Enhancing student communications

We will soon be implementing the first steps of key initiatives from the Student Content and Communications project, which aims to improve the quality and consistency of information ACU shares with current students.

This project, initiated by Marketing and External Relations in late 2020, focuses on current students – not prospective students or alumni – and builds on the Empathy to Experience (UX) project, which aimed to map student journeys and improve key touchpoints.

A major insight from the User Experience (UX) project was that “information is inconsistent or inadequate across channels”. The Student Content and Communications project sought to understand this insight more deeply from both a staff and current student perspective, and to co-design concepts for a new content and communication model.

Over 10 weeks, the project team – including research and service-design specialists MAKE Studios – engaged in hour-long, in-depth sessions with a representative group of 33 current students and 42 staff from across ACU. These insights built on those from the 120 students interviewed during the UX project.

Download the final report to learn more about the project, including its scope, design and outcomes. You can also access an abridged version which includes a rough timeline of deliverables.

Recommendations and initiatives

The research and co-design phases of the Student Content and Communications project yielded three key recommendations for a future-state content and communications model. It also proposed seven key initiatives to start working towards these recommendations.

Over the next three months, we'll be implementing the first steps of three key initiatives:

• Content and Communications Community of Practice
• Student Content and Communications Policy
• Digital Platforms Working Group

As part of this work, we’ll also improve knowledge-sharing and uplift among staff around student communications through, for example, publishing a series of related Knowledge Articles on Service Central.

More information

If you have questions or feedback on this project and planned activities, please contact Internal Communications and Engagement Manager, Danielle Kirk.

For project updates, you can join the Marketing and External Relations Updates group on Workplace.