Unitec is one of New Zealand’s leading institutes of technology – and, with more than 20,000 students studying subjects from accounting to zoology, it’s also the country’s largest.
In step with a rapidly changing education environment, the Auckland-based tertiary institute in 2013 began an-all-of organisation transformation, in order to better meet the needs of its students and potential employers of its graduates.
The transformation includes facility and technology upgrades and the introduction of contemporary teaching and learning models.
As the transformation continues, Unitec communications manager Liz Phillips engaged Mediamine to analyse and report on what the media presents to the public – and how that aligns with the organisation’s goals.
“Education is a very competitive environment. We’re committed to providing our students and staff with world-class learning and teaching opportunities,” says Liz. “Our media analysis requirements are two-fold: we need to understand how structural changes to Unitec are being reported to the public, and also how the institution is being portrayed to new students and potential employers.
“As a communications team, we have the further goal of increasing strategic media engagement by 10%, so it was essential for us to create a benchmark that we could measure against going forward,” she says.
“What we like about Mediamine’s Quality Score Reporting (QSR) is that it scores each item on elements that we determine are valuable to Unitec. Those scores can then be combined to create a single quality score. Going forward, we can track an average item quality score against a range of criteria, such as time periods, spokespeople, and/or media outlets.”
Through a facilitation meeting with Mediamine, in which Unitec’s communications team outlined objectives of the organisation, media item quality score criteria were established, weighted, and aligned to relevant evaluation metrics.
The analysis brief required Mediamine to search its database for relevant news items published between November 2013 and December 2015. The items were then coded by a Mediamine analyst based on a set of global-standard media evaluation metrics. The data was then peer-reviewed, before a report with a written summary and graphical data representations was presented to Liz and her team.
“Working with Mediamine helped us to achieve our primary goals, and our ongoing relationship is continuing to help us guide media engagement around the hard work that’s going in to our transformation.”
Find out about some of Unitec’s future plans
For more information on QSR, click here