Training resources

[Tayyab Maqsood]

Good day, everyone. Greetings from Melbourne, Australia. So I hope you can hear me. Good afternoon. Very good, great. So great to say. So we're looking forward to having about 400 people joining from all over the world, which is great. So I'll start with a bit of my introduction first during that time. Hopefully more of the colleagues can join from around the world. So it's great to see that's happening. I'm hoping that all of you are keeping yourself and your loved ones well and safe in places where you're living. We're certainly in a difficult situation. Very good. So just a brief introduction about myself. My name is Tayyab Maqsood. I'm associate professor of Project Management here in the school of Property, Construction and Project Management. I'm also a head of Project Management Discipline, and we refer to these as Associate Dean.

So that is my leadership role, and I manage the team of academics who work with me in the Project Management Discipline. You probably, I think it's good for you to know that RMIT as far as I know in Australian context is the only university where project management exists as a discipline and department, where other universities they will have just one program. But we have a full discipline or a department dedicated to project management. So we are doing this for last 30 years, and have been going steadily and cementing our position in the project management area in Australia and internationally. So to start with, because we exist as a discipline, we have our discipline vision. So I would like to start with that. Our vision is that we want to recognized as a world leading community of students, educators, researchers and practitioners. So we don't want anybody to be left out.

We're all part of it together and we cultivate project management discipline or capabilities and advance the discipline to facilitate successful projects. So this is our guiding vision. So before just getting straight into the program, which you want to know about, I think it's very important to know that how that program is housed, how this program is being part of a bigger picture. That's where you will say that how that program is supported, and that is one of the key differentiator that we have got from our competitors. So it is one of its kind globally. There's no doubts about that. We have 16 full time staff members, and it is again unheard of in a project management context where you'll see the other universities run their business in project management through four or five people. So we are well established over a longer period of time.

It has taken a while to set this thing up and to pick the best staff from around the world, which are specialized in this area. So as a discipline, we have different teaching programs. One is the very popular undergraduate Project Management Program, which again is very few around the world. Only one in Victoria and only one of the three in Australia. Then the other programs that we are going to be talking about today, and that's why we are here for, and that is the Master of Project Management and graduate certificate and graduate diploma in project management, which we also offer online as well. We have total number of students at this point 800, which is again a reasonable number that we have and makes us one of the larger discipline in project management. Now as you probably see and I can see, there are 400 people on this webinar.

Obviously there is interest among the community to know and learn more about project management, and also from the students from around the world and it is growing rapidly. One thing that I would like you to remember and talk about [inaudible] students when they make a decision between they go for Master Project Management or they're going for MBI or other competing programs is that why the project management has become very common these days and it's growing rapidly. One of those reason is that all those companies, which are non project based like big retail companies called manufacturing companies or car manufacturing companies, they do every initiative as a project and they separate this project out of their business. They put a budget to it, they put people to it and see what happens.

Once they're successful, it becomes their regular line of business. That is why you would see the projects are happening in almost every industry around the world in every corner. So in retail, in finance, banking, agriculture, even the zoo, any pharmaceutical construction, obviously an IT is by default the project based anyway. But all other business which are non project based also type projects, also do projects. Hence, there's a need to manage those projects, and thus some of the statistics that are put forward that there's increased demand about these roles in Australia as well as worldwide. Now I will try to establish that why the project management is becoming very popular and unique these days, and has by now for last I think definitely for last seven, eight years as we have seen our numbers double and triple. So then at RMIT, what makes us special? I want to talk about that.

So one thing is that you can provide this advice to prospective students that they can choose project management as a career. Then why RMIT? So that's the things I'm going to talk about. As I have seen or we will work for our students to make opportunities for them in the industry, we have seen our graduate has gone into construction industry. Obviously is the big place where our graduates get absorbed, and then the non-construction side. So I've seen people going into Australia Post, which is again just a regular business. We've seen in calls, we've seen in the law in the justice department. So obviously health, change management. So all those unique areas where the project management was not that common before, now it's becoming common and there's more and more appetite from these areas and the need for project professionals.

Now at RMIT, I'm sure you know this from your experience, and you might have seen my other colleagues in the same school doing this. That we have a very state of art learning spaces, and they are customized. They are modern facilities and that they encourage collaboration among the students. They create that atmosphere of collaboration where the student would like to be staying and working together, and we are very proud of that what we are doing at RMIT. Now we have a very careful and balanced approach to this master of project management. Without naming other universities, if you go dig deeper in that you would see that they would have five courses related to project management, and then students can do seven and eight electives doing anything. Well, that's not the case with us, because we have that critical mass of staff that we can actually offer each course related to project management.

When I talk to some of my students and say, "Hey, why did you choose us?" These things comes up again and again when the say while they were searching through different programs around the world, they saw that our program is unique. That every course is project management oriented, and we're just not offering certain key courses and everything else is elective. Even we have [inaudible] as an elective, but they also provide the product management context and flavor. So this diagram that you see is the heart of what we do, which means we develop technical skills and soft skills. So the project management is an art as well as in science. So we recognize that, and we try to have a balance between the technical side of project management. I don't want to go into more than that. Then the softer skills that we actually teach students in terms of the leadership and teamwork, and the negotiation.

So what we offer is a good set of project management programs. We say one stream, we say generic. Okay. So if you do not want to choose any specialization, you can take a generic stream. All right? In genetic stream, our approach is to touch upon as many industries as possible. So during the course of the program, which is the two years program, we would have talked about project management in most industries. So in Australian context they're in 19 different industries. So we're trying to develop a curriculum to cater for the cases and example, from those 19 different industries and we are adding new examples every day. It doesn't mean that every course would have all 19 examples. It means that over the course of the full program, students will be exposed to the variety of project management areas. If you want to specialize, then we have engineering stream.

We have Information Technology stream, IT. Then we have a Post-disaster Project Management stream. So most students, they take a generic stream. So if you come from business, economics, marketing, sales or health background, genetic stream is really good. If you come from the engineering background, it could be civil engineering and mechanical engineering, or electrical or partly communication. Then genetic stream is very good, but there's an opportunity that you can continue with the engineering stream as well. Then again with the IT, if you have an IT background, it's quite natural to opt for our IT specialization in project management. If you're working in the NGO and the aid and relief sector and post-disaster and reconstruction area, then the Post-disaster Project Management is our stream. That is also becoming popular among the student coming from the developing countries.

Now I won't be able to go through each of the stream with you, but I will go through with our genetic stream. So it's a two-year program. First year we offer eight courses. So I'm sure you're okay with the terminology. So the course is one single subject or module, as you can see in your area, in your country. We say a course. So it ran for 12 weeks. It could be an intensive, runs over a couple of weekends. Now first four courses forms out so the graduate certificate, and the second set of the courses together with the first set makes the graduate diploma. Now these two are very hands on program, developing skills that students need to learn to actually start practicing project management in their first year. So we start with the introduction to project management and project management techniques and quality, and the leadership aspect in teams. Moving on to the risk and finance part. Now there are very quite regular courses that you will find out in any other program around the world. You need to have them.

