VE Town Hall 2 September 2019

[Start transcript]

[Music]

[Belinda]

Morning everyone. It's nice to see you here on a Monday morning. Who can believe it? Here we are in the break as well. It's a bit quieter out there in the university. It's always nice to have a little breath, isn't it? Before it all rolls in madly again for the last bit of the year. As is usual with events like this, it's always a good idea for us to acknowledge the land in which we hold the meeting that we're on. You've probably noticed that when you go places, when it's not said, you think, oh, they didn't say it. I think because it's become so acceptable here and required at RMIT.

But, actually, on Saturday and Sunday, next for this coming week, I'm going to be in the Northern territory. My brother and his nephew are coming on a holiday and I think it's the first time my nephew has actually been on a holiday and he's 16, but he's had a really interesting life. We're all heading off to the rock together with his dad as well and it's going to be great. I was on the phone with him on Thursday night and he was getting all excited, had been looking up things to do and he said, "I'm going to climb the rock and really exciting going to climb the rock."

I went, "Oh, really? You want to climb the rock, right? You want to climb the rock." I said, "Well, I'm not sure it's a good idea." He said, "But you climbed the rock." I said, "Well, yes, I did when I was like 21 or something when I knew no better and should have known better." I said, "Well, things have changed a bit, Jayden." I said, "You'd probably need to look at it." But he said-- I said that, "The whole reason they're closing the rock is because it's sacred and it has meaning to the land and country into the indigenous people." "Yes, but if I could climb the rock now or get him before they close it, it'll be fantastic and dad and I want to do it and blah, blah, blah."

I said, "It's still not a great idea, mate." I said, "If you do it," I said, "I don't want to know you're doing it because that's not something I'd like you to do and I don't think it's respectful." Anyway, we left the conversation and I said, "Look, I'm going to send you something funny." I sent him the Chaser's video or the link to, have you seen the Chaser's video link about climbing the church? It's hilarious. It's very, very funny. I said, "I'm going to send you a little link." I send him this link. He's 16.

Anyway, he got onto the phone to me on Saturday morning. He said, "I've been thinking about the rock thing." I said, "Yes, what about it?" "Now, I'm not going to climb it." "Of course, really? You're not going to climb it. Why is that?" He goes, "Oh," he said, "I think you're right, Auntie B." He calls me Auntie B, "I think you're right Auntie B. It's not a good idea. It's not a good look." He said-- he had watched the video and he said he had a good laugh at it. He said, "I also saw Pauline Hanson went up there and I didn't like-- I don't like her and I don't like what she's doing." I said, "Well, that's great mate." He's 16. "All that's great mate." He said, "But, you know what we're going to? And I said, "What are we going to do?" He goes, "We're going to hire bikes and we're going to ride around the base of Uluru." I said, "Oh that just sounds fantastic. Let's do that together."

So, I thought it was quite a nice little moment just to reflect about how maybe our young people in schools and stuff are being inducted into what it means to be on country, to have a sovereign relationship and to understand what like-- that whole notion of how we seed country and when we say in our acknowledgement on the unceded lands. I think for my 16-year-old nephew, he just had that little realisation and I think it was actually the Chaser video that did it for him, that how outrageous it is on so many levels.

The current ridiculousness that's happening at Uluru and apparently, the ques are really, really long and people are lining up before dawn in order to get up that rock before it closes. It's very disappointing, but anyway, I just thought I'd relay that little story for you. I thought it was quite cute and it was like a little awakening, I think for him himself about how he thinks about these things. With that in mind, I acknowledge our elders past, present and future and the unceded lands on which we hold our session here this morning. I look forward to discussing with you more about VE and where we're up to and what's going on because there's certainly loads going on.

Thank you all for being here. If there are some people on the Yammer and I'm not sure how I tell if they're on Yammer, but we are live streaming. Where's the camera for Yammer? Is it up at the back? Hello, Yammer people. It's kind of obvious you're up the back. I hope some of you are listening in this morning and that you're joining us too from wherever you're seated as well. There are a lot of people working in different locations.

I know at Bundoora Brunswick as well and people working from home. We're in full flexible working mode and this week being a bit more of a quieter week. I know people take that time to work more flexibly as well. For those of you who don't know me, there are a few new faces in the room today and it's lovely to see you all. I'm Belinda Tynan. I'm the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Education and I'm your fearless champion of Vocational Education and everything VE. I also seem to be the person who finds all the things that are going on with the VE and have to make sure that we nurture our way through those sorts of surprises as they occur for us to.

I am also delighted to be welcoming some of our senior leaders here today from the heads of schools to so talk to you about various things that are going on. I think Glenn and Graham are going to be doing that. In a little while, [Avan], you're off the hook this time, but we'll make sure you're on the hook next time and Peter's on leave this week. So, you've just got me. Four things we're going to talk about today. One of those is the VE rectification update and where we're up to on that. We've got some reflections that Graham is going to take us through around RMIT values as well, which was recently released.

I'm not sure how many of you've got the little V pins or have seen any of the collateral around the university, but if not we'll talk to you a little bit about that and let you know how you can access some of that. We're also going to talk some about some of the professional development that we've got going for our Vocational Education leaders and also just for all our staff generally around the micro credentials that Elissa's team's been working up for us too.

Without further ado, I'm going to play a short video from Martin. I think, Reese, you're going to kick that off for me.

[Video playback starts]

Martin: Hello to all my colleagues in Vocational Education. We're a proud dual sector university here at RMIT and practical education runs in our veins and it's been part of who we are right back to our beginnings in 1887. It's more than what we teach. It's how we teach. Whenever I talk about VE, the first thing I talk about is our people. It's your purpose, your passion, your drive, and your deep expertise that prepares students for the real world of life and work year after year.

But it's not easy work, and I know that it's hands on. It's intensive, it's personal. It's also why I know you carry a weight on your shoulders as we work through the critically important improvement processes, all designed to ensure a bright future for VE at RMIT. I want to say thank you. I know you're hard at it and you have my support. Please keep up the great work for our students. You're really transforming lives every day.

[Video playback ends]

[Belinda]

So, Martin couldn't make it this morning, but we caught up with him last week and he recorded that message for us. I know, he knows, and he's very grateful for all the work that we're currently doing around the rectification. His own personal interest in Vocational Education and what it means for RMIT has really strengthened over recent months and he has huge empathy for what it is that we're facing with further increased scrutiny from our regulators and particularly around the things that vex us the most, particularly around our assessments and around currency et cetera.

