 That was great. Let's move on now to our next session. I would like to introduce Bridgeturle and Catherine Clements who will be presenting a case study from Curtin University and the title of the case study is Students as Partners at Curtin. We're going to hear about Curtin's case then we're going to hear about a case from Holmes Glen and then we will have Q&A after each of those sessions have taken place. So, welcome Bridget and Catherine and over to you. Hi everyone. Thank you for having us in today and before we get started, do we need to share our slides? Oops, there with me. Could I please ask for permission to share my screen? Are we able to set up a screen sharing? Great. Got it. Thank you. Let's disappear again. There we go. Okay. Could you just confirm that you can see my screen? Great. Thank you so much. Fantastic. Okay. Yeah, so thank you very much everyone for having us in today. It's really amazing to have so many people from across Australia and outside of it at some point and yeah, I'll just start off by first of all thanking Isaac for the beautiful Welcome to Country and I'll start off by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land that we're on currently here in Perth who are the Wajak people of the Nungar Nation and I'd just like to acknowledge Elders past and present and acknowledge that this is stolen land that was never seeded and that it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. So, yeah, beautiful. I'll do a couple of quick introductions. My name's Bridge. I use they them or he him pronouns by the fine. I'm the current current Vice President Education at the Curtin Student Guild at Curtin's Bentley campus in Perth. And I am in my fourth year of psychology. And I'm Kat Clements and my pronouns are she her and I am the lead for students as partners at Curtin University with sustainable development goals as a part of our students as partners initiative. My background is I've been in higher education for five years and prior to that worked in social impact and have a real interesting career development and human centered design and also how we can put students at the center of everything we do here at Curtin. And just briefly, I sit within the student success team. So that's a central team within Curtin. Cool. So a little bit about our university. We have overall over 59,000 students at last check. It's, we currently have a 53% domestic market share of our high school graduates within WA. And we are usually a pretty significant leaders in the international student market as well but obviously COVID has been a little bit of a thing in that area. And we have campuses across a variety of different countries, which are listed there. And a few other external ones within WA so Calgo Lee and Margaret River and I think Albany. Um, so I, as I mentioned, I'm from the student Guild at Curtin so where are our student union I pick representative body for students at universities here or at our university at our campuses. We're like a group of students who are elected annually by the wider student body to essentially represent the student voice and what's kind of going on on the campus at the current time. Um, so our main roles are obviously representation and advocacy we sit on as many university committees and boards as we can get on. We address any issues that are raised to us by students to those boards and committees or to university staff directly. We. Yeah, essentially, essentially what we're here to do primarily. And sort of provide that liaison between students and university at sort of management levels and ensure that all information is being accurately and appropriately relate to students and provide a little bit of that like liaison. To help support our students and make sure their issues are heard. We have dedicated support through our representatives to all four of, or, ideally all five of our faculties and some for various equity groups on campus so we currently have representatives for faculty of business and law faculty of science and engineering faculty of humanities and faculty of health sciences. And then we also have dedicated offices for our queer department for any LGBTQIA plus students. We have our women's department we have our first nations department and we have an accessibility department. So all of those different groups have a student representative assigned to them, who is a community member, and can help ensure that that like diverse voices being heard within the Union and within the university and the any issues sort of specifically affecting their groups can be heard. So we provide our student assist service as well which is essentially an external like staff run support service, which provides essentially academic financial welfare support. We have a group of psychologists and social workers who essentially can provide a lot of like it's it's an extremely broad service, and it's essentially like the one stop shop for students who are sort of having a bit of a hard time. A majority of their work is sort of in the academic space so it's to do with academic misconduct, any sort of appeals, anything like that where students aren't entirely sure how to go about it on their own or need some extra advocacy in that area so they're very highly trained and very skilled in dealing with those sorts of those sorts of issues, and they're yeah run through the guild so that it's an external body to the university. We also fund over 120 student clubs and societies, which is really amazing and a really great avenue to get to get more students involved. And yeah and then we run a series of events throughout the year as well. And all of us, or not all