MQ2020 planning: Macquarie Business School’s student-by-student approach

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It’s an extremely busy time for faculties who are working through the complexities of how to migrate their current students across to the new 2020 curriculum. And while each faculty is taking a slightly different approach to this planning work, under the Program Beacon banner, all faculties are committed to ensuring every student receives a personalised 2020 study plan and is transitioned as smoothly as possible.

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In April, we shared information you might not have known about the curriculum transformation. This week, Neta Mahbubani, Manager of Student Administration for the Macquarie Business School discusses her team’s approach to planning for the transition.


What is ‘transition planning’?

To my team, ‘transition planning’ means finding answers to these questions:

  • Who (which students) should be transitioned based on the Curriculum Architecture Principles?
  • What will be different for students in the new curriculum and what do we need to do as a team to help them through the changes?
  • Where do students get the information and support they need?
  • When does this all need to be done, so we can continue to provide an excellent student experience?
  • How do we collaborate across the University to ensure agreement in joint programs
  • How do we make sure communication is broad but also tailored?

What is the ultimate goal?

For every currently enrolled student who will be studying in 2020 or beyond to have a personalised study plan. And for the transition process to be as seamless as possible for the student.

What is the Macquarie Business School’s approach?

We established a working group with senior academics and members of my team. Academics in the departments, working with the various committees in place, did a great job of redesigning our courses for the new curriculum. So once that work was finalised, the Student Administration team was able to manage the transition planning, liaising with relevant academics as needed. We’ve taken an individual, student-by-student approach that’s made it possible to quickly identify and resolve problems. Our approach included:

  1. Identifying all students currently enrolled at MQ
  2. Reviewing each students’ units, then classifying students to be either migrated to the MQ2020 courses or taught-out of the current courses.
  3. Mapping pre-2020 courses (programs) to the new curriculum architecture.

Collaboration has been really important, and we meet with other faculties regularly to look at cohorts together.

What challenges have you faced?

This is a busy time of year, so it’s been a challenge to add this to our significant business-as-usual workload and to accommodate changing timelines on the project.

We have always had a very flexible program. So, another challenge is managing each student’s individual unit options and mapping these into the new curriculum architecture.

What have you learnt during the planning so far?

This may seem odd, but I’ve definitely learnt that having too many options is not a good idea. I have also grown to appreciate the can-do attitude of my team and the other professional staff member teams: Lifecycle and Program Beacon, to name a couple.

What will be the benefits of the new curriculum?

The new structure should be simpler for students to understand and easier for them to self-manage. And students will have more choices and greater flexibility. The transition is hard work but the benefits to our students will be great!


Program Beacon says ‘thank you’ to Neta and all the other Faculty Student Administration Managers and their teams! We really appreciate your support and hard work in planning a smooth transition for our students.

This Week will continue to share updates about Program Beacon and the transition of students to the 2020 curriculum. And if you have questions, you can send then to beacon@mq.edu.au

 

 

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