Here is my first series of questions. They're about changes in student expectations of higher education.
Please leave a comment on as many, or as few, as you like. Tell me in your comment if you are a student, a lecturer, a parent or a member of the public. Comments may be moderated.
- What changes in students' expectations do you think are likely to happen in the next 5-10 years?
- What would you say are the top three challenges in meeting these changes?
9 comments:
Students are poorly placed to have any realistic expectations of what is for most of them an entirely new environment. We do not set up universities to match their expectations, but to create an environment that we see as the best we can provide for them. They react to this experience and sometimes complain about the bits that don't work well. We respond as best we can to those complaints when they are valid. But they are not "customers" and we don't service them as such.
They come to us to learn from us and to get qualifications we offer - we set the standards and the expectations.
Few universities, if any, have adjusted to the enormous expansion of higher education and the changes in schools. We are still trying to educate the elite 5%, and tend to complain mightily about students' lack of engagement. It would be doing everyone a favour if we adjusted our expectations to what students can do and what they want to learn rather than, as a whole, attempting to perpetuate a myth of academe that probably never was.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment:
Changing student expectations:
In general I feel that students have become much more pragmatic in terms of 'will this course produce a decent/desired job'?
Increasing numbers of mature students also mean that students are becoming more demanding [a good thing] and vocal if/where things are not professionally run & presented.
There is a negative expectation of 'juggling' significant part time work/hours, studying, family commitments etc; and of leaving university in debt. I think that the latter expectation/'fact of life' is a tragedy for young minds, creativity & for the country.
Top 3 challenges:
1. Encouraging, supporting & helping to succeed the UNUSUAL suspects - older HE students, those from poorer & 'needy' backgrounds;
2. Enabling academic staff to properly fulfil their teaching, consultancy and research commitments in the intersts of currency & TO THE BENEFIT OF STUDENTS;
3. Looking at ways & means of 'recycling' recent graduate experience/expertise back in to HE teaching & learning - across the range of guest sessions, hosting work placements, establishing 'live' student projects etc.
Will the opportunity be taken to ensure that the work of the newly started Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience - http://changinglearnerexperience.pbwiki.com/ - initiated by JISC together with the HE Academy, is properly included in this review? It would seem a pity to miss the chance to combine the two sets of work here.
From an ICT perspective there is already a large body of work, experience, and research that should help inform this review - the JISC web site contains much of this - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/ - and there is a useful overview document that pulls together research findings, programme and project outcomes, IR issues etc
The JISC Conference this week ran a session specifically looking at this area from an ICT viewpoint - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2008/04/jiscconference08/student_expectations.aspx .
Robert Haymon-Collins - r.haymon-collins@jisc.ac.uk
In my experience, most students are reasonably happy with their experience most of the time. However, we offer our services to a very diverse range of people. What my German undergraduates on the European Programme expect of me is very different from what locally recruited undergraduate students seem to want. Much, I think, depends upon their school experience. I do find that many students are expecting a lot more individual support from teaching staff and find it difficult to take responsibility for their own learning, even by the final year. We need to consider how changes in one part of the education system need to be reflected in the assumptions on which the others are founded.
the top three challenges are:
managerialism in HE undermining the holistic nature of research and teaching, and destroying academic freedom and diversity across the sector
a very narrow interpretation of 'evidence based practice' applied to teaching through so-called 'theories of education' that turn out to be rather shallow constructivist nonsense
an over reliance on students' own expectations and evaluation of their learning - understanding students is one thing, pampering to their every whim is another
There are a few important points (and I am possibly going to repeat what others have said)
1. There is a need to ensure that any curriculum developed in universities match the needs of the respective sectors that are being catered to. Not sure if students are the best judge for this at the pre-graduate level. But they may as well be at the graduate and PG levels.
2. Assessment should not be confounded by incompetencies - the current QA system does not allow for this confounder as they mainly focus on student experience and procedure (see what has happened to the schools - it is the lesson plan that is important not the content!)
3. There is a need to compensate for a change in the competencies of incoming students to UG courses - for example students have substantive presentation skills but poor writing skills.
4. There is a need to keep a research informed teaching focus - there is a risk that UK is already falling behind by putting a divide between research and teaching (I suspect this is an abnormality of the RAE ratings)
I think that students are quite often disappointed with their university experience, especially in first year. They expect university to be different t school, but quite often in the early days, at least, it's just like school but with none of the support they could expect at school. The classes are big, no-one knows anyone else, the staff are remote etc etc. Someone else commented about management impeding the holistic view of HE. I would agree with that entirely. There is always lip service paid to "the student experience" but if I or any of my colleagues ask for funding, however modest, it's always met with an excuse as to why the faculty/institution can't spend money on teaching. The RAE has a lot to answer for - departments chasing the 5 to the detriment of the students. Young research stars are protected from teaching (and some of them would not be very good at it anyway) and the emphasis is put on research, research, research. This climate has brought about an arrogance that research is the pinnacle of achievement, and this myth is further promoted by the reward and recognition that researchers receive. Questions should be asked as to where funding is going, just exactly how much teaching is subsidising research and how this balance can be redressed.
I am an academic, specialising in teaching, rather than research, and all too familiar with the second class situation of teachers vs researchers.
I am currently in the US and I have just had an interesting conversation with an American graduate student. She is working full time in a clinical support role (in a blood bank) and is also completing a Masters' thesis part time. She was asking what HE is like in the UK, and we were comparing stories and experiences, and she was talking about her experience of students wanting to be with the most inspiring teachers, and how students would often be frustrated that these teachers' classes would be filled up and students would have to take a class with a "researcher, not a lecturer, you know, a lecturer that really enthused and encouraged the students and made them want to learn." (Interestingly, she used the term lecturer to mean someone who teaches, and researcher for someone whose main academic interests are research.) I asked her then, if she appreciated that expert researchers were able to get her to the cutting edge of the subject, and she just looked at me.
"Those people were interested in research and were only teaching because of a contractual obligation," she said. No-one wanted to be in their classes because you were never made to feel part of anything. The real inspiration came from the people who were interested in teaching."
I found that conversation interesting and also a bit sad, given that institutions in the research-led universities promote teaching by research stars - fine if the researcher a)wants to do it and b) is good at it, but there seems to be a continuing myth that great researchers make great teachers. I don' think that is necessarily true, just like great researchers are not necessarily great communicators. Research-informed teaching, fair enough, but inspiring teachers, what ever their background, is what makes the subject come alive for students.
I have been called naive, glib and over-ambitious when it comes to my teaching practice, but my students are happy, they work well, are sociable, and achieve academically, because my priority is fostering an environment that makes it possible for them to learn.
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