There's lots of other things in there too that we know that we need to do better at and certainly around the systems which support us, which we're working very hard at the moment, to make what we actually do easier to do. I think for a very long time, Vocational Education and Higher Education, even though they're sort of hand in hand and the pathways from Vocational Education articulate into that Higher Education piece are very important to us as an institution.

I think what I've observed over this last 12 months or so is that the emphasis on Higher Education has actually devalued that pathway for Vocational Education and hasn't actually called out that actually the systems that are required for VE are actually significantly quite different. And that what we've been trying to do for a long period of time is to shoe horn a lot of what we do in VE into those high choice systems and processes. They are actually fundamentally different. So, what we're trying to do at the moment is separate these things, articulate what the processes are so that the systems that we put in place are ones that actually can support VE. They're not actually a HE system, which somehow has VE pushed into them.

Now, that's actually quite difficult because what we've been doing for many years here at RMIT is integrating lots and lots and lots and lots and trying to push it all together. Now what we're trying to do is unintegrate it and decouple it in a way so that we can actually see it so that it can become transparent for us. With all the different audits that we've had to deal with over this past six months in particular, two really big ones, but also a bunch of internal small ones. There's something like 59 odd, outstanding items or line items that we need to address in order to be fully compliant.

In fact, just this morning, and Grahams going to-- no, Glenn, I think it's going to talk a little bit about this. We were just talking about grades and how we're probably going to remain noncompliant around grades and grading for a shorter or a period of time as we figure out how the systems can actually support us to actually have students as either they have, either they have passed and can demonstrate their ability to do whatever the competency is or they have not. You can't be 70% competency compliant. You're either are competent or you are not competent and that's what our regulator wants to see.

But for us as a university, we've been doing it like this for a long time. It's all being mashed up together and we've got students getting grades on their transcripts that say there's 70% current or competent. Now, you can see obviously what's wrong with that and why our regulator sort of goes, well, you're either are or you aren't, aren't, aren't you? You can either take a blood or you can't. You can't be 70%. So, it's kind of a vexing one for us to think about, but we'll make our way through it and you'll help us do that as well.

So, yeah, we're tracking 98 actions currently. Those five major audits since October 2018. You will know that we had the huge ASCA audit, which was actually very, very serious and could have resulted in quite a number of our programs coming off scope. It didn't, thankfully. The rectification that we've been doing together as a university and supporting your community has meant that when they came back to us with what our response was, they were pleased with the actions that we put in place, but they had a 20 day expectation on it, which we've just recently closed out. But certain things just had to be done.

I think one of the things they were really, really worried about, which hadn't really occurred to me until they actually did call it out, was the one around that if you don't have current teachers or students with the right currency teaching students and they're not assessing them correctly, well, then ASCA, will think that those students are actually not going to be-- won't have the competencies, because they're not taught by a teacher who's considered to be competent. Then what ASCA wanted us to do was to go back to 3000 students and either reassess them or prove that those students were actually competent. Quite tricky.

Now, because they only looked at 15 programs, they were then said to us, well, okay, if that's indicative of 15 programs, you've got 130 on the books, let's escalate this out. Now we've got 20,000 students potentially that we need to reassess because we don't know if they're actually able to demonstrate the competencies that they're being assessed on. It's a huge thing for us. Part of our rectification is by the end of next year to make sure that we've gone through every single assessment, that every teacher who stands in front of a classroom, each time we timetable now, will have to and need to be current, because the scale of the reassessment is beyond all of us really. I don't really know how we'll do it.

We have got a plan though to do, I think it's-- I might get this number wrong, but is it something like 9,000 assessments? Yep, Graham's nodding. I think it's nine. I keep saying 11, but I think it's 9,000 assessments that we have in the VE community that all need to be looked at, scrubbed and to make sure that they are actually measuring the competency, which is stated. That's huge for all of us.

But if every single person is not able to do that and can't, doesn't have the capability to do that, then we're in trouble because we can't hire other people to come in and do all that work for us. So, part of the conversation today, and Elissa will share with all of you, is to make sure that everyone has enough professional development and support to be able to analyse their own assessments and make sure it's all lined up. It's really, it's a big deal. I think the thing that gives me a little bit of comfort is that we're a very capable community and I actually believe that even though ASCA called those things out, it was more about our systems didn't, weren't able to evidence that we were doing it.

In fact, when you go back and dig in, you find that people are doing this, they do have good assessments that they are actually current. We just don't have good systems to record it and to actually be able to demonstrate and display it quickly. And we need to get into that position where ASCA walks in the door and they say, we want to report on growing tomatoes and all the different varieties and who the teachers are and what their qualifications are. When they last did PD, we should be able to push a button and that just pops out. It shouldn't have to take us like 12 weeks to go down to every single department school and level.

It shouldn't take people having to come in on a weekend and say, well, here's my certificate to say that I went and did the course on growing tomatoes and I have actually grown tomatoes and here they are. We should be able to have those systems in place to support us, which is what we're working towards. I really also want to thank you all because it's been a really stressful six months. I mean, if I felt some stress, I'm sure all of you have felt some stress around this. It's not easy. There you are in front of your students. You're, teaching your students, you are competent, you are capable.

And I'm just really grateful that our students are able to continue their studies and that you are able to get in behind us. Even though it's annoying and you say, well, why are they asking for that now? Why do I have to supply this? Why can't they just trust and believe us, just thank you for being patient. Hopefully, the systems we get, we'll make that a bit easier, but I can't emphasise enough just how grateful I have been that our students could still come to class, and they still had great teachers in front of them. The students say that you're great. I don't know if looked at your CES scores, you've got the highest bump. I mean, compared to HE, VE has got it all over HE. So, whatever you're doing in the classroom, thank you, keep doing it. You're CES scores are great. The scores that you got in, the microsurgery also were really good and you're at least four or five points above what HE is doing. So, that's absolutely tremendous. That also makes me feel very proud as well.

So, if we were to look at how we're setting Vocational Education up for success, you'll remember last year that we talked about this wheel here and you would have seen this. One of them, half of this wheel's really around the growth strategy and the other half is was around enterprise bargaining piece.

Since we've delivered the workforce workplace agreement, we have now put together the working group with the union as well to actually begin to implement that in ways that you expect. And to make sure that we get the provisions that were allowed for in that agreement actually into the workplace as well. It wasn't just about a pay rise, although a pay rise is very nice, and you should sort of be feeling those coming through and that's well deserved, and it's appreciated as well. But it's also about ensuring that you understand what your career paths are and what careers are also available in the VE space.