of us, a number of our food and retail outlets on campus are also run by the guild, and we provide discounts for all of our members and sort of yes student pressed food and goods throughout the university to the extent that we can, and that's essentially cool. So, I'm shifting out towards curtains, sort of journey with student partnership and students as partners movement as a whole. We are still relatively early in our journey here, which is really exciting and one of the reasons that it's so awesome to be able to join in with networks like this and yeah, share those resources and see what's going on in other places and all of that. So, essentially, our, we have an enshrined commitment to student partnership at Curtin through our agreement which I will talk about in the next slide a little bit, but it's essentially come out of a broader commitment to ensuring that students, you know, as has been touched on already ensuring that students have and like a central role in the delivery of their education the delivery of the university experience and any sort of avenues of university life that affects students which is most of them. And it's, yeah, essentially, it's a it's a win-win because it creates like really sort of empowered and engaged students within the community and assist the university in really kind of addressing exactly what students are wanting what the needs and expectations are and ensuring that, yeah, it's it's a nice sort of a nice sort of relationship and where, yeah, as we mentioned it's still relatively early days yet, but we are, we are working through it. So, yeah, essentially, as was as was touched on just before sort of throughout the throughout the SDA history and a little bit about that. So, yeah, this is a student guild from last year when Chris Hall who was mentioned was our vice president education. He and the president at the time worked very closely with Kate Walsh and were involved in Student Voice Australia. So, yeah, it was really early on and had a real sort of commitment to ensuring that curtain was involved in this process and that we could sort of cement ourselves as having that really that really present commitment to this and seeing the value in it and hoping to continue to develop this. So it was all sort of, yeah, implemented relatively early on. And one of the aspects of student partnership that they were seeing at other institutions, and really wanting to sort of implement here was going about it through a organized student partnership agreement, which was carried out and signed at the end of last year. And in it, Vice Chancellor has articulated a enshrined commitment to student partnership at Curtin and ensuring that students are involved in as many areas as we can be, and that, yeah, that we're upskilled and given appropriate support and listen to in these environments, and sort of given all the tools that we need to be able to effectively advocate for our own experience at university. So we're at the start of this year. Yeah, yep, we recruited students as partners Lee, which is cat just yet. And we've been working quite closely throughout this year so far on developing the curtains on students as partners governance structure and continue on to go along with that. And yeah, just sort of starting to starting to get that information out to the wider curtain community as well. We have a community of practice here which incorporates representatives from all across the university who are either already doing amazing things in the space or looking to do more, or just wanting to share resources and information. And then, yep, not that long ago, we launched our students as partners student facing website, which is extremely exciting as well. And I'll do a funny final bit about the student partnership agreement and then I'll pass over to Kat. So, yeah, essentially the student partnership agreement was drafted by the Guild at the end of last year or throughout last year. And after being signed off on by all of the representatives within the Guild at the time was then forwarded to the university who once they reviewed it we had an official signing on December 3 last year. So the student partnership agreement essentially focuses on the three goals that you can see up on the slides here, which is yet all around essentially promoting that really accessible culture for students and ensuring that everyone in the process has given the tools to make the most out of that environment. And actively encouraging students to engage in the experience of their education and research or however they're sort of engaging as students here at Curtin. And sort of really ensuring that that knowledge about what opportunities are there and what's available to them is going out. And yeah, again, sort of, I think a really central part of this is really empowering students to take this step and take this involvement in their own education and their own university experience, which, you know, leaves you with with students who who have that experience have been empowered. A strong supported upskilled effective student leaders, which then will lead to happy and well adjusted graduates. Yeah, and then we, yeah, there's a little bit of a little bit here just about the, the kind of commitments and shared sort of values and expectations that was outlined within the agreement. And that there was also mentioned of the, like an alignment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which Curtin as a university has already committed to, and just ensuring that students are involved in that process. And that we're all, yeah, working towards ensuring that we can be the best and most sustainable