Then there are other specialist courses, specialized courses which are very unique to us. For example, this Project Initiation Management. I have not been able to see many courses around different universities that cater for different end project management. So we had a specialist eight years ago who has a PhD in this area, and he's running this course. Then the course like Information and Technology Management is also unheard of in project management context. So this is the IT tools and techniques for project management is already unique course. Very unique to our Master Project Management. After first year, the second year actually now develops more critical thinking skills, and more self sturdy requirements there because we start talking about research. That's where the students who really want to grow in their role in their organizations and move up the ladder, they opt for the full master program and research is the key thing there.

So they learn about how to conduct the research, how to understand the literature, work done in the past and how to actually synthesize a body of work and present the argument. Then getting them to have a second soft risk skill course about project leadership, and then moving on to the advanced project risk management. Again, this is a unique program that it has got two risks courses. One I've shown you previously, where roughly we said risk one and risk two. Again, we teach advanced tools and techniques. So Advanced Project Risk Management is the area where I have expertise in. So I teach it myself. So we teach the tools like Monte Carlo simulation, [inaudible] risk analysis. Again, not very commonly taught and used the other universities. The students then have a choice to take an industry investigation route, or they can take a research route. It's up to them. If they want to do an industry project investigation, they have to finish project management practice.

If they want to get to the research route, which can give them a further route into the PhD. As we see there are some students who want to have a long term objective of doing a PhD, they do this research stream. So they have to do research investigation one, and they have to do the research investigation two. Obviously we get more numbers, the students taking the industry stream, but we get a good reasonable number of students doing the research investigation technique. So we encourage students to choose what they like. During even the first year, during the end of their first year, we run sessions and explain how these two streams work and what they can expect if they take the industry stream or the research stream. Now I've mentioned about some key points during my presentation that differentiate us. Differentiation is also key strategy of our discipline. As you would say, there is a mushroom growth or a lot of growth of Master Product Management.

Every other institution that seems to be offering that now, colleges even. So the strategy for us is to actually differentiate, and differentiation come through our staff that we have hand-picked them from around the world. Differentiation comes by having a discipline or a department here at RMIT. The research that we carry out, so we're just not teaching, but we all start as research active and then produce a state of art research, well-crafted research in their area of expertise. Thus again, sets us apart. Our research is recognized at level four in Australia, which is the maximum that in project management in our area that any university has got. This is out of five. Nobody's got five and we sit at four. So now we as I said, we have a good focus through our assessment on critical thinking and problem solving. The staff is a key to this all. They're very approachable. They have one common goal, and that is the student satisfaction.

So our students' satisfaction very much easily can go above 80. For some courses it definitely ranks in 90s. So all in all, I can tell you that the students come very satisfied out of this program. Now this is general RMIT ranking, and obviously I'm sure that you got this sort of a data all the time. Obviously with the five star for excellence in employability teaching facilities and engagement internationalization, and especially in built environment. We are I think we have further improved in 28th. Now come to the external validation, which is very important. Now again in the state of Victoria where we are located, we are the only university in the program, which has got three accreditations from external professional bodies. The first one is the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyor. Second one is the Project Management Institute. The third one is the local one from the Australian Institute of Project Management.

So I think the staff and the students, they produce really good work that there's a very strong external recognition of the quality of our program. So I'm sure they should go, you should be able to talk about this in your pitch to the prospective students. I'm sure there are only very few universities around the world and in Australia that is able to maintain their accreditation from three different professional bodies. This doesn't happen overnight. This is years and years of work that go on behind the scenes, and building up to this to be recognized by these three different leading professional bodies around the world. Now the other highlights we have got is again, makes us very unique that we are probably the only university that have a project management students society. Again it's unheard of. But again, we have a critical mass that we can support that. So the students obviously through the staff help, they were able to create the Project Management chapter.

There is a president, there is a vice president, there's a treasurer, there's a general secretary. Then they run their events obviously through our help, and we provide them with some budget. That's a good experience for the students to get involved, volunteer. Then because they have a good connection with the industry while they're doing the events, that has become a good conduit between them and the industry which then able them to secure some roles with the industry partners. We have a computer lab dedicated to our students. Our other highlight is the Annual Industry Nights, where we invite the industry to join us to celebrate the ending or the graduation. Not the formal graduation that happens RMIT, but from our perspective when they finish their semester, we bring the industry and students together. This is our annual connection with the industry in which they will provide the awards to the high achieving students.

This is going on for last 11 years, and been very successful to keep our relationship with the industry. In that industry night, there are a lot of movement happens from the industry moving through with the student work. Students actually put up their work, and then this is the source of either the interview or work in future. We also do our In-house Career Days. Obviously we can't do it this time. Usually in March we do one, and in August we do another industry. They come in our school and they set up their stalls, and they have their staff coming. They talk about the students, what they do in their company and how the students can join them and their graduate programs and things like that. That is very successful to events year that we do. We have a very strong ongoing collaboration with Project Management Institute. If you know about that is a major player in project management, and the Melbourne Chapter, we have this partnership going 2012 and it's going really strong even now.

So one of my strategy is that one of my staff member also become or take part very strongly, and become a board member all the way through. So we got a very good collaboration to this Chapter. They invite our student to their events. That becomes a fabulous networking opportunities, and I have seen many connection students further follow up in the industry, which has resulted in jobs. We have from last two years, we have now started our collaboration with AIPM. Australia Institute of Project Management, and the same effect that we are having with the Project Management Institute. The underlying industry connection that we have got is what we said the Employer of Choice program. If you've been through our construction property programs, you know a bit about this program. Now this program caters for the whole school, and we like to have the employers from different background sign up to this program.

The idea of this program is that they get a preferential access to our students. They can advertise their jobs, short-term jobs, longterm jobs with us first. That saves them with some HR costs and issues like that as well. They get access on a very good high quality graduates and it is growing. We started with 20 odd employers on board, like 10 years ago, 11 years ago. But now we have more than 300. So it just speaks how the industry really likes could be involved in this program. So I just put some couple of example big player there. It is available on the link that we have got. So we have the employers from construction background, from the construction area, from property area and from project management consulting areas as well. So very successful and robust program. Again, one of the key differentiator that we have got.

Now this is the quick run down on the things that we do, and I'm open for question and answers that you got. In that, I will bring a little more flavor to the discussion as I see what are the questions that you've got. So I want to thank you all. I've got 343 or 44 people now. So thank you very much for listening to me. I'm looking for your questions that I can help answer, and that you can take it further to your markets and prospective students. Very good. So you can download the presentation as well. There is no work experience requirement for this program. There is the English requirement. Ari, would you help me to get exactly what is that? It is 5.5 or six. There is no scholarship as such in this program for international students, because scholarship are what they are more in terms of the research side of things.

However, I believe the RMIT was working on a certain initiative where they were able to provide some assistance. So I think Ari would have more information about that, because the financial matters are handled centrally. I'm very happy to answer the technical question around the Product Management Discipline, and how we run it. Yes, difference between engineering and project management. So in engineering side of the project management, we have four specific engineering related courses, which goes more into the engineering domain and engineering examples. So they want talk about IT examples, they want talk about general health or change management side examples. So for that, we have partnered with our Engineering Management School and together the collaboration we offer those courses in our stream. So how many backlog is acceptable? Sorry, I didn't understand the question, Ari. Maybe you can decipher it whether [inaudible 00:31:32].

