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Research Support = making a difference by working together

Justin Shearer

Jessica Taylor

Bryony Wakefield

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Our challenge: user experience

Research services, processes, work well, but...
Academics report difficulty in understanding offering, finding services, navigating organisational complexity, tracking services; significant administrative burden.
We identified 45 (!) unique providers of research services at UoM.

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Our challenge: user experience

- Value of a Human centred design approach

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Research Service Excellence

We're working on the service model in scholarly services.
Co-design a seamless experience between teaching/learning and research support services.
Integrate with wider support communities; leverage infrastructure.

Our support offering needs to focus on the needs of our academic colleagues. We need to align to the priorities of Academic Divisions, and respect disciplinary differences; balanced against the need to deliver, at scale, consistent, high-quality, research support, integrated with the wider research support community at UoM.

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Our Research Gateway

Internally facing website for accessing research support services and resources.
Extensive use of in-kind support of researchers and research support staff across the University.
Enhanced University-wide culture and strengthened project delivery.

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Research Gateway

A single point of entry for finding research services and resources available at the University of Melbourne.
Access is available via single sign-on to graduate researchers, salaried academic, honorary and professional staff - >16,000 people.
Includes information on research support services, resources, a research support directory and a research support glossary.
The motto of the Research Gateway is “access to action”.

“Comprehensive 'one stop shop' for research support services - I wish this existed when I first started”

– Faculty of Science professional staff member.

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Research Gateway:�Service Catalogue

The Research Service Catalogue gives visibility and provides easy access to research services.

Search or browse for research support services.�
Over 350 services identified (Student and Scholarly Services offers ~50 of these!).�
45 service providers.�
Single point of access regardless of the provider.

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Research Gateway:�Glossary

The Research Support Glossary is all about creating a common language and understanding of research support terms used by the University of Melbourne, our partners and our peers.

Search or browse for glossary terms.�
The glossary is maintained by a Community of Interest, comprised of volunteers from around the University to an agreed set of business rules.�
Terms in the glossary were initially crowd-sourced across the University and are subject to review, editing, validation and approval for publication by the Community of Interest.

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Research Gateway:�Save your favourites!

Your profile page allows you to save your favourite services and contacts.

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Research Gateway: Helpline

People-driven support for researchers and research support staff.�
Enables channel of choice - access via digital, phone, chat, form, email, or in-person.�
Student and Scholarly Services participated in workshops and developed knowledge articles.

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Research Gateway: Governance

Demonstrated a true concept of cross functional collaboration supported by the project governance model:�

Director, Scholarly Services was on the project Steering Committee.�
Scholarly Services representatives on the Business Working Group.�
Held three workshops with Scholarly Services to get their input on site design and identifying FAQs.�
Significant contributions from Scholarly Services in writing knowledge articles and creating the Research Support Glossary.

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Research Support Community

Service providers ensuring seamless collaboration.
Research Support Symposium - bringing together people from across the organisation with a common interest.
It’s all about the people!

Photos by @BryWakefield

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Research Support Symposium 2019

“Research Administrative Day is a fantastic initiative in bringing together the research support staff and providing us all with an insight into each other areas and also highlighting how we all fit in the big picture. The presentations by the researchers were very interesting and should become a regular part of the symposium every year. “

“It was fantastic to share in the ideas and enthusiasm of the broader research support community at Unimelb. I came away with a greater understanding of our diverse work, and a deeper appreciation for our community.”

“This was my first time attending although I've been at UoM many years. I liked this event because it gave me an awareness of teams I never knew existed on campus, and gave me a chance to hang out with like-minded people to celebrate what we do. It gave me good feels.”

250 people from across the organisation with a common interest came together.�

#researchadministratorday