university that we can be. And I'll pass over to Kat. Thanks bridge. I'll briefly talk about what we've been doing this year. And thank you to Student Voice Australia for this student engagement continuum. So this continuum was a really great place for us to start talking about student, students as partners at Curtin this year. And we've started to iterate this, this student engagement continuum for Curtin for Curtin's purpose. And it's really helps our community practice that bridge mentioned to see themselves in this conversation and to identify where their initiatives might be aligned. So we have a lot happening around consult and involve and certainly a lot around the control or we call empower stage and we do see that there is a lot of opportunity to develop in the partnership space which is incredibly exciting. So thank you, SVA. You gave us a really good tool to support our conversations. Just briefly on our governance structure. So bridge mentioned our agreement and we had a lot around building this strong culture. And as you would have seen, we have campuses all over the globe. So a culture shift is no small task. And so as a result, we've made a decision to really create this, this, this governance structure that we hope will create that culture and have enough people in it to to support all of the areas that want to get involved in students as partners at Curtin. So very briefly and aware of time, we have our leadership group, which is both 50% students and 50% staff that are creating our action plan for students as partners at Curtin. And then we have a wider reference group, which includes, we've got around 16 students and staff listed in that reference group that we're yet to form. And again, their role is to really clear obstacles and really advocate and be champions for students as partners at Curtin. As we've mentioned, we've got an existing community of practice, which is currently a lot of practitioners, particularly staff. And we wanted to really open that up to students as well, but the membership is around 60 people at the moment, which is pretty, pretty, it's great, pretty great, very great. And then we have our students as partners, students and staff that are engaged in initiatives that would align with one of those consult involve collaborate and control or empower stages of the continuum we mentioned. And just, I know that this is a graphic that has lots of closed circles, but it's probably better to think about some of these as open circles because we want to make sure that people can come in and out of students as partners at Curtin as much as we can. So we do have a few things that we're planning for this year. And one is really developing our framework. So this includes looking at reward and recognition and feel I hear all of your comments seem very aligned with where we're at and some of the things we're question we're wondering about at the moment. We're going to be building student and staff training materials I saw there was a question about staff training and very keen to collaborate with people in the network about that. And we're getting a lot of interest around how do we deliver students as partners initiatives across the university already because of the Vice Chancellor's commitment and because of the agreement. So we're sort of building a framework and also trying to harness the enthusiasm and interest and energy for students as partners at the same time, which is a fun challenge. And finally, establishing our reporting measures. So we're looking at a whole range of reporting measures. It's really important to us to have that diversity in our students and staff engagement so that will definitely be one thing we'll be looking at. But also sort of slightly aspiration Lee and this is yet to go to the leadership team is how can we look at our impact and some of the changes that we're making in students experience and also the curtain. The whole curtain community how we what changes are we making as a result of students as partners. So if anyone has any resources that that you could point me to that so call out we'd love to see and take a look at what other people are doing in that space. A final slide is just some questions which really aligned to what has already been said, but how do we develop an overarching framework while also harnessing that interest that we have right now. So how do we build what we need to build while also continuing to I suppose drive a bit of an analogy there to work. How do we align students as partners with what's already happening at Curtin so it's not something we just want to add in we want to make sure it's integrated into some of the existing frameworks we have and we do have an extra curricular certificate that we want to to work towards that's called Curtin extra. How do we support students as partners initiatives across our campuses so we need to have a framework that is flexible enough to allow for context cultural context to really be appreciated and probably at the center of everything that we do. So we make sure we engage with diverse students and staff. And finally how are we ensuring our governance structure becomes the the enabler around the cultural shift but also allowing us to take action at the same time. So yes that's our case study we're definitely at the start and and it's a work in progress and we'd love to connect with people that are at different stages so thank you very much. Kat and Bridge it's really great to hear about the work that you're taking forward at Curtin and you know you're emphasizing that you're at the start of a journey I think that I think we know that the SBA network has institutions that all