Work placement, so this is a good question. What I would like to tell you that we do not have a work placement model, or you can say the internship. We have this Employer of Choice program and the employers are able to advertise their roles with us. That has made this quite possible for our students and international student to also gain a short term jobs, and that are maturing into long term jobs. So if you going to ask me what are the job prospects, I think that's really good. Much better than any other university that I would have seen. I've not had anyone coming back to me and says I'm not on job. I have seen students getting job before they finish, and soon after. So I usually if I get anybody coming and talk to me, I say give yourself three to four months. Maximum six months and then come back to me, then I will connect to you somewhere.

The person has never come back to me, which means when I follow up on LinkedIn, I can see that they are in a certain job, a relevant job. So it all depends on the personality on the student as well, which we try to polish a lot through the program. We don't need any portfolio. What we need is the undergraduate at the completion of the undergraduate degree in any discipline. Students coming from the construction management, they go very well with the generic stream. Also, from the architecture background, they go very well with the generic stream. Even I usually advise my civil engineering prospective students and I am a civil engineer myself, that the generic stream is really helpful. It also brings into context other areas project management, which you are not exposed to during your engineering program. So if you want to diversify the generic programs or where to go, but some students I can say especially from Saudi Arabia or middle East.

I'm not sure if they're required from their funding bodies that they need to have a specialization in [inaudible 00:34:24]. That's why they actually enroll into engineering program, which is we welcome that as well. That's right. So Sonia here mentioned a good thing that most engineering students want to opt for courses which are not very technical. Yes, correct. That's why I say that they have done enough engineering. Now it's like to broaden up. By taking project management, they are still within their discipline of engineering. They're not going to go totally out of it, but it's going to expose them to the other skills and knowledge that they need to actually excel in their job. The idea is that this degree program helps them move up the ladder or move up into... On the what as I say [inaudible] or food chain. So I think that's the idea.

Yes. Student with the bachelor of agriculture. Yes, they are eligible to apply for this program. We are trying to accommodate some project management from agricultural point of view. One of my staff is working on a case study to develop that. Yes, if you mean by freshers that's the students who have just graduated. Yes, if they have completed their bachelor degree, yes they can apply for generic Master Project Management. Correct. How many years of work experience require post-disaster project management? We again, we do not need any work experience. But having said that, I would probably advise that a certain number of experience in this area under your belt would be helpful to actually then get a job if there is an interest to find job in Australia. So the professor, can you share with us what are some example project management that handled by student this year?

So student work on diverse projects, especially in their last course industry project investigation. They are provided an opportunity to pick any kind of project, and so they have picked the IT project. They have picked the infrastructure project, which means either a road or a bridge or a tunnel. Or it's a basically a stadium that they do [inaudible] develop a product around stadium construction or a house construction. They have also been projects around like running Commonwealth games or Olympics, or Grand Prix. So it all depends upon the students' interest. They can take a specific projects in their assignments, in the area they have expertise in. So I have students doing some nursing or health related projects when they were doing risk management with me. Ye, we have students changing stream as well.

Students have come to us with a certain stream like they might be engineering. Then down the track they find out they want to change it, so we just have to see how we can accommodate that. So they do have to have extra courses done, or what they have done we can consider them as an elective in a different stream. So this is happening. You don't want to keep the changes to the lighter part, but earlier. So it's good to have first semester and then think of what they want to do, and that's where we see most of the changes. Is there any scholarship on this program? I don't think there is any direct scholarship, but as I said, as believe our international unit was working for some initiatives, which I'm sure Ari and Reshmi can talk about. Students have six years experience in sales, they can definitely apply.

I think the students, prospective student in that with that experience will have a very good outcome, and they follow job prospects that from [inaudible 00:38:56]. So there is some question on the question box. No, that's good. Our pathway is coming from obviously our undergraduate program. If somebody came to have a pathway that comes through our Undergraduate Honors Project Management Program. If you do that program, you can get one year exemption. So you can finish your Project Management Master Program in one year, if you have completed our Undergraduate Project Management Honors Program. If you've done our Undergraduate Construction Management Honors Program or Property Honors Program, then you will get about five, I think five or six courses exemptions in masters. So student coming from our Construction Management program to our Master Project Management Program is also very common, because they want to up skill into the generic project management area.

Any student with architecture can apply definitely, and I highly recommend that. In my class I usually say 20, 30% come from the architecture background. The architecture background goes very well with the Generic Project Management, and a very successful outcome in terms of the job prospects. Any other question? So very good. Yes. We have a Study Abroad and Exchange Program. Definitely we encourage students. So they go through our normal Study Abroad Exchange Program, RMIT. We have partners in U.S., Canada, Sweden, where the students have gone. They can take one semester over there. So we actually welcome students from those countries to RMIT, and we do encourage that and put it up front for the students to perceive. So that's definitely a very, is one of the strengths that we have got here at RMIT Study Abroad and Exchange Program. Thank you very much. So very good. Thank you.

I'm sure that you will be able to take it to your markets, and be able to advise your clients or students over there. Personally, I complete belief in this program because I have nurtured it myself over the last nine, 10 years. We're growing to a team of five to 17 now, under the leadership of our Dean. So this is something very close to our heart, and something that we have a lot of due diligence in improving our culture of improving on day-to-day basis. So we run a very continuous improvement quality aspect on this program, especially on the discipline. Thanks, Sonia. I would welcome you to my class. Please come. Feel free to come my class. We're going online it seems like. Happy for you to join there.

We would [inaudible 00:43:28]. You've got a good question. We would welcome a student from other construction program. They need to be honors program. So please be mindful. If there are other honors programs around the world or even from the Australia, yes, we can explore the credit exemptions. If it's not the honors program, then according to AQF we can't provide these exemptions. I hope it's clear. So yes, there is some report. Our own graduates coming from construction to property program, we already know what they study so we have the predefined exemptions. From the other universities, we do not have it predefined, but obviously we can look through it and provide some exemptions. But the degree has to be honors degree. I hope that's clear.

Upasana, good question. At this point, I don't know, I think this is the again, central RMIT decision to make. We have allowed students to go back to their home country, and they are taking their classes online through their home countries. Not everybody has taken the opportunity to go back, but there are some students who has gone back and they are continuing to study. It all depends again on the Australian government how they would like to handle that. So we will go by that. If the situation doesn't really improve, I hope not. I hope it improves soon. There may be options so I can't guarantee that, but it may be option they can continue from their home country. We have made a very good quality transformation to online, because we were already offering an online program before. So it was not a big steep learning curve in project management. Any student, yes. Any student who have completed the bachelor program can apply for the Post-disaster Project Management.

Thank you very much. So it's very good to talk to you. So hopefully if you have more questions, then you can pass on to the Ari and team and happy to get back to you. Very good. So thank you very much. Very good. Ari, so do we... Okay. Thank you everyone. So Ari, are we going to close now? It's a real pleasure to be talking to you today. I never had this opportunity before. As such I think it's a great initiative on the RMIT international or Ari's team. So thank you. Thank you very much everybody, and hopefully we can see some good outcome.