And you will know that with my work with Higher Education around 'met us', there was always a plan that we would go back into and say, well, this is not the right term but a 'Vet us', what would a 'vet us' look like as a comparison to what we're doing for Higher Education? And the VE strategy, like all great well-played plans-- and we actually have seen growth. So, there's about a 5% annual growth on VE that's occurring naturally because of the free TAFE piece and we'll continue. So, we are on a growth trajectory just by the nature of the political forces that surround us.

There is huge opportunity though and much more opportunity, which we haven't actually yet grasped, which sits around our work with industry and with business and also in new sort of content in subject areas. But until we feel that we are actually compliant enough and robust enough, at this point in time, I've kind of paused those things. I've slowed them down, which is not to say that we're not doing industry things and that we don't want to do those things and we don't want new courseware and product coming into the suite of offer for VE. Rather to say that actually there's a few things we need to fix.

If our 9,000 assessments aren't sorted, that's a problem. If our systems can't actually support what we're doing, we need to make sure the systems are there. If the processes don't support what we're doing, we don't know what systems we need et cetera, et cetera. So, it's not that we've stopped it. There is still work going on with the industry and I think we've got some great Microsoft stuff going on at the moment. I know, SEH, you do loads in this space. We're not stopping it, but we're not actually actively pursuing it because we don't want to damage that market because people come to us and you can't-- when people come to you and go, no, no, they stop coming.

So, we can't stop them coming, because we want to reboot it. But we're just sort of slowing it down a little bit at the moment, which is not to say that if somebody approaches you from a big company, wants to do something, you should say, no. It's just that you bring it back into your VE head of school and we assess it carefully to see whether or not we can manage it because it's a lot to layer in over the top of everything else that we do.

I think the other thing here too is that the compliance piece. I mean, I would really like to get it out of the way quickly because there's a lot of innovation that we want to do. That's that piece working with the industry or working with new product, new ways of doing it new pedagogies. People, I think, I don't know if there's anyone from the plumbing group here. Is there anyone from plumbing? No. I know we've been working really hard to digitise the plumbing curriculum for example and looking at new pedagogies in that space. There's a lot of that that we want to do across all of VE that I know you'd love to get to as well. We need to get out of just being worried about being compliant to actually get into an enhancement space where we can invigorate and do all that interesting innovative stuff that I know that you will want to get to as well.

The audits and the rectification piece, I've said a little bit about that. There are so many people in this room that we need to thank for all the effort that has gone into this, a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of trying to meet those deadlines quickly and to make sure that we didn't have a catastrophe in our VE space. We couldn't really say it much at the time, but maybe you knew that we were on a knife edge. It could have all gone. It was that close. It could have just flipped. We were very, very lucky. And there are a lot of people in this room that we should thank for their diligence and for their resilience and just sort of that keep-on-going. It's a lot of you, but people like Karen Bird, who's here in the front row. I think you all know Karen very well, but your heads of schools. Peter Ryan, the whole office of the VE team, which has really changed and people that have been seconded out of the colleges to come in and help and they knew our staff as well.

Thank you for holding that line. Thank you for still being in front of our students. You probably knew that it was a bit touch and go there, but we've got through it. The state government actually at the moment absolutely love us and we have a brand-new relationship with them where they really want to work with us more. They love what we're doing at RMIT. They see us as a beacon of hope, because the rest of the sector is really suffering as well. When you look at what we're doing and how we're tackling our problems, it's all there as well in those other areas. It's not just RMIT. But we've actually got a whole lot of support sitting apart behind what we're doing. For all those people who've really gone that extra mile, I just want to thank you for that as well. I think that deserves a round of applause really.

[Applause] *] * 0:22:06.2.

[Belinda]

So, I've spoken a little bit about what those most serious things were. I've mentioned like the assessment piece, managing staff credentials and the industry currency. How we manage training plans is another one that's in there and providing adequate professional development for our staff as well. It was one of the promises that we talked about last year. It's about how we find that time in your workloads to make that happen. The professional development piece, we'll talk about that in a moment, will be rolled out really shortly. Reviewing all the processes and pro mapping what the processes are as well to make sure we're doing that right.

And then, making sure that we get through, I think it's 2000 courses by the end of the year which are within the 15 programs which we were originally audited on. They have to be done, and then as we roll into 2020 is doing the rest of them as well. We will be so tidy and tucked in by the end of 2020 that, one, we'll either won't be able to breathe because we'll be so tidy and tucked in, or we'll be ready to fly and do the innovative things as well.

So, I'm going to hand over to Glenn now to talk to us a little bit about the rectification piece. Is that just because-- should I go to Graham first? Okay, I might get Glenn to come up and have a little talk to us now about the rectification piece and how we're flying on that. Before I do, have we got questions Reese?

[Reese]

Not yet.

[Belinda]

Not yet. Where is it on? Is it on--

[Reese]

On Yammer.

[Belinda]

On Yammer. So, if anyone's got their device of destruction with them, pull up your Yammer feed and please push some questions through and, and hopefully we'll get some questions going to in a moment. Glenn, would you like to come up next? Do you need this or if you've got your own?

[Glenn]

I've got a microphone.

[Belinda]

Got a microphone? Okay, good.

[Glenn]

Thank you. Well, while I reflect on my weekend for one moment, I have six minutes to talk here at the moment, so I'll take 30 seconds on the weekend. Happy Father's Day yesterday for all of the fathers. I was sitting on a balcony in Lorne yesterday this time enjoying the sea view and thinking about our rectification presentation this morning as well.

[Belinda]

I bet you weren't, Glenn.

[Glenn]

I look, of course, you have-- I've put a PowerPoint one slide, there's only one slide and I've pretty much want to touch on items that are at a fairly high level. In some ways, what this is about is my experience as a Dean in the School of Vocational Design and Social Context throughout semester one. I just want to touch on some of the things that you've probably all lived and provide some commentary and reflections. Not necessarily in any particular order. Where will I start? Well, in the middle of the circle would be an obvious place. We have VE systems, people and processes, as Belinda spoken a little bit about those already.

What I would like to say first of all is in terms of the rectification project, key pieces of work that have really impacted in the schools are the renewal or revision or revision of assessment tools and then of course the currency piece. In terms of the assessments in DSC and the School of Vocational DSC, we have around-- there are around 1000 units that we are reviewing over the period of time to the end of next year. And unbeknownst to many people, we've actually already made a good start on this. We've actually completed in the vicinity of 200 reviews of assessment tools already, so 200 units.

We're doing that in partnership with the external partner, Edutemps, and they're working with us to achieve that kind of work. I'll come back to that in a moment. In terms of the currency, so high level currency. As you're all aware, we all went through that process of reviewing the currency requirements of teaching staff. It was a really significant piece of work. It involved the heavy lifting of many staff, which is to my point, see that little group of people over there working together to put the jigsaw puzzle together? That was my reflection on us all working together to achieve that.