sorts of different kind of stages and and points of development and maturity around students as partners work and but I think we can all work from that we can all learn from each other. And certainly there were, you know, a whole range of things that you mentioned that we're very much, you know, we're on that same journey with you here here at Adelaide. I think we can now move on to our next case study I'm sure that the audience will be wanting to ask you questions when we, when we, when we come to them a little bit later so over to you coming. Yeah. I'm now going to introduce Michaela Hosking. She's the manager of student engagement and success as part of the, as part of the engagement and support team from Homes Glen TAFE. I present a case study. The title of the case study is student voice at TAFE and the presentation has been prerecorded so we're going to watch that now first. And then we're going to be joined by Kristin Fagan who is the acting head of department for lifestyle and degree programs from Homes Glen for answering some questions around the Q&A. Hello, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me here today. My name is Michaela Hosking and I am the student engagement manager at Homes Glen. My role at Homes Glen looks after student voice across our institute. And I have been asked by SBA to come here and present basically what we are doing at Homes Glen and the difference that student voice, the difference of student voice in TAFE itself. Before I begin, I'd really like to start by recognizing the traditional owners of our land of which we all meet today and pay my respects to Elders past president and our emerging leaders. I also acknowledge that this week is reconciliation week with the theme being more than a word and that reconciliation takes action. And I guess given the fact that we are talking student voice and representation, I think we will have a responsibility to make sure that our Indigenous students are very much represented in the work that we do. So without further ado, I will continue on with our presentation today. So I thought I'd just start by providing a bit of context as to how Homes Glen's journey and our timeline in terms of student voice up until 2021. So it has been an integral part, student voice and partnership has been an integral part of the institute's strategy for some years now. And I was fortunate enough to step into the role to really look after student voice across the institute in 2018. So it was very much recognized that we needed to dedicate some resourcing. And at the same time Homes Glen did join the student voice Australia network and that has been an enormous help. And you know, whilst we had been the sole TAFE up until this year within that network, it had been a really great way to share some knowledge in a space that was so foreign for TAFE and for Homes Glen in particular in terms of building representatives. And embedding student representatives in our governance structure, being able to link in with student voice Australia and that network has been invaluable. So I spent a lot of time in 2018 and 2019 really connecting, looking at best practices across the world really looking at the work that had been done in Scotland and Ireland. And working with the SBA team on understanding what other providers do and seeing how much of that could apply to TAFE. Obviously, understandably, TAFE is a very different type of education. You know, we have very different students and a very different structure which does make building a student representation representative program quite difficult and challenging. So being able to spend that time understanding the concepts of student partnership and student voice and some of those really key and critical principles was really valuable. In 2020, we used that opportunity to actually launch our student representatives and all be it virtual. You know, us in Melbourne were locked down for a significant amount of time of 2020. But it was an incredible opportunity to really launch a program. And so we did launch it from our computers, from our homes, from our lounge rooms. And we progressed. We launched some form of a program and we refined it and continue to refine it along the way. And I suppose what we've found this year is we have returned to campus and offices and normal life. We've got to meet those students that we did form that connection with over the screen. And those students have gone out and had more of an opportunity to go and speak with their representatives. But in terms of the program itself at Homesquare in 2021 has been about really continuing that improvement. Reflecting on the practices of last year and making sure that our system and our program for student representatives works for our students. So now that I've gone through our timeline of where Homesquare has gone with student voice, I thought I would talk about the current operations of our student rep council and program. We decided quite early on to appoint our learners or our students to the council rather than to host an election. We found that that would work just for TAFE students simply that they cycle through so much quicker. We have different students to get people on board is a challenge all the time. So appointing students was the best strategy for us. Early on in the piece I surveyed students on the qualities that they wanted in a student rep, how they wanted to communicate with their reps, how they wanted their reps to communicate on their behalf. And so a lot of the feedback that I got from that survey really helped to shape that application and appointment process. It helped me to write position descriptions and