Hi everyone, welcome to our presentation today, my name is Dr. Stephen Wigley, I'm the associate dean for fashion enterprise at the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University in Melbourne. So I'm coming to you from my home office in suburban Melbourne, we in Australia are going through the whole Covid-19 situation as I guess most of you are, and we've kind of got a little bit of a lockdown. So we're doing a lot of working from home, teaching from home, and up-skilling ourselves in terms of our digital and online skillsets. So, a few people saying hi on the chat, some of you in Melbourne, some of you in Sydney, other people from elsewhere around the world. So I think we've got people coming in from India, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, so welcome everybody, really glad that you can join us.

Thanks for making a little bit of time to learn a little bit more about our amazing fashion and textile programs at RMIT University. So I'm going to just talk you through some of the programs, I'm not going to go into super detail about all of them because we've got a lot of programs and a lot of details, so that would take a long time. But I'm going to tell you about, I guess, some of our kind of instant highlights and obviously really welcome any questions that you have, especially towards the end. So, yeah, thanks again for joining us, I am the associate dean for fashion enterprise, which means that I've got a particular understanding of the fashion enterprise, the fashion business programs that we do.

But also, I do represent the school in a marketing capacity. So, I've got a little bit of insight into our design programs and our technology programs that I'll tell you a little bit more about. I joined RMIT University just over a year ago, moved from the UK to Australia, so really excited to be part of RMIT University and part of the school of fashion of textiles in Melbourne. One of the reasons why I joined was because I was really, really excited by the programs that were at that point under development and being designed and I thought, "This is something that I want to be part of." So I hope I can share that experience and that enthusiasm with you a little bit as we go through. So, yeah, I'll carry on, I think as we go through if people have any questions, put them into the chat and I'll come back to them as we go, and also have a little bit of time towards the end of the session to go through some of those questions in a little bit more detail, so let's go.

So, wominjeka, this is an Australia Aboriginal word for welcome, basically. So, welcome to our presentation, welcome to, in a way, to Melbourne, as I said, really, really delighted that so many people got to join us from all around the world. And yeah, I hope that alongside of telling you a little bit about our programs and some of the successes that our students and graduates have had, I hope you get a sense of some of the community and some of the connectedness that we have at the RMIT University. That's something that we take really, really seriously because international students, oversea students, they're moving far from home, it's a big investment for them, for their family in terms of finance, in terms of their effort and their money. So it's an investment in their careers, and we take that seriously in terms of how we teach them, what we teach them, but also how we kind of connect with them and how we hopefully welcome them to Australia and how we welcome them to their careers.

One of the things that we regard as really important at RMIT University is a sense of community, and a sense of belonging, I guess, we would call it. A sense of belonging to the university, of belonging to Australia, also from our point of view in fashion and textiles, belonging to the fashion and textiles industry. And one of the ways that we try and endorse that sense of belonging is to just really kind of recognize where we are. Obviously, Australia has a history stretching way, way back, way before European colonization, and at RMIT University we seek to kind of acknowledge that. So, we start all of our formal sessions with a little acknowledgement of country, which I'll now read to you.

So, RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded land we conduct the business of the university. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their ancestor's past and elder's past and present. RMIT University also acknowledges the traditional custodians and the ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business. So you might be thinking, "Why does Stephen say that at the start of his presentation?" It's because, especially in these troubled times, we do want our students and our staff and all of our colleagues, and everybody that's in our broader RMIT network to really kind of feel that they are part of a community, part of an organization as I said. Particularly in this troubled time around the world, I guess, in your own countries you've got your own situations, and your governments are managing to greater or lesser extents perhaps, with Covid-19 and all that situation.

But obviously for our students here in Australia, it's causing a little bit of uncertainty, it's causing a little bit of nervousness about where they are, they're far from home, et cetera, and we want to make them feel welcome. And that really kind of mirrors the experience that we give our oversea students in terms of welcoming them and supporting them, helping them through their studies. So we offer a lot of guidance, I guess, and a lot of support, and I think all of our students, but especially our international students from all around the world, really kind of recognize that and testify to how well we support our students as they go through their programs. So, I'll tell you a little bit of that as we go, I guess. Let's dive right into the world of fashion and textiles at RMIT University.

I guess one of the first questions that we are kind of faced with, and you guys, I guess, when you're speaking with potential students in your own home countries is, "Why would I choose RMIT University?" And a few points here, which really kind of endorse a sense of, yeah we're in Melbourne, we're in Australia, but we're also actually in really the center of the global fashion industry. We are very much RMIT and the school of fashion and textiles, we're very much connected with the global fashion industry, and as a result of that, we're recognized as being one of the top fashion and textile schools in the entire world. The Business of Fashion, those of you who are familiar with The Business of Fashion will know it's kind of the industry benchmark, I suppose, in terms of media coverage of the fashion industry. They actually recognize us as being one of the top 11 best in the world fashion schools for the past few years, and that really endorses what I think that we do really well in terms of preparing our students for careers.

What we have got in terms of real specific kind of assets or attributes that perhaps other universities, other schools, other colleges around the world don't have is really the sense of flexibility in our programs. So in all of our bachelor programs, students can do combined honors, they can do a major in say, fashion design, but they can compliment that with a minor degree in fashion enterprise, for instance. So what we're trying to give students is that sense of bolting together a kind of boutique program that really suits them in terms of their skills, their abilities, but also their aspirations. We regard fashion as being a bespoke industry, professionals within the industry should have very much a bespoke skillset, and that's what we're trying to give our students. Giving them the options to tailor their study program to suit them and suit their aspirations.

Alongside that, we work really, really closely with lots of industry partners, and I'll mention a few as we go through here, and I guess of particular interest to many of you, who are our contacts out there in the market, it'll be the fact that we do have really good connections with other institutions globally. So we have lots of global experiences, a lot more opportunities for our students to join us in Melbourne, but also ultimately maybe take a semester overseas. We've got over 140 international partner institutes and again, I'll tell you a little bit more about them as we go through. So I just noticed in the chat a few people having a few difficulties, so if you can't hear me and you're having a few little technical issues, just try and refresh the page and drop a chat message if you can.

In terms of the facilities that we have at RMIT University and within the school, we're really, really lucky because we have a really amazing, very high-tech, very contemporary studio space within Melbourne CBD, Central Business District. Very much in the heart of the design area of Melbourne, very much in the heart of the business area of Melbourne, and that gives our students that very kind of fast-paced, contemporary experience. But we're also really lucky because we've got a separate campus in Brunswick, which is a little bit further out from the center of the city, and that's got a little bit more space within it. It's a bit more spacious, more room for I guess, their students to kind of stretch their legs, and we've got really amazing technical facilities and learning facilities throughout both those campuses.

