Source: University of Otago
Student Administration postgraduate admissions staff
A swifter and smoother postgraduate admissions process is the ultimate goal of recent work by the Process Improvement team, in an engagement sponsored by Student Experience Head Jo Gibson.
Firstly, the team identified that three groups of University staff participate in the process: Student Administration, academic staff and Client Services administrators, even though Student Administration performs the critical bulk of the work.
The team ran workshops to determine which parts of the process needed attention. Senior Process Analyst Maria Barsema says common issues identified from the workshops were: people outside of Student Administration not fully understanding how the process worked, where the student was in the process, and why it took as long as it did to process a student’s application.
Postgraduate Admissions Database.
One of the first things the Process Improvement team did was produce a new section in the Client Services website to explain the postgraduate admissions process to Client Services staff. This also referred to Business Objects reports that provide more detail about the status of an application, in case staff weren’t aware of them.
“One of the Client Services administrators reviewing this said that it was the single most helpful piece of information that she had been given, since starting at the University,” Maria says.
Next the team created the PAD (Postgraduate Admissions Database).
“Student Administration set up spreadsheets for each division to keep track of the contact person, regulations, etc. for the postgraduate programmes they administer.
“We worked with the team to combine all of these into one master spreadsheet and hooked it up with a web front end, so anyone can come in and see who and what is involved for each programme: what are the regulations, which academic receives the applications, who looks after this programme in the Student Administration team, what additional questions are asked in eVision, and so on. This can help all three groups to close gaps in communication.”
Senior Administrator Student Administration Finn Butler says, “We’ve recognised communication and transparency as key factors in our work, and the team’s assistance in developing these has been very valuable. The PAD establishes vital common ground for admissions information. I’m already getting a sense of decreasing distance between us in Student Administration and staff in academic departments, and I know that this will be important heading into our busy 2022 admissions summer.”
Maria says planning is underway for the student administration team to host roadshows to introduce themselves and the PAD to the academic departments.
The Process Improvement team works with groups to make incremental changes. As these get adopted and take hold, a continuous improvement cycle can begin.
Kōrero by Kerry Dohig, Communications Adviser (Projects)