include those qualities to make sure that we had the reps, the right people according to our own student voice, applying for the jobs. And it really helped to shape our application form, our interview questions. We also made it very clear that we wanted student support in terms of appointing our learners. So we involved students in screening our learners through the interview process, ensuring that our learners were on the panel with us when we were appointing their own peers to these positions. We also felt that it was important to make sure that our training was robust and that it supported students right through their term as a student representative rather than just initially. So we kicked off with an induction training session which was held over online. And I hope to get to a point where we are holding that face to face. And that induction really just set the scene for student reps, the operations of the institute, but also the operations of the council itself, what was expected of them. And then we found that that needed to really be complemented with some ongoing support and resources which we found to be hosted online was preferred by our students. It meant that they could access those resources anytime, anywhere. And those resources included things like templates that would help them with their meetings, running their meetings. We didn't want them to waste time creating that information. We wanted their time invested into doing what they were doing as a student rep. So we provided them with those templates and tips on how to hold or run successful meetings. Information, you know, almost like a bit of a thesaurus on our jargon terms. We're talking high jargon in this industry and we wanted to make sure that our learners understood what we were talking about. We also wanted to make sure that our students felt comfortable in managing conflict and strategies on managing conflict or being able to have those difficult conversations as well. So it is an ongoing library that we continue to add to. And I work with our students, you know, and say, you know, what's missing here? What do you wish that you were trained in and then continue to add to that itself? So it is an ongoing process. We felt early on that there needed to be particular roles within the council and obviously a chair and a secretary are quite integral to any meeting. So we've started with those two roles and that's been quite successful. We haven't needed any additional positions within the council itself. But I do work really closely with the chair and the secretary to ensure that our meetings run really well and that they feel that they're quite comfortable and confident to manage the meeting itself. And we find that pairing students, being able to have that chair and that secretary means that those two positions feel that they're supported by one another as well. We learnt last year, so we started off by having just regular meetings with our reps and letting anything within the scope of the terms of reference really be discussed. And what we found that actually really excluded a lot of students who came to the council later on down the track. And as much as those students who did join later on down the track could read past meeting minutes, you do really miss a fair bit. So we've made a really, really integral change to our program which has been really well welcomed, I suppose, by our students. And that is that our meetings are really centred around one singular topic which is relevant to those students at that time. So we kicked off the first topic this semester with orientation and given that that was something students had just experienced, it was very much topical for those students at that time. And our fourth meeting this semester, our fourth and final meeting will really be centred around exams and assessments. And again, that lines up with what they're experiencing at that time. We make sure that the last 15 minutes of our meetings are really made for the reps making particular recommendations to the institute. So as much as there's robust discussion, it's also, well, what are we actually going to recommend to the institute? And sometimes those recommendations are, hey, we want to just let you know that this is working. So keep it happening. And others, this isn't working. And here is what we suggest in terms of fixing that. So our student reps are really empowered to be part of the solution when they're identifying a gap in our systems. We really try and work with our reps to make sure that they come to the party with, you know, what do they think? Have they think we can plug that gap? One of the things that we are denied about for a long time was having staff presence at these meetings. And obviously, there's always a concern about, well, does that influence the discussion amongst students at that time? Is there a fear that their, you know, the discussion won't be as authentic as they'd like? And that continues to be something that we manage quite carefully. I do attend the meetings, and this has been a discussion that we have had with our reps ongoing. And they've actually said that it's quite beneficial for them to have, you know, really fruitful and productive discussions so that staff can be there to kind of, I suppose, answer any questions or jump in and correct any mis-conceptions about particular things. And so that's been really helpful and embraced, but I do think it is a fine line. It's very hard for a staff member to kind of hang back and not dominate the conversation. It's an ongoing challenge. So, yeah, it's a bit of a fine line there. In addition to that, we have a council mentor, and that council mentor is