We do have a very dynamic learning environment, so all of our teaching spaces can be [inaudible 00:11:56], can be changed, the layout can be changed depending on the type of topic that we're teaching. They make sure all of the projects that students are working, et cetera, et cetera. We've got, obviously, especially now thanks to the amount of online teaching we're doing, we've got really, really good IT facilities, technical facilities. So, we're actually able to, right now, we can do most of our teaching online, which is remarkable considering six weeks ago we had no idea that we were going to be doing so much teaching online. So depending on how the Covid-19 situation pans out in the next six to 12 months, whatever it is, we will be delivering some teaching online. But also we're hoping to get back to campus and really enjoy, as you can see in the images there, some of the facilities that we have, the equipment that we have, the amazing, really contemporary, really cutting-edge, high-tech facilities that our students have access to.

3D printers, laser cutters, obviously, for design students, knitting machines, et cetera, et cetera. So really, really amazing bits of technology that our students have access to, other few little things, the last point there, dye garden and fashion composter. These things sound like slightly small kind of things, but what we're trying to do in this school is really become as sustainable as possible. Trying to accommodate the UN sustainability goals in everything that we do, so we're trying to have a little circular economy of our own. So we actually have the dye garden where our students and staff actually are growing plants, herbs, flowers, et cetera, that can be used to make the dyes that go into some of their fashion products. We've got the composter where all the offcuts of the organic material of our students go into, and we're helping reduce waste, we're trying to endorse a sense of sustainability within our students, obviously, really, really important in the world today.

Other side of the start, we're very much part of the global fashion and textiles community, so we are connected, as I said, with over 165 partner universities worldwide, and these range from all across Europe, Asia, the United States, as you can see. And they're really very much at the top end of the scale, Parson's School of Design, FIT in New York, Nottingham of Trent University, one of the top UK design, fashion and textile institutions. We are very much connected in at that level, we're very much, as I said, at the lead end of those fashion and textile schools. So we're really kind of plugging into that, giving our students the opportunity to learn all the awesome stuff they can get in Melbourne, but also perhaps spend a semester overseas, but also maybe work in corporation or in collaborate with students from an overseas institution. We're part of very much a global community, and that's really endorsed by the partner projects that we do, and a few different images here to keep you interested.

But we've got all sorts of different partner projects, probably too many to really list, this is where we work in collaboration with industry, we're working with, might be, a quite small, local, Australia businesses. Or it could be a business of the global scale, of say, Nike, for instance, and what we're trying to do is really kind of give our students that real world experience on a partner project. Instead of just learning theory, instead of just learning very abstract theory about different topics, different issues, what we're trying to give students is real world experience of actually addressing that issue, solving that problem, working with a real life client, almost on a consultancy basis to really get that first-hand experience. That's something that we embed within all of our programs across the entire school, and those industry partnerships are obviously really, really, really important.

So one of the top ones that we've had over the past year has been with Nike, and this is not Nike Australia, not the Nike store in Melbourne, it's literally Nike global, and we've been collaborating with them, working on a project to build in sustainability within in their footwear projects. Thinking about how we can sort of really revamp the whole look, the whole makeup of a trainer and really kind of bringing in experimentation, bringing in sustainability, bringing in new materials and technology into the work that Nike do. Another really good partnership we have is with the Inditex Group, which again, I'm sure you're all familiar, is the owner of most importantly, the Zara retail chain. And again, we've been connecting with them thanks to our contacts in Vietnam, we've got a campus in Vietnam where we also teach our programs. We're connecting with their supply chain, again, trying to really help our students understand the sustainability issues within the fashion supply chain and working and specific projects that actually have an impact for those businesses.

So those industry partnerships are really, really important to us. I'll tell you a little bit now about the school of fashion and textiles, and our aim is very simple, we aim to bring together design, technology and enterprise as they apply within the world of fashion. What we're trying to do is to explore contemporary approaches to materials, the body, environments, people and economies. And I think it's important to reflect on the fact that we don't actually say in our aim, fashion or textiles, and that's because we've got to be called the school of fashion and textiles, but we don't kind of restrict ourselves to clothing or to fabrics. We see ourselves as kind of stretching out across the whole industry, and across society I guess. If you think about all the different applications of textiles, if you look around wherever you are right now, pretty much everything you will look at has some relationship with textiles. Wall coverings, the seats we're sitting on, the carpets, the interior of the cars we might drive, et cetera, et cetera.

This is a global industry and it goes way beyond just nice, pretty dresses that you often think fashion, Versace, Armani, Dolce and Gabbana, et cetera, et cetera, it's way more than that. Yeah, it's got that glamor, it's got that excitement, it's got that creativity of all those big brand names, but also it's got a serious side as well, and the serious side is, I think, within the technology of the industry. As I mentioned before, sustainability is a really, really big issue within the fashion industry, ethics are a really serious topic in terms of how these businesses operate, what they do. The integration of digital technology, virtual reality, augmented reality is really, really important to fashion businesses, and that's something that we really, really capture. Also, brings it very much kind of close to home right now in terms of Covid-19, we've actually been a key partner with the Australia government in designing and developing better protective equipment for our healthcare workers.

So, fashion and textiles is really, really, not just a big global industry where professionals within it can have amazing careers, but it's a high-tech industry. Also, it's a very significant industry, not just in terms of its scale but in terms of its connections to science, its connection to health, and its connection to society. So that's why we don't mention fashion and textiles or clothing or fabrics within our kind of mission statement, we're trying to take a much bigger approach and that's something that's really important for us in terms of our different programs. Really trying to expand our students understanding of what fashion and textiles are, and what they can be. In terms of our structure for the school and I won't bore you with who's in charge of what, or the whole kind of management structure of it, I just want to divide it into the three kind of disciplines that we have within the school.

And as you can see, those three disciplines are design, technology, and enterprise, and this is trying to mirror that sense of the fashion industry brings that technology and applies it to design, and then it's commercialized in context of that enterprise section. And we've got the different programs there within each of those three discipline areas, so we've got that bachelor to textile design, bachelor of fashion design, and with honors, and we've also got master of fashion. In technology, we've got bachelor of fashion sustainable innovation, brand new program, but we've got a graduate certificate in textile forensics. Then in my personal area in enterprise, we've got bachelor of fashion enterprise, again another brand new program, but we've got our graduate certificate/diploma, and master of fashion entrepreneurship, one of our flagship programs for the whole university, really.

So I'm not going to tell you all the detail [inaudible] take a long time, it would probably be a little bit kind of dull for you to go into the minutia of it. What I'm going to encourage you to do is if there's particular ones that you think are potentially of real interest you to you or your clients, then ask questions as we go through and at the end about those specific ones, and also we've got obviously the website, all the information's out there. My contact details are on the front of the presentation here, so you're very welcome to drop me a line, and also my colleagues within RMIT marketing. I guess some of you are listening there, so hi, shout out to you guys, thanks for your help today, I'm sure they'll be able to send you more information as we go through, as well.

So telling you a little bit the design area, and you can see again, we don't really talk about fashion products here, we don't talk about dresses or shirts, or jeans or shoes, or anything like that. What we talk about is the body and materials, we want to explore surfaces, we want to explore materiality, products, spaces and experiences. So our design student are really taking that kind of, again, global view of what fashion design is, it's not just about designing a really beautiful dress, it can also be about designing a whole experience, a space. It could be designing the whole look of a brand, so we're trying to imagine future commercial context, we're trying to create ethical design propositions, and we're using cross-discipline and collaboration to drive global and competitive practices.

