Looking back to Darwin and looking forward to Hobart …

Reflection …

If you were fortunate, like I was, to attend the recent AAIR SIG Forum in Darwin in July, then you will know what an amazing event it was. We had two days of remarkable presentations at the fantastic waterfront campus of Charles Darwin University. Many of the presenters focussed their discussions around the theme of ‘Finding the Eye of the Storm in Cyclonic Winds of Change’. In fact, our winners of best presentation and best new presenter both focussed on this theme.

Michelle Devitt of QTAC presented on an online diagnostic tool developed by QTAC called MyPath, which supports Year 10 students in making the right subject choices to ensure they can succeed with future study or in a career. Her analogies to ‘storm chasers’ and ‘staying in the eye of the storm’ were particularly appropriate in terms of developing new insights into the education market and student recruitment.

Grace Corpuz and Erin Greenaway from Western Sydney University were also winners at the event with their presentation on institutional feedback surveys entitled, ‘Riding the storm in institutional feedback surveys: A structured approach to evaluating reliability’. I loved the slide they started with, which was a cartoon showing two people looking at a computer screen with one saying to the other, ‘This is interesting, 70% of the respondents to our survey said they don’t respond to surveys.’ I am sure we can all relate to that!

Other topics covered included a discussion of data lakes, dynamic modelling, load management and forecasting student numbers, as well as an update from the Department of Education on Transforming the Collection of Student Information (TCSI).

My pick for the best title of the 2019 AAIR SIG Forum was ‘Why truth unexists and data scientists are actually time lords’ from Joshua Lee of The University of Sydney.

As you can see, the quality of presentations and topics covered is very relevant to today’s climate. Presentations are currently available only to those who attended the SIG Forum.

It wasn’t all hard work though, as our evening at the Mindil Beach Markets showed off Darwin’s stunning scenery and otherworldly sunsets. This experience was closely followed by dinner right on the waterfront. Thank you Darwin for your magnificence.

Anticipation …

I am hoping that you have all received the bulletins about the upcoming AAIR Annual Forum in Hobart from 11–13 November.

The theme this year is Institutional Research: The Devil is in the Detail. There are also several sub-themes this year, which include:

• The evolving role of the institutional researcher
• Justifying the value of higher education and research
• Evidence-based strategic planning (and implementation)
• Benchmarking for continuous quality improvement
• Informing learning and teaching through evaluation and surveys
• Realising benefits – the role of institutional research in enterprise and transformation projects
• Compliance and government reporting reform
• Business intelligence, analytics, visualisation and modelling – the foundations of IR.

I hope that you will consider making a presentation—and at the very least, attending the Forum—to share your insights and learn from colleagues about their experiences. It is set to be a standout event!