separate to myself. And one day we hope that that council mentor will become a past student or a past student rep who will share their insights and support our student reps. However, at the moment that is another staff member. That mentor's role is really to make sure that our student reps on an individual level feel comfortable and confident within their role. You know, mentoring them to make sure that they are contributing effectively, that they are comfortable to do so. But also mentoring the council as a whole, ensuring that it does remain true to the terms of reference of that council. Ensuring that everybody is having, you know, a fair say and just really there for an additional support. And last but not least, we always make sure that these meetings are minuted and those recommendations are published to their peers, but also to the institute, obviously. We are very fortunate to have a digital platform which really is designed to bring students together as a community. So this is separate to their learning management system where they really can come and have discussions on particular topics, share different experiences and so forth and connect with one another. It's essentially almost like a Facebook but just for our institute. And that's where we host all of this information which is available to all of our students to see and comment on. So that's our current operations as they stand at the moment and I am always working to continue to refine those, to change those. The idea is that they are always super easy, super relevant for our current students. They are inclusive systems and processes and the idea is that they are always flexible that they adapt to our students needs at all times. So whilst we're making some progress, I continue to come up with come up against these challenges. So awareness of the program amongst our students. There is so much information that we are providing our students throughout the semester relating to their course relating to the institute various programs and you know this is one other program that we are trying to spread the word to our students. And that continues to be a bit of a challenge particularly because our students cycle through so quickly. As I mentioned before closing that loop continues to be a bit of a challenge trying to identify really clear strategies on how we can do that and do that again in a timely manner so that those students who are cycling through quickly are receiving responses to the feedback that they are giving. And as always and everyone will attest to this time and resourcing. If we had all the money in the world, you know, we'd have a cast of thousands working in this space. But that continues to be and a challenge for us at Homes Glen. So a couple of things that I wanted to share the things that I wish I knew before I started on this journey. Number one was to refine the program as you go. So instead of trying to develop this really refined and well oiled program and then launching I think it's you just got to dive in and you know and and work with your students and communicate with your students and partner with your students to explain that you know it might be clunky and we need to work on this together as a team to make sure that. That the council or all the program remain sustainable. And that has been a really wonderful journey so far with our students. Also in TAFE you know there are so many different cohorts of students different types different courses different levels of study it's incredible so I think the other piece is to start with one cohort and just keep adjusting it for others. So, you know, I don't think this is a one size fits all. But if we start with one and we just keep adapting and keep progressing it it's almost infectious it'll keep it'll build legs and it'll run itself. The other thing is to use available resources so there's amazing resources on the student voice Australia website that I've really lent into we've obviously contributed as a member of of SBA but you know really using those resources. There's some great resources on training there's some great resources on partnership itself. So being able to use what's already out there is fantastic. I think the other pieces make the process work for TAFE, you know, those models and those resources out there at the moment do do tend to lean towards the university space. And so there is a bit of tweaking so taking those as a base and tweaking and making them work for the TAFE students and for TAFE and our programs is really really something that I think I wish that I knew before I started out on this journey. And the other pieces around keeping it simple and easy for participants is the key that sounds super obvious but I think the more that I got into this the more that I made processes and systems a little bit more complex than they needed to be. So that's where you know trying to kind of scale back and really review and identify how much of that information are you capturing what do you need that information for. Is that process necessary? Is it just an added barrier for a student to participate? So that's another piece that I think you know and I continue to really reflect on this as I as I move through and adjust our program as it is. So thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you for listening to our journey. I am very much still learning myself and more than happy to share my experience, you know, with everyone here so please feel free to reach out if you'd like to continue the conversation. So my ideas around particularly if you're getting started but even if you're still you know mid journey with student reps itself I'm always