In 2023, UniSA Online collaborated with the OG Yellow Wiggle to solve two problems; how to introduce scaffolded employability and WIL skills into 100% online degrees in the creative industries and the challenge of raising awareness of sudden cardiac arrest and the chain of survival. The solution? A year-long pilot project that embedded Greg Page’s charity Heart of the Nation into all year levels of undergraduate degrees in digital media and communication.

The resulting student work and engagement with the charity has been heart-warming. Through website creations, social media strategies, media pieces, or stakeholder maps, students have created professional-standard work that has contributed to the charity’s growing communication and digital strategies. Students have also developed skills and knowledge and created work they have added to their professional portfolios. For many UniSA Online students, these non-work-based WIL activities created outputs that are added to their professional portfolios of work.

Beyond the immediate impact of addressing the need to scaffold WIL skills throughout online undergraduate studies, there have been ripple effects leading to a greater awareness of cardiac arrest and Greg’s charity within the university and student cohorts.

The pilot project also acts as a benchmark for further replicability and scalability in other online degrees and industry partnerships and has been shared widely. Firstly, within UniSA Online via our working groups and research framework pillars, shared with the broader UniSA community through the teaching and innovation symposium and various presentations, and the Higher Education Research Group Adelaide (HERGA) via a paper at their annual conference. The WIL activity demonstrates good practice because it serves as a template for scaffolding WIL is one that is underpinned by Dr Burley’s doctoral and post-doctoral research into industry Wil partnerships.