As a bit of a side story to that, last week the VC came to the DSC college executive meeting and he just asked for some thoughts, commentary around the table and of course, I raised this or spoke about this issue of the hard work that had been undertaken as part of the first semester's work on the rectification. It was actually that conversation that prompted me to drag out that little graphic because what I said to him is that-- this hopefully will resonate with everyone in the room here that the thing that I love about working with Vocational Education staff is when they have to roll up their sleeves and get the job done, they do.

That is a simple fact. I've worked with Vocational Education staff since 1986, so it's a long time. And every time we have to get the job done, even if it's hard work and we bring in the additional people and so forth, I never see anyone shirk that responsibility and we just get on with it. I think that's incredible and that's amazing. The Vice Chancellor also agreed that that was his observation from his point that that is exactly what has occurred and taken place. I think that is worthy of a round of applause from everyone as well.

[Applause] *0:27:45.6.

[Glenn]

Down the bottom there on the right-hand side, I have my wayward star, but I can tell you that star was perfectly positioned when I put this PowerPoint together. And the whole point of putting the gold star, some people in my school would know, I'm prone to throwing gold stars around the school, every now and then. This is a gold star piece of work. Yes, it was hard work and it required a lot of the heavy lifting from people, but we had a meeting, it must be maybe three weeks ago now with the department. From the Department of Education and Training, we had around five or six representatives come up and meet with us.

In a sense it was a catch up, but to look at what we were doing and to reflect on the currency work and the whole rectification project and hence the gold star. They were ecstatic with the quality of the work and the commitment that we had all shown to achieving this piece of work, which was a vitally important piece of work, which as Belinda has called out, the sector is struggling with this. And they did suggest that they thought that we were well ahead of the game and that the road that we're on, the journey that we were on to solving this piece would be something that the sector may well want to have a look at.

We have more work to do on currency. We've got semester one next year that we need to collect evidence and so forth. But in the background, what is also occurring is we have people working on the development of new systems. We've got processes and as you would have all experienced as we went through the currency work for the first semester, one of the challenges is we were having to-- we were reacting and building a system on the fly. I think within that context we did it pretty well and we achieved what we needed to achieve, but we all know that we need to be much smarter with the systems that we have to assist us in doing this work.

As a little bit of promotion, the essentials down on the far-right hand side, that's your one stop shop to all things assessment tools. If you're not aware of this space, most of you probably are, but I'm just putting it up there, putting it out there. Then of course, with the-- in terms of people there is like really incredible work underway at the moment to develop a PD specific to VE. We have at the moment, the two key pieces of work that I'm certainly aware of. It's we have a lead VE program, which will be spoken about a bit later today. And that is a piece of work that's specifically designed for our Vocational Education leaders, so senior educators, coordinators, deans, associate deans and others.

And so, we really welcome that investment, but in addition to that, there is also the development of-- I don't want to steal anyone else's thunder here, but the development of some micro credits, which are really going to be targeted and aligned to our assessment practices and the requirements. All of the things that you need to know about building assessment tools as we moved forward into the future. I'll leave that for someone else to talk about.

The assessment project. I said I would come back to that one and I just want to make a couple of comments about this. So, this is your assessment rectification. There is endless discussion about how we should do this work and what is the best way to do this work. I'm really pleased to say that in terms of the central resources that have been put up to support our work on reviewing all of our assessments, it is a terrific investment and it's overseen, and project managed by James Macintyre. And James, of course, it's terrific and a terrific person to lead this piece of work. The discussion that we've had that I'll put out here for people to have an awareness of, sorry James, is that there are different approaches that you can adopt to this kind of work. That is, okay, we're reviewing your assessments, we're reviewing all of your assessments.

In some organisations, what they would do is they would put it out to the market and say, "Please write all of those assessments and bring them back here and we will use them." The other alternative to that, and I'll come back to that, the other alternative to that is we take more ownership of it. We ensure that we continue to build our capability, be great at what we're doing in this space and that we get involved in it. It's a little bit more heavy lifting that provided it's resourced and that we continually talk to each other if we're coming across issues and challenges, then that would be that-- I will always argue that that is the way that we should be doing this work. We're not a private RTO where you can farm this work out and then you just have teachers come in and have them plunked in front of them and they then say, teach that.

We really want people to get involved. I have a commitment in DSE to ensuring that all of our teachers are in the redevelopment of the assessment tools and that no one's left out of the process. I should add to that also that-- and I'm not here to talk about the really minute detail of it. It may come up in questions, but we've also within the budget that is allocated there to support this work, there is an allocation of funding to support sessional staff where we made the sessional staff for getting involved in it as well, which is not dissimilar to what we did when we introduced the work that was required for Canvas. There was an allocation of funds put up for our sessional teachers in that space as well.

I feel like I'm really rapidly approaching the end of my six minutes here. The final thing that I will say, is I've been at RMIT for almost 10 years. I did run away for a couple of years, but I've been around the place for a while now. What I would hope that people really do, in a sense, appreciate because I certainly appreciate it, I appreciate the lens that's being put on Vocational Education and the investment that's come with it. Certainly, when I arrived back in the early 2010 and 11, that was my greatest concern, that we didn't have the investment and the support that we really needed to prosper and be great in the future.

So, there is really significant work that's going on here around people, processes and systems. There's a lot going on in the background. There is a lot that you're also seeing in the foreground. And so, I really want to say thank you to all of the people who are making the contribution here. It's coming down from the Council and the Vice Chancellor in the DVCE, all the way through the PVCs and so forth. So, I'll leave it there. I'll look forward to the questions at the end. Thank you everyone for listening.

[Applause] *0:34:49.2.

[Belinda]

I think I just want to support what Glenn said there about what kind of workforce do we want for Vocational Education at RMIT? Because if we didn't want an empowered, capable workforce, well, then you would do what he said. You would outsource like the private RTOs do. You'd desegregate the curriculum into components, and you would outsource a lot of it. What we wanted at RMIT though, are teaching professionals. It's a professionalised workforce that understands competency, that understands how to write assessments, that understands the pedagogy, that understands underpins Vocational Education.

There's probably always going to be a bit of a mixed economy in that if we're honest about it. We're always going to have casual and sessional staff who are coming in to do a job for us, but on the whole, we have about 800 substantive staff, Vocational Education teachers who I would like to see as being a professionalised workforce that know their business and that can actually do that business as part of what they do at RMIT because that's what differentiates us. Part of the investment that we're doing in the professional development and the resource that is flowing into Vocational Education at the moment is to do precisely that.