And as I said, we are one of the top global fashion and textile schools in the world, and our design students are very much the flagship of that in terms of the creative content that they produce. Within the technology area, this is very much, I guess kind of the cutting-edge of the fashion and textile industry. It's about environments, it's about materials, it's about being innovative and coming up with sustainable solutions, sustainable products, sustainable business systems, responding to critical challenges, ethical challenges, sustainable challenges. And it's trying to really kind of grab those problems, those big global issues that we hear a lot of bad news about the fashion and textiles industry, it's a big litter, it's a big CO2, it's responsible for all kinds of climate change, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Within technology, what we're trying to do is really kind of capture those issues, and give our students the opportunity to solve those problems and work with people at the forefront of technology within the fashion and textiles industry. And finally, the enterprise area, and again, we don't talk about necessarily different brands here or different businesses, what we talk about are people and economies, consumers, global economies, national economies, local economies. We think about environmental issues, ethical and corporate questions, consumer questions, and what we give our students is the opportunity to specialize in product management, fashion marketing and retail management. We're capturing again, a lot of the technology, data-driven, interactive virtual environments, and we're kind of combining that with that sense of sustainability, the issues around ethicality within the industry, and really trying to capture them within that commercial and the business context.

So, I'll stop here and just remind you that a student might enroll in say, bachelor of fashion enterprise, but they can also do a minor in fashion design. So that's really, really interesting and useful for our students because they can specialize in whichever area it is, enterprise, "I want to work in say, fashion marketing, that's my dream, that's my career." But they can also complement that with say, a minor in fashion design. So they've got an understanding of how the design world works, and that makes them, obviously, much more employable, broadens their skillset, gives them the best chance to have an amazing career. This illustration kind of captures that in terms of the program structure for a bachelor program. So, we've got there in the orange color, different core courses, that's where we're really developing that sense of specialization, discipline, knowledge via enterprise, design or technology.

Within each program we've got electives, so students can choose, "I want to specialize in say, fashion marketing." Other students might choose project development, the same applies within the design and technology programs. And then outside of their own discipline program, they can take minor electives, so this is where a student can step out of their core discipline and into another discipline, a sister discipline, design or technology, or enterprise. And then even more choice alongside that, our students all have opportunities to study university electives, they might be in say, a foreign language or in a business discipline, or something really kind of left field. So again, trying to give them that sense of bespoke and tailored kind of experience to their learning.

I'll tell you a little bit now about some of the programs, I'll go through fairly kind of swiftly I think, I don't want to bore you with the detail of it, I just want to give you I guess the big heads up in terms of different programs. So first of all, bachelor of fashion design, beautiful image, those students on there are really responsible for a lot of the amazing, evocative, exciting imagery that is in my presentation today and that is actually used to promote RMIT as a university around the world. Our students are really kind of pushing the boundaries in terms of that design discipline, coming up with really far-out designs that are really exciting, trendsetting, eye-catching. And that's really captures by, obviously, our bachelor of fashion design program, it's our biggest program within the school.

It's really, really popular, a lot of students on this program, it's very much in demand, it's one of the top undergraduate design programs in the world, for fashion. Our students explore the world of fashion, they obviously will learn design skills, and the different techniques to really kind of begin a career as an amazing, a cutting-edge, an influential fashion designer, or playing some role in the design and production of fashion products. And I'll tell you a little bit more some of our graduates and some of our past successes as we go through. As I said, sustainability is very much kind of a recurring theme to all of our programs, and we encourage our students really to, from day one, think about how they use the materials that they're working with. How can they try and build in as much sustainability, as much ethical practice, how can they really kind of become the drivers of sustainability in the future?

As I said, the fashion industry all these challenges, and just simply by cutting down waste some of those challenges could be dealt with, so we encourage our students to really kind of consider how much material they're using, can we reuse stuff? One of the key projects that we do in first year of our fashion design is basically, as it says, fashion design reuse. So it's kind of taking one item, one garment and redesign it into something else, and what we're trying to do is build in that sense of sustainability and circularity. We, as I said, learn from industry, so we encourage our students to really develop contemporary, cutting-edge techniques, new materials. As I said, fashion textiles, big, big driver of innovation in terms of science and new materials coming through, we give students access to those new materials as they're available.

Innovative process, there's new ways of doing stuff, new ways of producing stuff, new ways of designing stuff, new ways of visualizing them. We bring in industry to speak with our students, and again I'll tell you a little bit more about that as we go through, and we do, as I said, connect globally with professionals, with colleagues, with academics, with industry experts from around the world, from Australia obviously, but also Asia, Europe and the USA. On top of our bachelor of fashion design, we've also got our honors year, and this is where students really kind of push the boundaries, push themselves, I guess, to really kind of step beyond and really kind of begin to develop who they are as a designer. What's their own personal take? What's their specialization?

So all of our bachelor of fashion design students do have the opportunity to progress onto the honor's year, it's a really great, exciting opportunity for them to really kind of push themselves and become a true professional and a true individual in the sector. And the next step is obviously our master of fashion design program, and again this is very, very much one of sort of top end master of fashion design programs in the world. As I said, it's very much responsible for producing some of the really kind of media-grabbing, attention-grabbing images which cover fashion magazines. A lot of our graduates have gone on to work for big, global brands, as I'll be able to tell you in a moment. So summing all that up, our fashion design students, it's really all about developing their own practice, learning from experts, learning how to kind of development their own sense of expertise, pushing themselves, discovering their identities, discovering things that no one else has done before.

And what we're trying to do is really kind of embed them, our masters and honors students, within that city center campus that I talked about, and as you can see it's very much a custom design space. It's kind of set up as being an atelier space for those really top, high-end students to really kind of express themselves in that professional environment. Moving onto our textile design program, quite often textiles is regarded as a little bit a kind of old-fashioned industry, the truth is, this is an industry, as I said, which is very much at the forefront of technology. Very much at the forefront of all the things that we are concerned right now, how do we protect ourselves against this airborne disease? How do we protect our healthcare workers to make sure they're not infected and carry on doing the amazing work that they do? That's what textile design is all about, it's not just about creating nice patterns and different textile structures and surfaces.

It's about technology, it's about getting to play with materials, to maybe protect ourselves as we breathe, and it's also about spaces and experiences. So thinking about that textile connection with interior design and with architecture, really, really, again a key program for us in terms of its popularity and a key program for us in terms of its kind of global reach beyond just what we might conventionally regard as being fashion or clothing or textiles. One of the key things we do on all of our programs I called project launch, and this is all about our students really kind of launching themselves, literally, into industry. So it's a final year course, final year project and this is all about students discovering who they are and discovering who they want to be. So they've got perfect freedom to find a brief for themselves, study a topic, get into designing a product which is really all about them and all about the issues that they think are really, really important.

This becomes almost like their calling card for their employability after they graduate because they work on something which is very personal to them, and it's that kind of launchpad to who they want to be in their careers. So, really, really key project for all of our students on the bachelor level to launch themselves into industry and obviously we support them through that. Quite a lot of our students actually work in collaboration with industry clients on that project as well, so really, really exciting project. One of our brand new programs that we have is in fashion and textile, sustainable innovation, and again this is really trying to capture that sense of sustainability and sense of technology within the fashion and textiles world.

