Covid has changed the way many of us work and it’s the same for those in education.
RMIT’s Bachelor of Business students do work placements as part of their final year business degree. It’s one thing that sets them apart.
When Covid changed how we work, the students were unable to go to workplaces for work experience. So RMIT Activator, the innovation hub of the University, decided to bring the experience to them. They established the RMIT Impact Academy with the specific objective of giving the students industry experience and exposure to help them apply their learning and build relevant work experience.
“It was critical to find a way to help students experience real life business, so we reached out into our community and found many organisations were happy to participate in a business simulation. The organisations provided business challenges and the students worked in groups to solve them. Exactly as you’d find in a modern workplace.” said Julie Stevens, Head of Partnerships & Engagement, RMIT Activator.
“we wanted to ensure that we focused on the things we knew people needed to be effective at work - communications, training and wellbeing. We chose to use Indie by Pioneera”
Julie Stevens, Head of Partnerships & Engagement, RMIT Activator
“Given we’re simulating a real-world work environment, we wanted to ensure that we focused on the things we knew people needed to be effective at work - communications, training and wellbeing.
“We chose to use Indie by Pioneera because at RMIT, we see emerging technologies as a key enabler to support our students and experiment with new solutions ourselves,” Julie continued.
Indie was connected to the Slack workspace created for the 80 students in the Impact Academy, and owned as a wellbeing project by one of the student teams.
“Indie was helpful in creating a positive culture across the simulated business environment. It helped us see patterns and trends of stress/wellness that we could action. The interface was really simple to use and the team responded positively to the calming colours and easy to digest insights. We also found, like many businesses, that how you use these tools makes a big difference,” said Daniel Christiansen, Activator’s Learning Designer & Facilitator.
“Indie was helpful in creating a positive culture across the simulated business environment. It helped us see patterns and trends of stress/wellness that we could action.”
Sukanya Banerjee, Program Delivery Lead, RMIT Activator.
“Indie is a valuable digital tool, so we’ll use it in our Masters of AI program later this year and we’ll ensure we set it up for maximum success. It will support a focus on “organisational health” and we’ll bring together the functions we think are useful to support any business - such as communications, training and wellbeing into one team.
“We’ll also look to see how we can use Indie more effectively to support productivity and learning outcomes. Like any business, we’re learning and growing as we go” said Sukanya Banerjee, Program Delivery Lead, RMIT Activator.
