During my six weeks in New South Wales I’ve had the pleasure of visiting five University campuses: The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Macquarie University, the University of Wollongong (UoW), the University of Sydney and the University of New England (UNE). The response I have had has been really positive – particularly from academic staff who very much like the idea of having their assessment administration load reduced. At UNSW my talk was so popular, they ask me to repeat it the following week. People even traveled down from Canberra to hear what I had to say. In total, over 80 people came to my presentations at UNSW and they weren’t even in term time. Now – while I’d like to think this is all because of my scintillating personality and my sparkling wit, the truth is that this is something academics, administrators and technical support people are interested in and/or worried about and they want to hear what it’s like from an academic’s perspective.

What’s becoming clear is that the Universities in Australia are in a similar situation to those in the UK when it comes to EAM and what we’re up against is a sector-wide problem.