Executive Summary: Emmanuel College engaged Swick Learning to conduct an independent review of its culture in 2023 to gain a true and unbiased perspective, and to ensure it could remain "relevant, forward looking, pursuing best practice, and ensuring the wellbeing of the community." The review conducted by Swick became one of the most comprehensive examinations of a residential college in Australia. The 90 page report, which was published to the community and the wider public on the College's website, validated the College's strengths, and mapped out three broad areas for improvement, resulting in 16 recommendations. Every recommendation was accepted and activated by the College's leadership. About Emmanuel College: Emmanuel College is a co-educational residential college within the University of Queensland located at the St Lucia campus. The College provides a living-learning environment for up to 359 (primarily undergraduate) residents studying at the University and nearby institutions. Emmanuel College is considered to be the oldest and largest residential college at the University and is affiliated with the Uniting Church of Australia, Queensland Synod. The Challenge: The review was conceived of by both parties as a broad, forward-looking process which, while being sensitive to the College’s rich history, should strike at the heart of cultural renewal opportunities for the College. As always with a review of this nature, the central challenge was obtaining valid data. Without broad and candid participation, the findings can come to represent the view of those who commissioned the review. This challenge was overcome thorugh clear upfront commitments to transparency and confidentiality, which were genuine, and accepted as such by the community, resulting in ample unfiltered contributions. It was entrusted to Swick to determine the methodology that would yield the most insights. The Solution : The design of the review process sought to examine College life from as many angles as possible, and be as data-driven as possible. Data was collected from a range of sources, including desktop reviews; a student survey; interviews and focus groups; written submissions; and direct observation. Particular care was taken to ensure that the voices of the most marginalised and powerless members of the community were actively sought. Data were analysed through a framework of four interrelated Factors affecting people’s propensity to live the values of the College. The Impact: The review was well received by the four main stakeholder groups that form the internal College community: the students; the staff; the Senior Management Team; and the Board. The report has been widely accepted as a high quality entry point for culture change at the College. The findings are considered to be accurate, insightful, and addressing the 'real issues'; and the recommendations have all been accepted as meaningful and practical actions that can be taken to strengthen the College. Some public comments from the Principal and CEO of the College, Stephen Peake: "What Cam has come back with after his deep dive into the College is a great body of information to work with, and his recommendations for improvement are, in my opinion, very worthwhile" "I and my management team, have committed to the activation of all recommendations" “We felt Cam’s unique background and deep understanding of college life made him an excellent choice to undertake our review, and how he approached the project and eventually delivered such a comprehensive and practical report completely vindicated that decision”

About Graduate Student Association (GSA) GSA is the largest postgraduate student association in Australia. It is the independent representative organisation to all (post)graduate coursework and research students at the University of Melbourne. It advocates for graduate student interests to the University and wider community, and provides enrichment opportunities and support services to students. At the time of writing GSA represents 36,000 students / members and supports over 160 self-organising student clubs. The Challenge: The cost of living had become the single greatest issue for postgraduate students represented by GSA. This was the single greatest issue raised by a survey of more than 7,000 students about their experiences as student, and reports of homelessness and other crises among students were becoming increasingly common. GSA was finding itself redirecting resources away from its historically core functions of advocacy, community building, and academic and career support; and towards the provision of food and other cost of living relief. ] GSA wanted to respond to this crisis by developing a suite of programs and/or services to improve the situation for graduate students. They wanted ones that would make a meaningful difference to the lives of students but also be sustainable for the organisation to manage and deliver well into the future. The Solution: The project is still underway. Swick Learning has commenced a three stage project to develop these services. First, we will explore the feasibility of the ten most promising interventions GSA could make on this issue, devleoping a mini business case for each. Second, an optimal mix of these ideas will be progressed to implementation, where personnel will be trained and the services will be developed in time to support students commencing in 2025. The Impact: The project is ongoing. We look forward to updating this section in 2025.

