Priorities:University of Technology Sydney Student Priorities

Strategy #1 Creation of an innovation space

Recently, UTS has begun encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship around campus, made evident by starting two team in the University Innovation Fellows program. Created by the previous and new candidate UIF’s at UTS, this strategy aims to provide a place to facilitate innovation collaboration and teamwork for students. Currently this strategy is already off the ground and we have already pitched our ideas to the heads of the Engineering and IT faculty and they are more than enthusiastic with our idea.

Milestone 1: Initial Stakeholder meeting - Completed

What got our project started was when the heads of the Engineering and IT Faculty emailed us expressing interest in re-purposing a previously unused space in the Engineering and IT building.

Milestone 2: Idea Pitch - Completed

Two weeks from our initial stakeholder meeting, we re-scheduled a meeting with the faculty leaders to pitch our ideas. We generated three ideas for our innovation space which had varying levels of creativity and many different features. We gained valuable insigth from the faculty leaders, as they provided many thoughts and opinions on what they thought would work and what was too far out there to be practicle.

Milestone 3: Investor Pitch - Completed

To provide funding for the room, the faculty leaders had a potential investor lined up who was interested to know what kind of opportunities this space could provide for students. We had a short meeting with the investor where we gave him a summarised version of our three pitches and explained why this un used space should be re purposed. Over all the investor had a positive opinion of our ideas and even had his ideas and suggestions to improve our ideas.

Milestone 4:  Project Follow Up – Planned Feb 2018

In this milestone we aim to discuss potential strategies to take our ideas to the final stages and eventually turn the innovation space from an idea into a reality.

Milestone 5: Working with architects or designers – Planned March 2018

In this milestone we aim to create a design for the final product by working architects and designers. We aim to have a professional looking design that will be enticing to students as well as serve their practical needs for innovation and collaboration.

Milestone 6: Construction - Planned April 2018

For the construction of our space we aim for it to take as little time as possible, to minimise disturbance for the students, with the construction taking place outside of peak university times.

Milestone 7: Grand opening - Planned July 2018

In this milestone we intend to open our innovation space to the students. It is very rare to see new and interesting spaces open from existing spaces inside UTS, so we aim to have an awesome opening ceremony.

Strategy #2 - Improving communication of current innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities to students.

During interviews with first year students at UTS we discovered that communication of existing innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities was lacking and potentially resulting in students not attending events or not gaining a proper understanding of the existing opportunities.

As a result we would like to identify methods for improving the communication between innovation resources and students and help connect interested students with events and activities that can help them on their entrepreneurial journeys. Our current prototyping has found that QR codes while initially seaming like a fun and interesting way for students to interact is actually seen as a hindrance and may not be fully utilised as would be expected.

We would like to trial more advertising and communication techniques such as an "innovation board" in a communal area of the university, "abstract links" that get students completing a challenge or game to gain access to a link to information or mass advertising drops using interesting mediums such as bouncy balls with links or slickers found all throughout the university.

The Plan:

To start off we would first like to pilot the "Innovation Board" idea using a small group of students from a common area on campus such as the main lobby of the UTS tower. A UIF leader with a whiteboard divided into sections would prompt students to add a "card" (sticky note) to the board under particular sections. These sections could be for example "What does it mean to be innovative", "What skills does an entrepreneur need" etc. The board would also have information about where to find out more and events comming up on campus that could help them in finding out the answers.

Initially students would be guided to the board and asked questions about the board such as "how they would use it", "did they find it intuitive"," was the experience fun/educational" etc. Using this feedback we could start to get a better idea of how students would interact with such an instalment and how we could improve it so that they get the most value from it. In the long term we would like to find ways to integrate the innovation board into related classes, subjects and courses to help it become a focal point of innovation and entrepreneurship at UTS.

By increasing student awareness of the programs, opportunities and other students that exist both on campus and in the surrounding community we hope to increase the innovation and entrepreneurship culture at UTS and generate higher motivation within our peers to take on new challenges and follow through with innovative ideas.

Strategy #3 - Social Events to Break Down Faculty Separations

When interviewing students from various degree backgrounds, it was often evident that rarely interacted with students who were apart of a different faculty to themselves. In many occasions, they barely interacted with people outside of their own course. We have often seen that students who know more people in a cross disciplined environment often get involved with a much grander range of activities and therefore enjoy their university experience more.

Milestone #4 - commence uni subjects that are not tied to one particular faculty

Examining the current ecosystem of our campus, it was clear that the university has recognise a need for students to learn about innovation and entrepreneurship. As a direct response to the demand. The university has introduced incubator-like programs for students and undergraduate courses to support ongoing students and new alike, in this area. There has been many successful programs and it has been well received by students of all disciplines.

However examining the bigger picture, it is clear that these programs overlap and no coherent community was formed between these programs and faculties. One of the problem space this strategy plans to address is the segregated but successful programs the university is producing. The problem space became apparent - how can we conjugate these groups of highly talented people and their ideas to entwine a larger network and form stronger presence of innovation and entrepreneur at the university.

Following this observation, the University Innovation Fellows plan to host a series of social events in the aim of joining programs and communities. These social events are designed to cultivate conversations for students, staff members and those in the industry. It will be run regularly by students with creativity. Events such as interfaculty debates or startup fairs are a few among ways to get individuals involved.

Ultimately the aim is to connect current communities on campus and allowing new students to find ways to get involved. This strategy hopes to influence the success of other strategies being implemented at the University.

Strategy #4 - Creating a Cohesive Innovation and Entrepreneurship Environment

UTS is a large university with approximately 45,000 students currently enrolled. As a result, the UTS campus is vast and spread out over a large geographical area. As each building is home to a specific faculty, this creates a sense of pride and belonging within each faculty however it can also contribute to a feeling of disassociation with the rest of the university. This is especially true in the case of the innovation building which most students are completely unaware of.

After interviewing several students from the Faculty of Engineering and IT, we could not find a single student who was aware of the existence of this innovation building where so many of UTS' I&E programs take place. Through our own experiences at UTS, we have observed a rift between the students who frequently engage in I&E activities and those who do not. After speaking with students, most told us that they would have gotten involved in these activities had they known about them. From these discussions coupled with our own experiences, we believe the main cause of this is poor advertising and the physical isolation of I&E programs and initiatives within the innovation building.

Instead of perpetuating an environment in which students are forced to seek out I&E programs and events themselves, we believe the solution to this problem is to bring small I&E experiences into the everyday life of the UTS student. We are still investigating how best to do this with ongoing ideation, prototyping, and feedback.

Related Links

UTS Home Page:

https://www.uts.edu.au

UTS Hatchery Home Page:

https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/opportunities/hatchery/overview

UTS FaceBook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/UTSFEIT/

Spring 2018 UIF:

Alastair Bate

Laurence Presland

James Ryan

Gavan Huang

Spring 2017 UIF:

Matthew Childs

Peter Cole

Irene Hsieh

Corey Stewart