It's to ensure that our workforce is a professionalised workforce that understands all these pieces. Some of you will be able to step up and into that and some of you won't be able to. And so, we will always have a mixed economy where there will always be probably a certain proportion of casual or sessional staff that will come and support us as well. But I think that's also to remind you or that we value you. We don't want to outsource VE in a way that a private RTO might do it. That's not what RMIT wants to do. That's not the way we want to run and shape the workforce for Vocational Education. I think you should see it as a sign of our commitment to you.

And if I was being really honest, we should have been doing these years ago. But now we're doing it. We've woken up and we're doing it. All I can say is I just apologise. I'm so sorry we haven't enabled you in the way that you need to be enabled in to be the workforce of this future, but it's all coming now. At least that's something, I think.

Now, I'm going to sort of disrupt the program again. Sorry. I know you've got me on the queue, but they know what I'm like, I change it around. I think it's probably best to go to the professional development now because I think that segues quite nicely. Then we'll come back to the values piece at the end, Graham. Is that okay? Yep. So, I'll get my two people up here to talk about what we're doing on the front here. I don't know who would like to go first? Michelle, would you like to go first? If you take that microphone.

[Michelle]

Hi, we'd like to talk to you today about the lead VE program. This is Elissa. I think many of you know her.

[Elissa]

Elissa McKenzie.

[Michelle]

We're really excited about this program because, as Belinda was saying, it's recognition that Vocational Education requires different attention and the building of different skills to the Higher Education area. We've been given funds to really target the things that you need. What we're-- we can move on to the next slide, Reese.

And so, the purpose of the lead VE program is to enhance the capability of VE leaders at operational level, at senior level and executive level, to embrace and support the changes that are needed. And that's including all the rectification stuff as well as looking at where we are sitting. We are growing.

One of the key changes that we have is that we've recognised that within the sector we need to grow our own leaders. It's not something that has been done particularly well. When we start to look for leaders across the sector, we can't find them outside of the organisation. There are one or two that are really good, but we need to be actually consciously looking at how do we grow our own, what competencies do we need internally to be able to build the skills that we need to grow the VE and service our clients effectively. So, we are looking at achieving growth over time, but it's really about how do we do that internally and what do we need to do to look at it? Next slide.

So, the lead VE program incorporates three phases looking at our individual-- how do you lead individuals and how do I operate as an individual leader? How do I grow the teams that I'm working with and work effectively with the teams? And then how do we grow the future workforce? So, there are three phases to this program. And sitting in the middle of that is the idea that we need a common leadership language. Not just a common language for VE, but a common leadership language within VE, and then for the rest of the RMIT community, so that there are opportunities for people who are leaders to move into the broader university as well if that's what they want to do.

So, that common leadership language looks at a set of principles that are already in existence. So, if any of you have done the Be Ready Program, the B's, the leadership B's, which are looking at fundamental principles around, how do you lead in this organisation? The first phase is establish the foundations, get that common language happening, and getting a common understanding of what leadership needs to be for the VE community. When you're having a meeting, there's a common set of principles and there's a common understanding of this is the way we do it here, so we’re tying in with our HR systems. We're tying in with all of the systems that you would need to work with, and we're setting a common set of expectations for their leaders.

Phase two is about then looking at where do we go, how do we strengthen the core that we have, and phase three is then moving into well, what do we need to do to ensure this happens. We're looking at making sure that there are some short courses, but because this is VE, it's actually really about how do we bring the skills that we need back on the job? How do we know that people are doing the things that we need them to? We expect our students to be able to do things back on the job.

So, let's look at how do we make sure that when we're teaching something when we're talking about common principles, that is enacted back in the workplace, and that's where the deans and the senior leadership have been really supportive around. Let's understand what that needs to look like and let's look at how do we embed. And that's where when we're working with the other part of the lead VE Program, which is about building the capabilities of the whole of the teaching staff in our assessment credentials that we're trying to say, what does that look like when it's happening, and how do we make sure that we embed it? So, working really closely with Elissa and her team about making sure that the assessment side of things is really embedded and you all understand what that means.

[Elissa]

Thank you. So, we're building five micro-credentials, so you've already heard that we're doing credentials that's been well-spoken about. These are the titles of these credentials. Our team's working very closely with Michelle's team around the Lead VE Project and this will sit as part of the Lead VE Project, but it's got a specific L&T focus. What we're really looking at here is, yes, we need to focus on some compliance type things, but how do we do these things at RMIT and how do we as RMIT ensure best practice in what we do?

So, the first four credentials were running. I won't read them out. You can read yourselves but they're for teachers as well. So, they're going to be able to be accessed by all our VE and open to anyone who wants to do them and really, we're going to be encouraging people to do those. The fifth credit, the mentoring one is for our VE leaders and that Senior Educators 1 to 3. We're looking at the moment and we're about to launch all of this. So, in addition to doing all the other credentials, our leaders will also do a short face-to-face piece where they will look at how to lead these things in the area, and it's really about honing in on what do you do already. How can we work with you more and some advice and general tips, so that we can work together as a collective to really improve our practice in all of these phases.

So, I'd like to point out, we're not building this in isolation. Our team's been working very closely with Karen and Ishmael from the VE team and looking at some of the things coming out of the new audit rectification, new processes, how we are doing things now. We're also working very closely with a governance group that has representatives from all of the three VE schools who are helping us to align to current practice as well. I'd like to say a big thank you to some other teachers that came along to help trial some of this content already and gave up their time to actually get involved and have a voice.

We appreciate the feedback and we're embedding that so that has been fantastic to get people involved. We are now about to pilot this program. So, we're looking for a group of leaders in this SE ones to three to put up their hands to participate in the pilot. We're kicking off in the next week, and the first face-to-face session will be in September, it's a monthly flow on. It's not a huge commitment of time, but we would appreciate people getting involved because we can then work with your feedback to really find this program and get it right and make it work for you.

[Belinda]

Fantastic. That's great. So, Michelle and Elissa, so you're starting a pilot shortly. Michelle, when does yours all kick-off when do we--

[Michelle]

It's really kicking off today.

[Belinda]

Right, okay, great.

[Michelle]

We're starting off the in-depth needs analysis supported by a number of external coaches who are here now, and will be here until the 20^th of September where we're actually you're getting some individual, that every leader in the VE school will get an individual coaching session to really unpack what your needs are now, and what your development needs, so that we're focusing specifically on you as individuals. You haven't signed up please go on, and all the heads of school have sent emails out with all of the details. But that starts today, and we'll be running the first common language session in October. Starting around about, I think, it's the 20^th of October.

