Today Practera (formerly Intersective) has won the International Student Community and Business Engagement Award for 2018 for the NSW Global Scope Program at the NSW International Student Awards at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
The Award was presented to Program Manager Alison Li, herself a former international student from China, by Minister Niall Blair for Primary Industries, Minister for Regional Water, and Minister for Trade and Industry.
NSW Global Scope is making a difference to the NSW International student experience – developing professional skills and enhancing connectedness. Over 3 years, NSW Global Scope has connected more than 1500 international students from 7 NSW Universities with more than 150 organisations to undertake 3-week business projects.
Students work in teams of 5 to address a business problem with a Global angle with a client from a Government, Business or Community organisations, with coaching from a mentor. Intersective’s Practera platform manages collaboration and learning at scale, tracks performance and identifies issues in real-time.
Director International Trade at NSW Department of Industry, Peter Mackey said “The Global Scope program has been a resounding success with great outcomes for hundreds of international students and project providers in Government, Business and Community.
Students engage through an app built on Intersective’s Practera experiential learning platform to structure student, client and educator collaboration. Tony Ren, UNSW Masters of Commerce student and Global Scope Team Lead, said “the Practera app helped our team plan and track the performance of our project for the City Of Sydney. It provides a clear and structured timeline and notifications that indicate what should be happening each week. Practera helped us deliver a great outcome for our client!”
Global Scope has been supported by many partners including EY, Allianz, Westpac, CSIRO, NSW Police, Departments of Health, Planning & Environment, Transport, the Export Council of Australia and many startups and community organisations. Universities have included the Universities of New South Wales, Sydney, Newcastle and New England, Wollongong, UTS, ACU and Western Sydney University.
In the most recent cohort recently completed, 100% of students and 80% of client mentors believed the students improved their employability skills and network, and 90% of both students and clients would recommend participation to a peer. “During the project process, I worked with peers from other countries. Not only did I make friends with them, I also learned about other people’s work attitudes and ways of doing things.” – Chen from the University of Sydney
In 2017, the program demonstrated it’s flexibility by being extend to regional Universities to be managed locally. Peter Mackey said, “One of Study NSW’s priorities is to increase the attractiveness of regional NSW as a study destination for international students. International students in regional areas make up more than 8% of total enrolments and make a significant local economic and social contribution to their communities. We were excited to be able to support the adaptation of the Global Scope projects model to manage the program locally.”
The Central Coast Regional Cluster connected 20 students from the University of Newcastle on projects which including advising the Police on youth and community engagement, contributing to a regional farm to plate initiative and advising the health department with cost reduction strategies.”
Central Coast Health Strategic Recruitment Manager Jennie McGhie said “I was incredibly impressed with the quality of the Global Scope program. The team at Intersective have designed a program that provided us with an opportunity to utilise the talent and innovative ideas of students that are a part of our local community. The final projects delivered by the students far surpassed my expectations. It was a simply brilliant experience and I can’t wait to do it again next year.”
University of Newcastle student Yeow Khoon Pua said “Global Scope helped me be more aware of the way I handle surprises and disagreements. In our first meeting, our mentor mentioned something which resonated. She said that in many cases, differences between people are at an individual level, but we perceive them to be cultural. In reality, we are just as likely to work well with many people across any cultures or countries. That’s so true.”
Practera Co-Founder & Co-CEO Beau Leese said that, “International education is NSW and Australia’s largest services export, responsible for over $20bn in direct revenue, tens of thousands of jobs, and building relationships with hundreds of thousands of future leaders from around the globe. However, International students are often overlooked and underutilised as a source of talent, insight and diversity. Global Scope was set up to try and change that through an efficient practical experience program. We’ve seen it deliver great outcomes, enhance the student experience and lead to internships and jobs. There is no reason this program cannot be 10x the scale in 2 years and become a strategic differentiator for NSW international education.”