JOCELYN WILLIAMS EDUCATOR

There's no doubt about increased demands for graduates who can approach their first professional positions confidently, with both knowledge and experience of what they are expected to do. Unitec places a high priority on strategies to narrow the gap between learning and work - through internships, projects involving carefully managed and supervised experience of industry standards, networking with practitioners. Therefore, for example, as a Head of Department with a duty to lead, I've pursued real world projects in order to encourage colleagues to do likewise. I seek authentic client projects that are also manageable, and pay very careful attention to process.

 

A good recent example is the postgraduate Organisational Communication classes of 2015 and 2016, in which the entire learning experience involved them working for a client. The client’s brief enabled the students to experience being an agency team responsible for designing an internal communication strategy. Although the client was the Internal Communication team at Unitec and projects related to the Student Services Blueprint in 2015, and the Student Wellness Project for 2017, they were both real, live briefs. They both put my students in the simulated role of being an agency team reporting to me as their Director, designing a strategy for communicating with Unitec students – high stakes, real, work.

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I've also developed organisational partnerships such as a very productive working relationship with the Westpac team at Britomart, to lead the way for students and colleagues. This relationship has enabled the 2013 and 2014 postgraduate classes to experience half-day seminars on site during which they were exposed to presentations from the full team. This kind of stakeholder generosity gives the students unparalleled insights into the critical place of effective internal communication in employee engagement (in this case in the banking sector) and the chance to mix and mingle with these highly experienced practitioners. Students also experience a state of the art open plan, flexible corporate workplace. The Corporate Communications team at Westpac is encouraging and keen on what we do in this way to prepare students as entry-level professionals. ANZ and Spark are other corporates we have established working relationships with, keeping us close to employer expectations, and the students close to opportunity.

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With colleague Deborah Rolland, senior lecturer and specialist in Public Relations, I've worked closely with the key industry body for communication practice, the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ), to build a very close relationship that benefits both students and teaching staff. For the past five years we've facilitated student memberships for year 3 and postgraduates who can join industry networking and young professionals events, get involved in the annual conference, and in this way get a good start on approaching employment. Successive Chief Executives of PRINZ have actively encouraged this close involvement and sponsored student awards for us as well, placing Unitec Communication students on an equal footing with those from AUT, Massey and Waikato Universities.

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I've built trusting reciprocal relationships among Unitec’s constituent communities. There are many examples including Face TV (a community media channel) where in 2013 I carefully put in place opportunities and delivered on commitments, expressly to open the way for students to learn in real world settings, since media production skills and experience are essential in entry-level Communication jobs.  As a result Communication students created a creditable, professional chat show series called Underside for broadcast on Sky in November 2013. This led to the 6-part documentary series The Living Community (filmed in localities near Unitec), screened on Sky in 2015. This project appears elsewhere on this site, especially the Leading Collaboration page.

 

The motivation to put students directly in real practice settings to find their feet and experience what it feels like, what the expectations are, and to meet practitioners, is implicit in much of what you see in my portfolio.