[Belinda]

So, Michelle, if people haven't signed up yet and they don't know about it, they should contact--

[Michelle]

They should contact me.

[Belinda]

-- either Arvin or Graham or Glenn or yourself?

[Michelle]

Yes. We have a Lead VE email address which is, leadve all one word @rmit.edu.au

[Belinda]

So, if you've got any queries about that jump into that. And Elissa, you're looking for volunteers?

[Elissa]

Yes, please. So, if anyone's keen to get involved, we'd love to have you involved in the program. If you could either contact your heads of school or also the Lead VE email address, we're just grabbing a list of names. So, you can try and sign up within the next week or so that would be fabulous.

[Belinda]

Thank you. Thank you, to both of you. That's great. I'm quite excited about that there's a range of professional development starting to roll through the system. Hopefully, you'll get involved in that as well. None of that can really work well for us as a community nor as an organisation unless we've got our values to underpin it. Graham, you're going to come and talk to us a bit about the revitalisation of our values.

It would be quite interesting for you to just lean into the person next to you-- oh, no, you've put them up. They've had a flash though. Did you say don't show it to--? Lean into the person next to you and see if you can name what the values of RMIT are. Do that now. Do you know them? Just turn to the person next to you. Do you know what the values are? It's a trick question, of course.

[Background conversations] *0:47:41.0.

[Belinda]

Brian, do you want to come up here? Come on. Yes, good. Oh good. I’m lining up them to get to-- Okay, let's flick them on.

[Video playback starts]

Voiceover: We are RMIT, a global University of Technology, design and enterprise. What unites us is our purpose and our values. They are at the heart of who we are and what we stand for. Our purpose is to offer life-changing experiences for our students and to shape the world with the research, innovation, teaching and industry engagement. Our six values inspire us, guiding how we work together and make decisions.

Inclusion, when we're inclusive, we respect each other. We embrace our differences. We build a sense of belonging in our team and beyond.

Imagination, when we're imaginative, we experiment and explore new ideas. We seek out different views to solve problems. We encourage innovation.

Agility; when we're agile, we adapt to changing needs. We see mistakes as an opportunity to learn. We find new ways to get better results.

Courage; when we're courageous, we act with integrity. We speak out on issues that matter. We are accountable for our actions.

Passion; when we're passionate, we empower people to learn and grow. We care deeply about the work we do and each other and take pride in it.

Impact. We always seek to make a positive impact. Empowering each other to achieve great things and recognising everyone's role in making a difference. By living and working in this way, we will shape the world for the better. It's up to you, it's up to me. Be the heart of RMIT.

[Video playback ends]

[Applause] *0:50:13.2.

[Belinda]

So, how many did you get? Hopefully, you got some of them. The number of values has not changed, and the values themselves have not changed, but Graham, you're the one-stop-shop, you know what the values are. Can you still remember what they are even though you said, can you? What are they?

[Graham]

I've got--

[Belinda]

I should put your-- what are they?

[Graham]

So, courage, passion, imagination, inclusion.

[Belinda]

You get caught? What are they, what's he missing?

[Participant]

Agility.

[Belinda]

Agility.

[Participant]

Impact and [inaudible] *00:50:51.

[Belinda]

Okay. So, we can all help each other remember the values, can't we? Actually, there was somebody in my team, and I think it took him three times to remember what the values are. We'd ask him every meeting and he'd still get them wrong, but hopefully, we'll embed these more. So, you're going to talk a bit about them?

[Graham]

Thank you, Belinda. I feel like the last speaker on the debating team.

[Belinda]

Do you? No, you are very important Graham, you're very important. You just press on. I'll try and go somewhere else so that I don't stand in the way.

[Graham]

That's okay. Before I get to the values place, I thought it'd be good to just also share a bit of the leadership lift that we're having in VBE, which Belinda's asked me to touch on as well, and then I'll tie it together in the context of these new initiatives that have happened in VBE with the values piece.

So, as we've heard from the range of speakers this morning, there's a large number of huge projects in flight at the moment. They're very complex projects, they have a lot of risk attached to them. We've got financial and compliance indicators riding on these projects. About six to nine months ago, I was reflecting, unfortunately, not on the balcony at Lorne, although I did get a very nice Father's Day brunch yesterday, which was great.

Basically, I was reflecting and thinking, I'm not sure that our ways of working really cut it in a school to lead the school with the leadership team, to navigate all of those projects that they're cross competing. There's timelines going left, right and centre. And I feel like we've been in a bit of a messy space, which I think you referred to Belinda. One way of-- I came across this I think one team methodology, I was lucky enough to attend one of Graham Winter's workshops last year and I came back from that thinking this would be perfect to implement with my leadership team. Basically, I distributed a copy of, I think, one team to my leadership group, associate deans plus program managers.

And we all read it over the summer period, which was great. It's only about 150 pages, a fair few pictures as well, which is good. And then, we came back in January and we did some action learning on it. So, this is just really a methodology to bring us all together because I felt that we were operating in a little bit in silos, and it wasn't prepping us really to get the-- I suppose getting the results that we'd need to get in this new environment.

The main methodology is an ACL loop, they call it, a little learning loop. It's align, collaborate, learn. So, we did a couple of action learning iterations of these, and then there was this awakening within the leadership group, and I'm really hugely proud of everyone that's in my leadership group for taking it on board. I'm going to distribute this book to all of the teaching staff. Within the next couple of weeks, everyone in the whole school get a copy.

So, to compliment that with the, I think one team methodology, I've also got an Agile methodology that we've been looking at. So, this is just a methodology again. It's been widely adopted across the university. We tried, as a school, to map out all of the tasks, the bus leaves, the whole school does over a 12-month period.

So, this has forced us to get some alignment on that task. I need a glass of water. So, each quarter, quarter one, two, three, and four is transferred onto a separate board, which is basically what we're calling an BAU board, and then the tasks are broken down into clear milestones.

We now have two boards, we have a BAU board plus a Kanban board, and the Kanban board is basically for 90 days, more strategic initiatives. It's providing clarity and transparency of work. All staff are being encouraged to implement ideas onto this. Just to wrap up, again to put this in the context of values, with I think one team the Agile sort of backdrop. Inclusion, we encourage different viewpoints on processes. Imagination, we keep an open mind with better ways of doing things. So, you're constantly in school trying to think of better ways of operating. Agility, we adapt to changing the climate and pivot quickly. Courage, we call out actions and hold each other to account. This has been pretty challenging as well, but I really appreciate everyone leaning into this value. Passion, we constantly push each other and challenge how things are done. And impact, we strive to allocate more time and energy to things, so have an impact. Thank you.

