From Risky Business to Best Practice: Session Notes
IEAA Outbound Mobility Forum : UTS, Sydney 23rd/24th April 2015
How Australian universities and third party providers can best work together is a hot topic.
The session, a facilitated discussion featuring a panel of both university and provider staff,
addressed a range of issues in the interaction between public universities and private
providers. The panel members were Michelle Kofod (University of New South Wales), Chris
Hoffman (University of Adelaide), Jan Drew (The Global Student) and Brad Dorahy
(CISaustralia). The session was facilitated by Rob Malicki (AIM Overseas/The Global Society).
A large number of individuals from the floor made comments, provided examples and
contributed to the conversation.
Three main topics were addressed:
 Key principles for working with third party providers
 Items that should be included in agreements with providers, and
 Best practice
Given the limited time, a number of other issues were ‘deferred’ to future discussions.
Principles
A large part of the discussion focused on ‘principles’ that should be applied when institutions
and providers work together.
Some of the key principles identified (in this non-exhaustive list) include:
Principle
Fitting with strategy
Comment
A great deal of discussion focused on how outbound experiences
need to fit institutional strategy. This makes having an outbound
mobility strategy very useful!
Centralising – many examples were given of where universities
centralise their outbound offering, thus controlling the types and
availability of programs. This had strong advantages in terms of
quality assurance and risk management, but also adds to workload.
Commitment to quality
Many comments related to ‘filling a gap’ – if an institution already
has five successful study tour and internship offerings in one
discipline, adding a sixth may not help to increase numbers, but
may jeopardise existing offerings. The existence of a strategy and
centralised approach help to identify gaps that need to be filled.
Quality is paramount – not only in terms of the academic (or
experiential) quality of a program, but also in terms of processes
and accountability.
Both universities and providers must be committed to providing
quality offerings that are well evaluated.
Strong communication
Transparency and trust
Strong communication is a key component of any good relationship.
Organisations need to be committed to regular, frank discussions as
‘accidents happen’ – i.e. even the best program can have bad luck,
therefore full, frank dialogue is a mandatory pre-cursor to strong,
long-term relationships.
An extension of communication, trust can only be built based on
transparency – beware of organisations that refuse to respond to
enquiries, comments or complaints. A good process might include:


Academic integrity
Reporting – from provider back to institutions after
experiences are completed
Independent evaluation by universities, such as debriefing
returned students, which is fed back to providers.
Expectations should be clearly outlined, including levels of service,
student numbers, costs, inclusions, processes. These sorts of issues
should at a minimum be clearly discussed and documented, if not
written into formal agreements.
Where a program is academic of nature, universities and providers
need to be committed to ensuring they are rigorous academic
programs. This might be ensuring there is a syllabus, the program
can count for credit, or is integrated into a degree program.
But academic integrity extends further. It also means be aware of
which organisations offshore are delivering the opportunity – are
they universities, legitimate businesses, genuine not-for-profits, or
are they based on a less robust model where quality and outcomes
cannot be measured/assured?
Close collaboration
Health and safety
Authenticity
Outcomes are critical – these might be academic or professional
outcomes (which take longer to ‘kick in’, but are no less valuable).
What is essential is to have an idea of what outcome is desired, and
to check afterwards if it was achieved or not.
Related to ‘Academic Integrity’ – excellent practice, or ‘magic
moments’ arise through close collaboration: a need is identified, a
structure is put in place, good communication is maintained and
outcomes are measured and reviewed.
This can mean a lot of communication between providers and
institutions (which can be time consuming), but ensuring of a better
result.
A great deal of conversation focused on health and safety and how
attention to detail in this area must be a principle underpinning
how universities and providers work together.
There was discussion on the types of destinations students should
be allowed to go to, the types of emergency response plans that
should be in place, insurance arrangements (critical!) and how
reporting should operate.
Organisations (universities and providers alike) should strive to
create authentic experiences, not ones that are clichéd or contrived.
The reputations of organisations, and mobility as a whole, rely on us
delivering quality, authentic programming on a whole-of-industry
scale – a few bad pieces of media, related to poor standards, could
undo years of good work by organisations and Government alike.
Recognising
It was acknowledged that wherever possible experiences should be
experiences
either for credit, moving towards being for credit or be
acknowledged towards some other form of university program –
such as a leadership program, work integrated learning
requirement or the Australian Higher Education Graduation
Statement (AHEGS).
Developing
excellent Developing systems and processes are critical for institutions to be
systems and processes able to monitor which students are on outbound programs, who the
providers are and what are the experiences that the students are
undertaking. Central to this is having an excellent database solution
– either commercially purchased or internally developed.
Agreements
The nature of agreements between universities and providers was discussed. Michele Kofod,
in particular, discussed UNSW’s procurement process it undertook in order to identify, select,
assess and endorse a small number of third party providers to work with.
UNSW generously agreed to make available to other institutions a range of documents that
they used in this process.
Other institutions also discussed the process they went through to sign such agreements, and
elements that were identified as being important were:

