- There's a view that students have become more instrumental and demanding, wanting more rather than less individual support. Partly this is to do with there being more students and more diversity of background, age and achievement; partly it may be to do with rising student contributions to the cost of education.
- Some people think this means adjusting teaching and the curriculum to meet 'customer' needs. But another view holds that this would not be fair to students. Creating the best learning environment does not imply simply meeting student expectations, according to this view. No: it means setting and managing expectations and standards -- helping students to adjust to higher education rather than the other way round; making it their responsibility. And if students expect more individual attention in a mass higher education system, maybe they will have to pay more for it.
- There's a view that developing academic and support staff skills to meet the new expectations will be a major challenge. Elsewhere I have heard it mentioned that we have contracts and performance management systems that haven't caught up with the needs of students in the 21st century university.
- Some people are worried (rightly, I think) that changes in student expectations and universities' responses to these expectations may lead to a bigger disconnect between research and teaching.
- RHC - yes, David Melville's group and JISC have been asked to contribute.
Some more questions:
- What things are you (or your institution) doing to accommodate changing student expectations?
- What do you think we need to do in the UK to maintain and improve the quality of the student experience?
- Should colleges and universities 'contract' with students to offer minimum numbers of teaching hours, etc? (one example of this - Lancaster - is here)
3 comments:
In the same way that schools have undertaken a much needed upgrading of infrastructure, univerities seem to be doing the same. Spending on building prjects is great but it does not improve learning.
It is about time that lecturers were subject to regular assessment. Too many are riding along on mediocre standards and students are afraid to be critical because the same poor lecturers are grading the students work.
In the main my experience of lecturers has been positive, but if i find three weak and inadequate academics during my undergraduate course then that is three too many.
Implement a system of unannounced checks on lecturing standards now. Good lecturers have nothing to fear, but those who are undermining the quality of degrees should be weeded out.
I would totally agree with harry - our institution is redeveloping its campus like so many others, which will upgrade the campus but not the teaching. As a previous comment said, great researchers are not necessarily great lecturers. Students want inspiring lecturers! This is the same for student support - great lecturers do not necessarily make great personal tutors. The personal tutor system will be changing here to focus on support, higher skills and links with employers, which is positive - for undergraduates. However, I am particularly concerned for postgraduate students and the level of support they receive.
Students are slowly becoming more vocal but they are still unsure of how to voice their opinion and I know of students who worry that their grades will suffer if they speak out on behalf of their peers - and these are usually the most serious and persistent problems. I do not mean that students' expectations before entering HE should be catered for - but rather that standards should be clear, strictly adhered to and more thoroughly reviewed - so that changes are made. Students should be able to comment on their experience and receive feedback or see changes as a result.
Our Senior Management needs to move from talking about the student experience to actively engaging students with their learning and assessment. They need to place great value on an effective and fully-functioning student rep system. Senior Management seem reluctant to respond effectively to consistent problems such as assessment - despite abounding advice from Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe) and current research. Small changes are being made at programme level by dedicated staff members, and in small projects - but why isn't good practice seen across the entire University and wider HE sector?
I am currently a Visiting fellow at the University of Salford so I offer this blog comment as an interested and engaged observer. In Australia we face similar issues to those described here. Our issues are also due largely to increasing student diversity which is challenging many of our traditional teaching practices. But one of the things that strikes me as different about this discussion is that if it were to take place in Australia I think it would be much more focussed on international as well as domestic or home student expectations and experiences. This discussion seems to be almost entirely focussed on the experience of British students. I can’t see any comments related to the experiences of international students and with the issues faced by British students when they are faced with large numbers of international students in their classes. This surprises me given that the UK attracts 12% of all international students. Anyway I think we do need to adjust teaching to meet the changing student population and it is a major challenge to do that in the context of widening participation within the local home student population and significant numbers of international students. In my Australian university we are seeking to accommodate changing student expectations and encourage positive interaction between international and home students in a variety of ways. We are really trying to enhance the student experience by focussing on student engagement in both the formal and informal curriculum across the university. In my own faculty we are seeking to create a campus environment and culture within and beyond the classroom that encourages and supports home and international students and staff to learn from, with and about each other and seek assistance when they need it. In the formal curriculum this is focused on increasing the opportunities for experiential learning and on professional development of academic staff to improve teaching quality and student engagement. This includes embedding support for student learning in curriculum design, for example through making expectations around assessment clear and explicit, without ‘dumbing down’. Students do want to be challenged, but we also need to ensure that teaching adds value to learning. In the informal curriculum our strategies are focussed on supporting students to engage with each other outside class. We have had some success with supplemental instruction in large first year classes and with a peer mentor scheme that pairs international and home students as mentors and brings mixed groups of students together informally several times over a semester. Our experiences in these programs are consistent with the findings of the 2007 AUSSE (Australian Survey of Student Engagement) which reported that students working on campus experienced higher levels of engagement than others (the key findings can be found at http://www.acer.edu.au/ausse/resources.html ).
I think Australian and UK institutions share a common challenge. How to improve the student experience whilst simultaneously accommodating the changing expectations of an increasingly diverse student population? Appropriate resourcing for academic staff development, broadly focussed and creatively delivered student services and effective performance management systems are all important. But we also need to think differently about the spaces we provide for learners etc etc …and how we use the formal and the informal curriculum to achieve educational goals…. developing policies as well practical strategies that impact on the everyday reality of student life…. Alas it seems there is no one quick and easy solution to these issues!
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