[Belinda]

That's okay, Graham. That's great and look, I don't think you were the third league, is that what you call it, the third league? No, no, not at all. Thank you.

[Applause] * 0:57:02.8.

[Belinda]

Just going back to our values here, if there was any community in the university that really represents what RMIT stands for, it is obviously the Vocational Education community. If you haven't seen these up around your areas yet, I know that our HR business partner-- where's Simone, is she here? Did you know we actually have our own dedicated HR business partner now? Simone, you should stand up so people can see you. Just what Simone needs. If you want to talk HRVE, this is the woman to speak to, but Simone has joined us just a few weeks ago and we've got our own dedicated person, which I'm delighted about.

But Simone will probably work with HR, and if you haven't seen these up in posters and stuff around your area, you should see that coming to a place near you very soon. There are a whole bunch of little pins as well. I'll make sure that all of the VE staff, if you haven't received those, I'm not quite sure how they were handed out, but everyone should get a pin, and we can make sure that you get them on your desk and there are a nice little V if you'd like to wear those as well. When I think about what we're doing at the moment, we're really working in the impact pace quite strongly, aren't we? We've had a lot of courage over the past six months. We've taken a few risks and really stood out and sorting out, acknowledging in lots of ways what hasn't been going right and what needs to go better in the future.

We're being incredibly inclusive. I hope you feel that you're being included more. I definitely want your voice more in things, events like the VE Town Hall, for example, which is even on Yammer. We've got our workgroups through the deans and any other ways that you think were appropriate for you to maintain contact or be in contact or open up dialogue and discussion I'm hoping to hear it. I'm always up for a new idea. In fact, I think I've got two fantastic pitch tank pieces that someone wrote down for me what they were that we're funding this time around, which were pretty exciting. If I could just find on my pieces of paper, which don't have any numbers on them-- here they are. There's two really good projects that are working at the moment. There's one around the virtual workplace, which Jack Dunstan's doing, and there's also some web-based teamwork for project-based unit competency with Amita [Eia].

I don't know if Amita is here, but they're two really lovely projects, and we do have more investment money to put into the innovation. If you do feel like you've got some spare space in there, in terms of your workload, you're interested in that, you know I'm always up for another pitch. I like a pitch. I'm not sure my team like the pitch, because what happens if you pitch to me and I go, yeah, great idea, and then I give it to somebody else, like Elissa to do for me. That's how we got the plumbing going, didn't it? Yes, it was good. I think we play in this space quite strongly, and I do hope that as we move forward that you will hold us all to account in terms of this is what we want our RMIT to be. This is how I would like RMIT Vocational Education to live, and to act and to behave and be part of.

If you don't see me behaving like this, I hope you'll call me out because that's what I want to represent as well. Don't hesitate to let me know if I'm not showing enough passion, or if I'm not being impactful enough. And certainly, if you don't feel like we're including you enough and you don't feel the VE community is being drawn upon to form what the future looks like, then I'd like to know because-- don't come to work every day not to be inclusive. In fact, I come to work every day to try and have a great day and to make a difference. I'm sure that you all do that too.

So, I'm going to end all our speaking bits about there. We've got a little, some time for some questions, and then I wouldn't mind wrapping up at the very end, I wouldn't mind just talking to a little bit about the staff survey, which is coming up shortly too. So, you know that that's in the wings, but I've got enough time here for us to ask some questions.

Have we got any questions that have come through on Yammer? No questions on Yammer. That's actually telling us something, Reese. I think GoSoapBox was a bit easier, wasn't it? You just went tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. All right, there you go. We've just got some feedback. That was pretty direct, wasn't it? We just got some feedback. We don't like Yammer. We're not doing Yammer. We'll get back to GoSoapBox. We've got a phone-- Reese is not going to be happy with me on that. No, Courtney's not happy. You got to do Yammer. All right, not living the values people. All right, let's move straight on. Reese, would you, you've got a microphone. I'm hoping there might be just a few questions. You've got Graham here, Glenda, Arvind, myself, numerous other people in the room. Are there any burning questions that anyone would like to ask? Great, got one here. I hope it's an easy one. Oh no, she's giving it back.

[Participant]

Hi, Belinda. My question is probably around the assessment project and future. So, we're obviously spending a lot of people resources and money and time et cetera on this project. I guess, my thoughts are around and just wanting feedback on what happens when training packages change, or new teachers come in? I've been in VE only for seven years, so a small time compared to many in the room, I'm sure, but I've seen that new teachers come in, and the reason we have sloppy assessments is because people change things. I'm just wondering how that's going to be controlled. Maybe it's not thought through completely at this point, but just some thoughts on that. That's all.

[Belinda]

I think that whole sustainability piece and the processes that are attached to that. While we're in the rectification we're trying to get stuff done, but in parallel to that, we are trying to figure out, well what would be the process for that? Because you're right, there's always change and there's churn in the system. How do we assure ourselves that we're not churning and changing so much that we end up where we were before? I don't think we have the full answer to it yet. It's what we're working through. If you've got any great ideas about how we do that, certainly from the VE community themselves, you might be able to help us answer that. But understanding the processes, understanding who has the authority to change things. When a new person comes in, do they have the authority to change an assessment that is actually already valid? If they do want to change it, what would be the process they need to go to get it approved kind of thing. But at the same time, trying not to disempower our professional workforce who should be able to change things and feel comfortable that they're doing the right thing. I think it's a journey as we head through that, but that wasn't too hard. Well, it's a bit hard.

All right, any more questions? I've got a hold back group. I always think who's in the back row? Surely, they've got a burning question or they're in the back row because they don't want me to point them out. I can see you also up there. I can see Claire. Hi, Claire. You're not on your device of destruction are you? No, of course not paying attention. Actually, I was actually taught by a teacher trainer. He used to do this to me. She'd go listening, listening-- used to drive me insane. I would never do that to you. Have you got a question? Great-- wait for the microphone. They do say in teacher world that if you wait 30 seconds, a few questions will pop up. I'm expecting something from up there at some point soon, Claire.

[Participant]

I would just like to ask Graham, take one team. Can you please on your ACL model, can you please give some examples? Like how you really acted on it.

[Belinda]

So, align, collaborate and learn. What do they mean, Graham?