So it's all about building in new, contemporary technology within fashion and textiles and beginning to find ways to apply that technology in a way which enhances the environmental potentials of the industry and a way which enhances the ethicality of the industry. So our new program, bachelor of fashion and textiles sustainability innovation, an amazing, contemporary, very cutting-edge program. So, students that are looking for something a little bit different, a little bit kind of unique actually within the world, to really stand apart from perhaps their contemporaries as graduate, I really encourage you guys to take a look at what sustainable innovation is all about, and introduce it to your students and think about, maybe this could be a really good option for you, you want to be a designer perhaps, you want to create amazing things. But if you want to really, truly change the world, sustainable innovation could be a good program for them.

One of the big parts of our sustainable innovation and our design programs is the idea of digital technology. So, obviously, we have amazing facilities as you can see in the image here, not just around the design size, so 2D and 3D virtual design and visualization tools, but also applying that digital technology to garment production methods, 3D prototyping, integrating artificial intelligence within the design and the business side of the fashion world. And it's got its home within sustainable innovation, but as I've said, it stretches out across all of our programs. Materials and wearable, kind of two keywords for sustain innovation and our technology part of the school, this is where really we are pushing the boundaries in terms of those high-tech materials, smart tech styles, wearables, bio-materials, bio-design, sustainability. As I said, trying to embed a sense of, "How can we produce something which is beautiful and lustrous and warm, et cetera, but is also completely organic? How can we do that?"

This is what our students are really very much at the forefront of doing, and this is actually a really big, important area for our research within the university, as well. Sustainability and ethics, again, a big part of our sustainable innovation program, that again as I've said quite a few times, stretching across all of our programs. So thinking about ethicality within the supply chain, thinking about how can we embed that sense of responsibility, corporate, social responsibility? How can we embed UN sustainable development goals within not just our students, but as they graduate and go into industry, how can we really add to the embryo, if you like, for change within the industry from that sustainability and ethics point of view. So again, if you've got students who are thinking, "I'm interested in a career in the fashion world, but I'm concerned, I've got these ethical kind of questions." Perhaps there's something here that could be for them in terms of trying to put a different context, a different narrative to what the fashion and textiles world is.

Some of the different career outcomes here, I wanted to focus on this a little bit for the sustainable innovation program because it is a new program, but these are some of the anticipated jobs that our graduates go into. And as you can see, it's going beyond what we might understand as a fashion or textiles job, it's bringing in a lot of digital technology, it's bringing in coding, it's bringing in sustainability, CSR, production, technology, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So really, what we're trying to do is to open the world of opportunities beyond, "I'm going to design some nice dresses." Or, "I'm going to manage a beautiful store." Or, "I'm going to work on the E-commerce side of fashion brands." There's a whole bunch of really, really high-tech, really contemporary, really exciting and really rewarding career opportunities beyond just those fairly kind of predictable, I guess, career paths for our graduates.

Last section I'll talk about would be our bachelor of fashion enterprise program, and as I said, this is I guess you could say the business side of the fashion world, which doesn't mean our students are kind of sitting in classrooms and learning marketing and different management practices, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously, they're learning some of that, but it's very much colored by the specifics of the fashion industry. If you think about the power of brand of Gucci or Louis Vuitton, now, these are global brands, these are brands which aren't just really famous because they're very well advertised, they are very well advertised, that's what they learn in marketing, but also these are brands which are really innovative in terms of what they do. How do they promote themselves, how they connect with consumers, these brands are powerful for a reason and that's what our students begin to learn and understand within the bachelor of fashion enterprise program.

We also do complement that with a sense of an understanding of the environmental, the ethical, the different consumer patterns that are going on within the fashion industry, and really trying to build up a sense of how the industry kind of functions. So it's not just about learning how to manage or how to market something, it's actually learning about what are all the connections within what we understand as fashion, consumers, society, politics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? What are all these kind of issues, how do they connect together and how can they be made, I guess, easier to understand for our students? We want our students to become global professionals and learn to be leaders in the future fashion industry. So in bachelor of fashion enterprise, our students can specialize in product management, in retail management or in fashion marketing.

So they've got that optionality in there alongside the opportunity to study minors, as I said before, just to sort of kind of reconfirm it, all of our students have an opportunity to really plug in to the global industry and community. So in enterprise, our students have opportunities to do study tours, for instance, so not even spending a semester, could maybe go on a trip for a couple of weeks. So the past few years we've had students going to Japan, Vietnam, Germany, the UK, USA, China, India, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, these are the type of opportunities, the global opportunities that our students have, as I said, a few more examples of that. Global experiences, so we don't just take our students to London and let them explore, we actually build a study structure around that, so we visit businesses, we learn from academics in the different locations we go to.

We learn from industry in the different locations, so as I said, we've got a really, really strong connection with our IT campus in Vietnam, we make use of that. We exchange over with them, we have student exchanges with them, we take our students to Europe, to Asia, to the USA on different study tours, to give them, again, a global experience. Again, trying to move away from the very sort of standard, default type of career roles that you might expect from a fashion and textiles graduate. For bachelor of fashion enterprise, these are the types of jobs that our students might get involved in, so buying and merchandising and allocating, those kind of a beyond the scenes roles really, really rewarding and really important in the industry. Product development, sourcing, sustainability, retail management, we hear about stores in Europe and Australia and the USA closing, but retail as a concept is actually thriving, new forms of retail, innovation in retail, that's what we're all about in bachelor of fashion enterprise.

Branding, marketing, E-commerce, the digital side of the fashion industry, again, connecting to that kind of technology and sustainability side of the industry. Last few slides now, you'll probably be glad to know, I'm looking forward to trying to answer some of your questions as well. So some of our student successes, we are one of the best fashion and textile universities in the world, and that means that our students are operating on that global level, I guess, in terms of winning major, international awards, winning scholarships for further study, and really making their mark on the global stage. We every year, have our graduate parade, as part of the graduation process, and we show off our students work in a very high profile location within Melbourne, and really giving students that opportunity to have a global platform for their work.

That even attracts global media coverage, but we also show our students design work at graduate fashion week in London, again trying to plug into that European side of the fashion industry again. So our students are really, really successful, they have won a list as long as your arm in terms of the different prizes, scholarships and successes that they've had over the past few years. Again, just to endorse the range of careers that our students have gone into, and these are real jobs that our students have gone on to join, to become and they go beyond the first one there. Obviously, some of them want to be a fashion designer, many of them have become fashion designers. But also many of them become merchandise managers, they've worked in marketing, they've worked in PR, they've worked in online, they've worked in production, they've worked in event planning, they've worked in pattern making and journalism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So, as well as we want to attract students who really are into fashion, they want to be studying fashion, they want to be making their mark in that really exciting and glamorous world, we also want to have student who are just kind of curious. We want to work with students who just want to know more about the world, who want to have an opportunity open in front of them that they couldn't have imagined before. So this is where we can offer something really, really unique to our students, giving them the opportunity to do something that they didn't even know existed before they became a student with us. Give them the opportunity to engage in something which is very contemporary, very rewarding, and also in terms of future salaries, is going to give them an amazing lifestyle. And I think because I said at the start, it's a big investment to come to Australia and study as an overseas student, we like to think that we more than repay that investment in terms of the opportunities and the chances that we give our students and our graduates.