keen to learn. So my details are up on the screen please feel free to reach out and connect and thank you so much for joining me today. Fantastic. So I'd like to just thank Michaela for taking the time to pre-record that wonderful case study on what partnership really looks like in TAFE. I'd like to highlight that there will be actually a showcase dedicated to student voice within the TAFE and VET sector that will be on Thursday within our symposium. One of the quick insights that I found from that case study was that there's so many similarities yet differences within TAFE to my institution here at USC. But I did really really like how there was that council mentor to really foster the students confidence in their role as representatives. I thought as a student rep myself and gone through that process I think that's something that I've found support through the students as partners program but I think I would have valued from something like that so. But I'm going to pass now to Phil who will facilitate a Q&A session. Thanks Carmen and welcome to, I thought it might be Kirsten but maybe not. It is and I do apologize this is what happens when you have a 13 year old that gets on to your Zoom at lunchtime. Yes, so I am sorry. Welcome Kirsten and thank you so much for joining us. Joining us in the place of Michaela. Michaela couldn't actually be here this afternoon so welcome and thank you very much. We do have some time for question and answer for Kat Bridge and Kirsten. We are running a little over in terms of our schedule but we have a little bit of wiggle room because we had put in some breaks so I think we can be somewhat flexible. And I definitely want to make sure that there is time for folks to ask questions. So with no further ado we have one question that has been posed in the Q&A which is about challenges in forging the positive relationship between the Guild and Curtin staff and executive with regard to power dynamics. So I think this is a question, you know, initially directed at Bridge and Kat, but I think it's relevant, you know, this question of differential power between staff and students is obviously critical to the whole building, sorry, building of really authentic partnerships and I think it was touched on by Michaela as well. So perhaps anybody, perhaps Kat and Bridge if you would like to respond first. Yeah, did you. Yeah, I think in terms of how it sort of rolled out here at Curtin. The student representatives at the time were extremely lucky in that we had a university executive and sort of like wider management, who were amenable to this sort of movement and who were like interested in getting students on side with something like this. It's a little bit tricky to speak to because representatives roll over every year. So this was reasonably before my time that this was kind of all being or being founded I guess but there was, I think, maybe not necessarily at the executive level but there has been like a really good culture of student partnership and sort of lower level initiatives and a lot of practitioners really championing this sort of the sort of issue throughout the university. Prior to the partnership agreement being put in place or starting to sort of pursue a space in networks like SVA. So yeah, I think there was like, yeah, good foundations for it here. And just to add to that, you know, almost weekly practice of mine is actually checking in and going well how am I living up to the principles that we've committed to in the agreement and how can I make sure that my my practice is around like is walking the talk and being authentic in this space and building the trust I suppose as well just by by by yeah by delivering on on what I say I'm going to deliver on and and I think also something that's come up a lot in our conversations. Also with the guild president is around listening as an incredibly important part of all of this is to pay close attention to what's being said and and be really present when we're talking about about partnership between students and stuff. So I can sort of that's what I can speak to from my my personal experience in in becoming part of this in sort of halfway through an agreement being signed is how can I show up and and actually be authentic to what's been articulated in our agreement. Thank you bridge and cat and that's really important observations there I think and sort of, you know, making sure that we don't establish values do a lot of work around values and principles and then sort of put them on the shelf and forget about them incredibly important. And I'm also wondering whether there's, you know what the role is for staff awareness rating development training, you know, and whether whether there may be experience at Holmes Glenn. And in terms of, you know, how you support staff to engage with this issue of power dynamics power differentials and students and empowerment of students and what that kind of means in terms of their own behavior and approaches that they take. How do you support stuff. Yeah, so we, I mean, it being a TAFE organization we have students all the way through from medicine V cal right up to. We've even got PhD degrees here so we have students that are here with us for the, you know, short courses of three or four days right through to long Jevity of three or four years so to be able to actually build on that foundation we found that a lot of areas have pockets of really good foundations that they were already doing and they were already embedding these values and embedding these cultures but it was really silo orientated. And so one of the initiatives that came out through. I guess it was our extended period of