[Graham]

Thank you, Raul. So, we actually bring the first ACL loop around a checklist for teaching staff and program managers for the start of the semester. We did the first part of the ACL loop is that align. We came together and rather than doing typical hierarchal, there'd be a couple of PMs or you're an associate dean working on a project ,we went skills-based and we divided up the resources. We had a couple of people that were basically had the technology skills, so they were able to put together the form, I suppose. We created an electronic checklist form. There were a couple of people that had the learning and teaching knowledge. They will put together on a little small fast team together. It's all about aligning and I suppose sharing and getting a shared understanding of the vision, or you're really clear outcomes of a particular project or task.

Then we went through several iterations of the collaborate part of the ACL loop. And the collaborate is basically just working together as a team. Feeding into those skills-based leaders if you like. And then at the end once we'd actually delivered it, we all came back together as a group and we said, what worked well? What could we do better next time? What can we learn from. So, that was just one example, just creating a basic checklist because my understanding was that various PMs right across the school have different types of their own checklist in place, which had come about over a number of years of things that they believed that were important. So, coming all together was invaluable and produced a pretty good outcome. We've still got another iteration to do a refinement on it, but that's basically one example.

[Belinda]

It's live reflection. The learn bit on the ACL, align, collaborate, learn is really taking that time to say, well we did that. What do we learn from it? Then what can you take? It's like an action. Many of you will know the action learning cycles is that you take that learning and flow it into the next thing. We rarely take time to sit still and just go, well, what did I learn from doing that? How could we improve things or do things differently next time we do it? But it's having the courage actually to say, yeah, that well this bit didn't go so well and if we'd done that, that would probably would have been better. But not beating ourselves up about it but learning from it and having the courage to say, well, actually that didn't go quite so well and if we'd done it this way, that might've gone better or differently.

[Participant]

Impact on this [inaudible] *01:07:27.

[Belinda]

Yeah, yeah. It's trying to get repeatable learnings. When you get a pattern of something that works really well and being able to repeat that. To say that we know in that circumstance if you do X, this will happen. We see it in the classroom quite a lot in our pedagogy, so you'll know it with your own students. Anyway, that could be something, a really nice topic for us to explore for the whole group, Graham, because only the VBE group have got that. So, maybe the DSE and SCHE groups would like to hear a little bit more about ACL as well.

Any other questions? Let me think from up in here. I won't look at you or name you, I promise, but I might. Here’s a question. Great. Thank you.

[Participant]

[inaudible] * 1:08:14.9.

[Belinda]

Be careful what you wish for, right.

[Participant]

My question is around currency, and we welcome the work that has been done and most of us have been involved in it. Given the speed at which it has had to happen, we’re finding ourselves in a situation where it's very difficult to get replacement teachers. When we do go out to the sector, given that they're also struggling, it’s very difficult to replace the teacher who has currency, especially if it's for short bursts of time. I'm just wondering how we'll manage that in the next six, 12 months while the thing that catches up with the work we've done here.

[Belinda]

I think you've nailed-- that's like such a good question because it's the question the entire sector has, because everybody's looking for these current spectacular teachers in all sorts of similar areas, and we're all stealing and poaching from each other. It's one of the reasons why when Glenn said before about growing our workforce, about growing the capability of our workforce is really important and valuing this workforce. And even though sometimes we have to go out and it is a mixed economy, you want to get people, we need to grow within ourselves somehow. I don't think we've got the answer of what we do when we had gaps. We saw what happened. I think it was-- was it Melbourne Polytechnic? They had to suspend some of their courses because they just couldn't find the staff to teach it.

In a sense, what I don't want to have happen is all the other VE start poaching and fishing in our pond. I just don't need you to be fished out of this pond. I need you to stay here. We give you the capability to be able to-- I don't know, I don't think the fish metaphor was very good, is it? Swim the happily here without the sharks now? No, we won't go there on the fish metaphor. You know what I'm saying? I think it's really hard at the moment, and we're doing our best to try and create a workforce that we have all the capability in where we can, even amongst our sessional stuff. It's inevitable though with our sessional and casual short-term stuff that as we train and enable them, they get fished out of our pond and go elsewhere too. We have to make sure that RMIT feels and seems attractive, and that people feel valued when they're teaching for us.

One thing I'd like to do, and I think we've been working with HR around this, is about how do you create the lists of people? And there are people who don't want to be full-time, who just want the short contracts, who do have the capabilities, who are loyal to RMIT that can be our cadre. I think as Simone starts to work with us as a group and starts to hear some of the problems, we have in terms of putting teachers in front of our classrooms, we should start to build out what those strategies need to be. There you go. Simone, did you get that football? I don't think there's no easy answer to that one. If anyone's got any ideas around how we build that cadre of expertise, that would be great. But my main focus at the moment is to build our expertise and make sure that we have got a strong expertise, and that you don't get poached and that our sessional staff don't get poached after we invest in them.

Any other questions? Look, you're more likely to open up and ask me questions. Next time we'll have GoSoapBox so they can ask questions.

[Graham]

All right.

[Belinda]

All right. Thank you. You might still get onto Yammer and do a few things. That'd be great. That'd help me. This brings us really to the end of-- and we can go outside, and we can mingle and chat together on this and there's some morning tea for you.

We do have the staff survey that's coming up in a few weeks' time. It would be fantastic for you to start thinking and reflecting on the kinds of things that have been happening in VE. It's certainly for the university, it's the full survey this time. It's not the pulse. Unfortunately, this is going to take a little bit more time. Where's my HR people? How many questions? Is it something horrible, isn't it? No, it's at least 100 questions. No, it's under 100, all right. I might be sending you all a tea bag, sit at your computers and write nice things, okay? It'd be really fantastic.

Obviously, the university takes your feedback seriously. We are working very hard to try and address all sorts of things. Things that I would remind you of. I feel like this is a little bit of an advertisement, but things you should be very proud of here at RMIT, are really that we are the LBGTQI+ employer of the year. We are also in rank stand in the top 10 employers. All the work that we're doing around reconciliation, I'm sure you agree with me. It's been absolutely outstanding in this organisation. And although you're not all converted to Yammer yet, I would really encourage you to get in there, because I think you will enjoy it once you get into that space.

We also now have a medical centre on campus. I don't know if you've noticed. If you need to check in with a doctor, it opened last week. If you're, apparently it was already full, so good luck in trying to get an appointment, but it's already happening, which is very excellent. We have all sorts of other ways in which we support you as our staff. I do hope when you sit in front of that survey that you remember, not just the things we don't do well as a university, but you also remember the things that we do well. I believe we're a very caring organisation and hopefully, the VE community is beginning to feel that more so as well.

Go ahead and have a cup of tea. Thank you, everyone. See you soon.

[End transcript]