Insurance
Public and professional liability are essential, and other insurances might be required
for specific experience types. Copies of Certificates of Currency, preferably drawn in
Australia, should be required.

Staff
Are there staff based in Australia that can be contacted to discuss agreements,
programs, processes etc.? If not, what steps are in place to manage communication and
liaison? Do provider staff have an understanding of the Australian higher education
and student mobility environments?

List of other universities they are working with
Picking up the phone and reference-checking providers with Australian colleagues, not
just taking at face value that an agreement or relationship is in place with an
institution a provider says they are working with.

Industry engagement
Is the provider engaged in the industry? e.g. IEAA

Creating an evaluation process
A documented process to identify the criteria an institution wishes to assess. These
criteria should also be linked to institution’s strategic priorities. A checklist or matrix
was suggested as a useful way of consistently evaluating providers.
There was discussion about how to handle providers that universities have not yet approved,
and opinions varied. Several institutions ‘closed the door’, in some cases extremely effectively
by communicating clearly with all university staff that no provider program was to be
promoted unless endorsed. Other universities agreed that working with a small number of
‘known’ providers presented little risk whilst they implemented more rigorous identification
and selection processes.
In all cases, institutions were encouraged to share their experiences and findings with each
other, either directly or via the IEAA Student Mobility Special Interest Group.
Best Practice and Processes
A great deal of best practice was discussed throughout the session, from Charles Sturt’s
approach to health and safety, to UNSW’s use of data, to QUT’s systems and collaboration with
staff. The list could go on and on.
Some of the discussed general best-practice principles for universities were:
 Building content for before and after students go on experiences (not just through
providers, but for exchange programs as well).
 Creating academic codes and integrating experiences into degree programs.
 Using existing documentation – begging, borrowing or stealing from other universities!
 Conducting thorough checks of dates to ensure clashes are kept to a minimum.
 Conducting a thorough health and safety evaluation for every program or experience.
 Developing systems that can manage students undertaking opportunities through
providers.
This part of the discussion ended up being shortened due to time constraints, however, many
examples were highlighted through other parts of the conversation.
Next Steps and the Future Conversation
It was acknowledged that this session was a useful conversation, though one that could have
continued much longer.
IEAA’s Student Mobility Special Interest Group will shortly release a paper that has been
collaboratively developed by a working group of university mobility practitioners that has
looked at the issue of universities working with third party providers.
Pending the release of this document, it has been tentatively suggested that a dedicated, daylong session might be a way to further advance the discussion, possibly prior to the Australian
International Education Conference in October.
As a final comment, Australia has a unique, collaboratively-driven outbound mobility
industry, unlike anywhere else in the world. This is an excellent opportunity for universities
and providers to work together to design what our mutual engagement will look like into the
future.
Rob Malicki
Session Facilitator
[email protected]