UOW Global Enterprises has been recognized as a WBA Winner for Process Improvement in the World Business Awards 2022. The World Business Award for Process Improvement [BPI] recognizes organizations that have successfully implemented initiatives that demonstrate excellence in business process improvement.

UOW Global Enterprises (UOWGE) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Wollongong (UOW) and as a commercial entity, operates unencumbered and with the agility to deliver UOW’s global aspirations.

Since 1993, UOWGE has grown to become one of Australia’s most unique and successful global providers of tertiary education programs encompassing Vocational, Diploma, Associate Degree, Bachelors, Masters and PhDs delivered from our own campuses located in key international locations. It owns and operates the UOW College Australia (UOWCA), the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD), the UOW College Hong Kong (UOWCHK) and UOW Malaysia KDU (UOWM KDU). Employing more than 1,400 staff globally, these institutions spread across Wollongong, Sydney, Dubai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, deliver over 200 courses to more than 14,000 students.

In 2016, UOWGE’s commitment to providing transformative educational experiences to students all over the world lead UOWGE to commence the design of a new built-for-purpose campus for UOWD which focuses on enhancing the student experience. This new campus was completed and opened in 2020 and builds on the established student centered approaches for the previous campus and enables multiple pedagogical practices further facilitating flexibility and excellence in teaching.

Prior to this new campus being designed; processes within the campus were often paper based and manual workload heavy. Students often had to interact with multiple divisions located in different areas of the campus and teaching methodologies were typically traditional. In light of the geographic distance that this project was being delivered across as well as the large volume of process improvement to be implemented, traditional approaches to process change implementation and process improvement had to be adapted to create bespoke solutions to ensure a successful outcomes.

As a result of the process improvement activities driven from the new infrastructure enabler, the new campus now has:

1. New paperless processes, systems and hardware enabled with:

– Completely paperless student admissions processes,

– 96.65% reduction in staff printing compared to the same period in the previous campus, equating to more than 6 trees being saved each and every month,

– 5 tonnes of paper archives digitised and recycled.

2. A Faculty, Registry and Exam Division or ‘F.R.E.D’. This single space is able to answer almost all questions student may have and allows key staff to act as a student advocate and facilitator for more complex problems.

3. Two classroom types with 50% of classrooms built as traditional teaching spaces and 50% built to facilitate blended learning. This infrastructure was supported with the employment of a blended learning specialist to support staff training on how to utilise these spaces to further positively impact the student experience. The blended learning enablement project had also already begun training and familiarising academic staff into blended delivery models (part teaching online and part in person) by the time the COVID-19 pandemic began which made the move for full online teaching smoother when this was required.