The Client: Specific details of the client will remain confidential. The client is an multi-site student accommodation provider. The Challenge: The client had a unique student accommodation facility with dissatisfied residents. Its team in this particular geographic area were struggling to create a student experience as captivating as its other facilities in that region, partly because those other residences possessed some advantages this property did not. The gap between the students' expectations at this property, which were informed by their observations of their peers' experience at the other nearby properties, was a growing source of dissatisfaction and was creating revenue risk for the client. The Solution: Swick Learning quickly identified there was no genuine experimentation occurring in the attempts to engage students. There was little variation in the attempts being made and the results of new attempts to engage students was not being recorded. We developed a series of events to be delivered to the students where each event represented a possible student engagement strategy that could be taken forward by the organisation. Each event also doubled as a focus group, where students shared feedback about the provider and the programs to Swick personnel, while being entertained by the event activation. This series generated layers of useful data that could be used to co-design a better student engagement framework with the client. The Impact: The resulting feedback was both candid and trustworthy, and provided a clear path forward: the provider needed to deliver two streams of programming, with two different sets of objectives, to suit the two main types of students in the community. The provider implemented the strategy from the workpapers and immediately enjoyed improved results.

The Client: Details of the client remain confidential. The client is a large commercial owner-operator of student accommodation facilities. The Challenge: The client had opened a new facility on the physical boundary of a Australian university in one of Australia's largest cities. It had no formal relationship with that university, but would almost certainly fill up with a majority of its residents. The provider was seeking a formal 'approved provider' status with the university so it could freely communicate with the university about challenges and opportunities, and generally work together in the spirit of partnership. However the university was wary of endorsing for-profit student accommodation providers and, as a result, was rolling out a detailed and rigorous approval process at the time, which no other providers had experienced before. The Solution: Swick Learning guided the provider through the process. It interpreted and clarified the requirements from the university's process; conducted a review of the provider's relevant policies and procedures (including creating new ones where required), and preparing the provider for an in-person assessment day. The Impact: The provider was approved by the university and the relationship between the two organisations has developed to support them collaborating in other ways. The provider has also embedded the new policies and procedures into its operating rhythm.

The Client: Swick Learning was jointly engaged by two education services companies: Alcohol, Drug & Mental Health Education Specialists (ADMHES) and Fearless Fox Training (Fearless Fox). The clients provides a number of wellbeing and safety-related program to the universities, schools and corporate sectors, including training programs, wellbeing programs, alcohol culture accrediation, online induction hosting. The Challenge: The clients had developed a novel approach to training student leaders in tertiary institutions on providing basic wellbeing support to other students. The new training program used Lego Serious Play (LSP) or adult imaginatie play methodologies and was created to respond to three growing issues with existing training which had not yet been overcome: the course length compared to other student leader training programs, the risk of student leaders overstepping their first responder role, and cultural barriers to full participation in diverse groups. The clients had taken care to ensure the materials were an appropriate blend of scholarly research and industry know-how, but wanted an independent evaluation of the training program, to be able to accurately communicate the maturity and evidence-base for the program to prospective buyers of the trianing. The Solution: Swick Learning separated an initial evaluation of the training program into two phases in recognition of the fact that the training program was brand new, and no direct evidence of the effects of the program existed yet. The agreed output from this initial evaluation was a letter from the Swick Learning review team to prospective buyers of the training program outlining our approach, observations, concerns and intentions for further evaluation, which will be published by the clients on the website for the program shortly. The first phase encompassed desktop analysis feasible at the time of the course's launch, including reviewing the course materials, facilitator guide, and selected evidence to determine how well the program condenses key teachings from established programs, its suitability for a diverse cohort of student leaders, and the quality of its evidence base, by examingin the credibility, relevance, and recency of the most crticial sources of evidence used. The review also articulates the requirements for subsequent and more complete evaluation exercises. The second phase will commence after several hundred participants have completed the training program, to allow some forms of direct evidence to be incorporated. This is likely to occur in one year. The Impact: The clients have achieved their initial objectives with the review process, which was to identify any significant changes required for the launch of the course, signal their commitment to ensuring the course is evidence-informed, and efficiently communicate to prospective buyers about the the maturity and evidence-base for the course. The impact of this evaluation will grow over time as the evidence builds and the course evolves in response to further evaluation. The clients are delighted with the care and thoughtfulness of the initial exercise, describing the process as "extremely thorough" and "incredible work".