous improvement and accelerates the insight-to-action cycle.
Founded in 2003, Explorance is headquartered in Montreal with business units in Melbourne, Chicago, Chennai, Amman, and London. Explorance works with 25% of the top higher education institutions in the world, including 8 of the world’s top 10 business schools. The company has clients in more than 40 countries.
2. Can you briefly summarise some of your collaborations with universities?
Explorance has been working with institution partners in Australia and New Zealand since 2003.
Our clients are diverse in their size and focus – be it their commitment to innovation and excellence in teaching, learning and research (IRU); how research intensive they are through the application and interpretation of the latest technologies (ATN); or if they are developing elite international alliances and research partnerships (Go8). In fact, we work with the majority of higher education institutions in Australia, including 4 Go8 universities.
Our collaborations with institutions range from providing the world-leading course and teaching evaluation tool, Blue, for the administration, collection, analysis and reporting of student feedback data, to providing insights from qualitative feedback using our AI-powered student voice tool called MLY. MLY is a machine learning feedback analytics tool that is purpose-built for higher education. We also offer a service of administering the survey process on behalf of universities.
3. What do you anticipate the needs of your clients to be in the age of ‘disruption’ in tertiary education? E.g. What are your thoughts around data and analytics for the future?
In the age of disruption, our institution partners are looking to make sense of the volumes of data at their fingertips; they seek to readily identify relevant sources of data, and further, they are eager to distil the data for informed decision making. We are witnessing, and are part of, the growing use of AI to assist in producing reliable, repeatable, consistent, and timely insights and recommendations for action.
So, what does that look like?
We are working with the higher education community to analyse qualitative feedback at scale to provide recommendations that focus on what an institution can start, stop, or keep doing – today.
4. What has Explorance learned from its involvement with the higher education sector in Australia and New Zealand?
Explorance has learned greatly from its mutual collaboration with universities in the Asia-Pacific region. It was in this region that our (now) global community was established as a means of connecting institution colleagues for the purpose of sharing and learning all things pertaining to course evaluation, assessment, and student experience feedback. The engagement direct with institutions and via the Bluenotes group has been key to shaping our products and services to meet institutional needs. Further, we observe that institutions in Australia and New Zealand are at the forefront in articulating their requirements, which feeds into our product roadmap such that it benefits our partners in other regions.
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