It’s a great privilege to have been invited to be one of the contributors to this debate, and I hope you'll join me by adding your views on this site.
Higher Education in the United Kingdom is renowned worldwide for its excellent teaching and research. Teaching and the student experience is an issue of considerable strategic importance to government. How can we maintain and improve its quality – in the face of global competition?
The student experience has become a more prominent part of policy making with the introduction of the National Student Survey and the Student Forums. Universities and colleges recognise that responding to information from students is a very important aspect of enhancing quality and ensuring the best learning outcomes. The organisation that I lead, the Higher Education Academy, has a bold vision: for UK higher education to provide students with the highest quality learning experience in the world.
I've been asked to:
I’m consulting widely, and this blog will provide updates on progress and offer everyone an opportunity to comment on the issues. I'll be posting a series of questions to guide the discussion every few days.
Higher Education in the United Kingdom is renowned worldwide for its excellent teaching and research. Teaching and the student experience is an issue of considerable strategic importance to government. How can we maintain and improve its quality – in the face of global competition?
The student experience has become a more prominent part of policy making with the introduction of the National Student Survey and the Student Forums. Universities and colleges recognise that responding to information from students is a very important aspect of enhancing quality and ensuring the best learning outcomes. The organisation that I lead, the Higher Education Academy, has a bold vision: for UK higher education to provide students with the highest quality learning experience in the world.
I've been asked to:
- Offer a perspective on how higher education institutions and academics, in the UK and internationally, are currently responding to the evolving student expectations of their educational experience
- Assess what are the main challenges for the future in maintaining and improving the quality of that experience
- Examine how these challenges might be met
I’m consulting widely, and this blog will provide updates on progress and offer everyone an opportunity to comment on the issues. I'll be posting a series of questions to guide the discussion every few days.
6 comments:
This is a rapidly changing time for all Universities. However, the changes are being made at the centre and many academics, including myself, feel excluded from the discussions. The imbalance between the 'valued' parity offered to teaching,scholarship, research, developmental work, knowledge exchange is the key area for discussion; this means parity of interaction between students, research commissioners, the community at large, professionals in private and public sectors, government and non-governmental sectors etc. Without that holistic approach, Universities become soul-less, exclusive institutions instead of being vibrant ebullient centres for deeper understanding which informs 'real' activity.
I'm currently engaged in a research project investigating the experience of part-time higher education students studying for Foundation Degrees in my college. We're hoping this will inform the ways we attract and support these students better in the future so that their study can fit round their work and family commitments.
I'm currently engaged in a research project investigating the experience of part-time higher education students studying for Foundation Degrees in my college. We're hoping this will inform the ways we attract and support these students better in the future so that their study can fit round their work and family commitments.
The student experience has been commodified into a product which can be consumed in bite sized pieces. We need to be very careful that too much use of "e-learning" does not re-inforce this trend. It does little to help students develop meta-cognitive skills.
I agree with what Kupata says, but I'd go further. In my institution, dictats come from on high, with no consultation. I happened to be party to a conversation with two vice-deans who were complaining about the heavy-handed nature of the top brass. I had to laugh, because at my level, the vice-deans were guilty of exactly the same behaviour towards their staff at faculty level. Another thing that I am aware of is senior colleagues poaching ideas from junior colleagues, passing them off as their own, and riding roughshod over the junior colleagues. This totally unprincipled behaviour seems to be either ignored or condoned by management.
Personally I think that student's expectations have altered significantly in 2 converse ways (and this is a personal view from my own experiences of being an undergraduate 10 years ago at the institution where I now teach).
There seems to be an odd combination of an increase in neediness (for contact time; for more guidance on assessments - I'm talking about the 'spoon feeding that many believe is increasingly evident) and independence/ instrumentalism (only coming to university for classes; only engaging in the course to fulfil the minimum requirements, and less of a desire to be a full time student immersed in student culture).
I think that in the next 5-10 years we will be somewhat at the mercy of students and the ways in which they need their HE experiences to be tailored to fit their lifestyles. One of my students recently said that “University fits around my life, rather than my life fitting around University” and it’s an incredibly positive thing that widening participation strategies have enabled this, but I am concerned about the possibilities for marginalisation of the student experience because simply ‘dipping’ in and out of university for the classes and to submit assessments is not a model that produces well rounded graduates.
I think the key challenges we face vary from institution to institution, but I anticipate the coming challenges in the near future;
1. Demands for increased contact hours
2. Demands for more evening and weekend teaching/ contact time and in general more flexible routes of delivery
3. The condensing of courses to minimise student payouts and debts
In theory I would welcome moves to enable numbers 1 and 2 as I feel they would enrich the student learning experience and continue to widen access; in practice I fear this is simply going to result in an increasing number of demands upon staff who are already stretched in a number of direction, not least the pressures or combining research and teaching. I feel the third point (condensing courses) could result in a compromise for both students and staff
-An Education Studies lecturer-
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