I think this is the last couple of slides now, to give you a sense of our graduate successes here, I can spend forever telling you about different businesses they've worked with. But when I say we've got graduates that work at Louis Vuitton, at Nike, at Marc Jacobs, at Dior, at Versace, at Balenciaga, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This really endorses that sense of us being a global institution, a global school, and giving our students global opportunities, Alexander McQueen, Nike, Lanvin, Zara don't recruit anybody, they recruit the very best people to join them. And what we're doing is really giving our students the opportunity to be the best, so I really would encourage you, if you've got students who are interested in a fashion career, I'm going to say this, I'm sure every other university says this, but there's no option but to come to RMIT and to do one of our amazing bachelor or masters programs.

So I want to say thank you, thanks for joining us, thanks for making a little bit of time for me to see you, I guess it's morning, or evening, or it could be any random time of the day for you guys wherever you are. Yeah, thanks for joining us today, and I've got 10 minutes to, I hope, try and answer a few of your questions. So yeah, drop few questions into the chat if you like and I will get back to you. So, okay, any tips for folio preparation for master of fashion design? Is the first question that's popped up there. Yeah, folio preparation, important part of the process for fashion design students, I'm going to actually open another window that I won't be able to share with you, but I will be able to tell you a little bit as I look at it.

So, folio preparation, just scroll down to the right part, we do ask our applicants to submit a little bit of work for us. So, I'm just coming to the right part, I hope, yeah, so in terms of that folio presentation, we're looking for the images of your work and a written statement. So we don't want to see loads and loads of stuff, we don't want to be overwhelmed by fabrics, we don't want to have any problems accessing material, we want to see a quite simple folio really that really endorses the students best work. So we want to see a folio of maybe six to 10 images, and we also want to think about a written statement demonstrating the students interests or creative and conceptual thinking, thinking about the design, their problem solving and their technical skills.

I think that's something that, for more detail on that, I'd probably have to kind of refer that question onto some of my specific program colleagues. So, I think for that, if we can take a note of the person that asked that question and perhaps we can send a little bit more information as we go through. Someone's asked about fee and entry requirements, so I think in terms of the free question, I'll need to defer that answer to from of my marketing colleagues. But in terms of entry requirements, we are as I said, one of the top universities, so our entry requirements in terms of academic ability is relatively high compared to some other institutions. But what we're trying to do there is to really build in the success from day one, in there. What we do again is liaise with our colleagues that you collaborate with directly, and we can in a little bit more detail because each program is a little bit different.

Someone's asked to share the presentation, so I think I'm going to do that later, yeah we'll get the PowerPoint via mail. Yeah, someone's asked a really good question about our July semester, yeah, it's a bit of a tough one because the whole situation that we're living through in the world is a little bit unpredictable, I guess. So, I think right now we're probably anticipating that we will be teaching online in our semester two of 2020, which is good because we can welcome international students from wherever they're located, as soon as people are able to travel to Australia, as soon as the campus is open, we'll be back to business as usual. I can't really say much more about that because it's obviously very much subject to government advice and your own home government in terms of travel information.

Rochelle, my colleague, has forwarded a question from [Alita] and the question is, according to Covid-19, how does the school of design prepare for the online workshop? What's the feedback from current design students? So, we were actually surprised because when we were told, "Okay, we've got to start teaching online." For me in enterprise, that wasn't too difficult, but in the design area, obviously, we thought, "This is going to be really difficult because students work in studios, they work with machinery, they work making and doing stuff, and supported by our amazing technical officers and our teaching staff and it's a very kind of hands on kind of experience." When we actually got down to it, we were able to bring about 90% of our design program online.

We do have a lot of support available to them, so we have a lot of online tutorials, we have a lot of opportunities for our students to use materials, to use machinery, we've been able to find a solution to a lot of the problems, and in terms of that kind of delivery, it's been actually really, really successful. So the feedback that we've had from students we were counting on was it's going to be really difficult, they're not going to like it. But actually they've loved it, they've loved the opportunity to work in their own space, to a certain amount on their own time, and we've found actually that student engagement in terms of interactivity, I've found when I've been delivering a class online, question's have been popping up, I've been able to engage with the students in a very much better kind of way actually in some ways than it would be on that one-to-one basis.

And yeah, we've been able to, I think so far so good, do really well, so we were kind of nervous about going online, but it's been pretty successful so far, so thanks for that question. Question about PhDs, yeah, we're very active in research, we're one of the leading institutions in terms of fashion and textiles research in the world. We've got a lot of post-graduate research students, a lot of PhD students right now, we don't have any age limit, there are a few scholarships, but again they're very much on a not ad hoc, but they arrive and they go depending on whatever the demand is and the need of, I guess, the industry. Rachel in our university marketing has posted a good link to our fee and entry requirements, so thanks for that Rachel.

And Rochelle's passed on a question from someone, if a student wants to apply for permanent residency after these courses, then which course is listed in a skilled occupation list? That's a really good question because as a UK citizen right now, I'm looking at Australian residency, so it's a question that's very relevant to me. Unfortunately, I can't directly answer that simply because I don't know, because I don't want to give you incorrect information. So again, maybe that's something that we can look back on and give a little bit of information. Good question here from Annie, are you familiar with curriculum from the UK? I am, yeah, came from a UK university before I came to Australia, we do accept students from the BTEC HND, and HNC, with that kind of background, so yeah, that would be part of what we would look at in terms of an applicant so, great question.

I think that's pretty much all the questions, certainly that I'm able to answer, thanks to Peggy for your feedback, very comprehensive presentation, I could talk forever, I could tell you more and more, and we could be in 24 hours and I'd still be telling you about how awesome we are. What I'd encourage you to do is check out our website, check out our programs, reach out to us at RMIT. So I'm very happy to hear from you and share my colleagues in the marketing and engage and interaction area, are really, really keen to help you, as well. So, don't be afraid to ask questions, we like to think of ourselves as being a global institution, one of the best in the world with that global reach, so we want to hear from you guys, we want to reach out across the world and hear from you and hear from your students.

And we want to have your students with us, and be part of that [inaudible] success that is the RMIT School of Fashion and textiles. So, thank you very much for your time today, I've got two minutes, any last questions that we have? [inaudible 00:58:07], thank you, thanks, Rochelle, thanks, Katerina, thanks, Phillip, thanks, Ari, thanks for your help, mate. Okay, great, thank you everybody, enjoy the rest of your day or your evening, depending on where you are in the world, I hope we've all got a little bit more freedom, a little bit more ability to get out in about, and hopefully I'll see you again on our next presentation, whenever that is. So I think the presentation, the video's going to be shared with you afterwards, so I'm going to leave with, thanks to everyone that's helped make this happen, thanks especially to you guys for dropping in, and finding out about our programs. Thank you very much, take care, see you soon, bye-bye.