lockdown was to actually get everyone together and try and instead of just doing a standard PD plan of what are you good at and what would you like to continue to work on what what are you doing to embed student voice and what are you going to actually listen and actively listen to what what our learners are saying and and and report that back into the education and back into their experience on their journey. And so that was interesting because of being locked down for so long we had a lot of feedback from from our students in regards to remote learning and now that they're coming back on to campus although as of today's I don't know for how long. Then we will be where we're obviously being able to embed not only that information that they gave us when they were in remote learning but now back onto the campus so our next step which we actually start on June 4 is to take all those pockets of different departments and different levels of qualifications and bring them all together so we've now we've got over 60 education managers in the Institute and we're now having education manager forums where we're actually discussing as a standing element is the student voice experience and what are you doing in your area to be able to bring that forward and bring that to the forefront so that's something that we're obviously still new in our journey as well, but that's something that we're definitely progressing forward with leadership, and we find that education managers in a TAFE really work with students, whereas when you get more higher into your head of departments and into your executive levels, they're looking at more of the of the bigger picture stuff so the education managers the ones we need to target to be able to say let's embed this culture let's listen to what the students say and then we can move forward with that way. Thank you, Kirsten that's really interesting to hear about what you're doing in that way, thank you. Now, do we have any other questions. Yes, what are some of the effective strategies to build an online peer community, especially for asynchronous online learners. Actually, Michaela did mention a digital platform that you're using at Homes Glen and because maybe this, that's your cue to maybe talk a little bit about that but also I'd like to come back to Kat and bridge about that too. So we have an online community platform for our students it did start off quite initially small and we started it just over two years ago. And it was more kind of an add on for those students who are doing more of the online courses where they couldn't access student well being or in person or student services rec services all the kind of lifestyle events that you would have in a general TAFE or university setting so that's where it started and then obviously again and I go back to the lockdown but a lot of that has really been able to to assist us in building this online community platform because all of a sudden students couldn't travel more than five kilometres from your home. So they wanted that that engagement, not only our cold or our culturally and linguistically diverse students but we also just our local students and then also our students that were from overseas that were still offshore needed that interaction. So our community platform is is a really good way in which we're able to get the information out there to the students. It has some great great things on there not only just about about what we're doing here at Homes Glen, but also just in Melbourne in general. So there's links to watching the virtual zoo when getting students talking about that sort of things and giving them the whole experience. So the community platform has as really skyrocketed since last year and it's continuing on that way this year. So, yeah, we're really fortunate that that we were able to get that in place. Thank you, Kirsten. Captain Bridge do you have any comments about leveraging digital to support student voice and partnership. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say like, in terms of like student partnerships specifically. I don't really have any experience in that area, but a majority of our communication throughout the last or probably in general, but particularly through the last sort of 18 months. Since COVID read it's ugly head in Australia has been sort of through digital platforms that we do a lot of our sort of engagement with students through Facebook groups that are set up for various student groups, through our community discord that we've started that did get a pretty decent sort of uptake throughout throughout the pandemic when we're all sort of properly locked down. And I think the point that this this whole sort of situation has really in a lot of senses encouraged engagement because a lot of students are facing issues that they wouldn't have before and taking far more of an active kind of role in what my like in what their education looks like and how it can be delivered and any potential like barriers that they're facing. It is really sort of seeming to draw out a lot more students who are wanting to get engaged in spaces like this. It's really interesting so you're saying you think that the experience of the last year has kind of motivated and spurred students to engage in a more. And that's, that's, I think that's, that's a great opportunity, obviously for for us to support them in that I am aware of the time. And we have gone a little bit over. Can I suggest that we draw that session to a close. Thank you so much, Kirsten cat and bridge the insights that you've shared with us and for responding to the questions thank you to the audience members who pose those questions.