Navigating the Emerging HE Landscape

1. Navigating the Emerging HE Landscape Dr Mark Atlay Chair SEEC Mark.atlay@beds.ac.uk

2. Flexible Learning in HE Enabling choice and responsiveness in the • Pace, • Place, and • Mode of learning [HEA]

3. A question … What is Higher Education?

4. The changing landscape A journey through time and space

5. Once upon a time …

6. 19th Century Oxford 'Practical applications', whether in research or teaching tended to be viewed with suspicion. It was easily assumed that an interest in them betrayed not a thirst for knowledge, but a commercial materialism unworthy of a university. [The history of the University of Oxford vol VII, 'Nineteenth Century Oxford, Part 1' edited by M.G. Brock and M.C. Curthoys Oxford: Clarendon Press]

7. What are the tools (kit) and skills needed to navigate this landscape?

8. Every university teacher is aware that the atmosphere of the university can transform the whole approach to learning of students who, when admitted, seemed only doubtfully fitted for university work [Robbins, 1963, 464]

9. 10.36 The majority of higher education institutions now have, or plan to introduce, a CAT scheme: some 70 per cent allow credit for work-based and other experiential learning. But there is wide variation in the arrangements made by institutions. There is, as yet, little inter-institutional credit transfer within higher education. Although there is no reliable basis upon which to make an assessment of the extent of transfer or the demand for it, it is likely that credit transfer will be particularly relevant to part-time students who may have to move with their jobs, than to traditional full-time students who will expect to complete a programme within one institution within a specific time period. [Dearing 1997]

10. 1.20 While traditional but still-relevant values must be safeguarded, higher education will need to continue to adapt to the needs of a rapidly changing world and to new challenges. In a period of discontinuous change, the future cannot be forecast from the past: what is clear is that a policy based on ‘more of the same’ is not an option. Increasing competition, particularly in the context of lifelong learning, will come from employers and training providers, in partnerships with major institutions of higher education possibly linked to the entertainment and communications industries, and from prestigious institutions overseas making extensive use of distance learning through modern technology. [Dearing, 1997]

11. Aframework which will: • cater for a wide range of aspirations and achievement; • have recognised standards; • enable students to progress through higher levels, as well as move between programmes as appropriate; • enable attainment to be recognised, providing it can be reliably assessed; • articulate with other areas of tertiary education; • encompass vocational and academic qualifications; • have standing here and abroad. The main elements of the framework will be: • standardised nomenclature for awards; • agreed and common credit points at relevant levels; • the inclusion of additional and recognised ‘stopping-off’ points

12. What does the landscape look like? From the organisational perspective

15. QAA Quality Code B3 • Higher education providers, working with their staff, students and other stakeholders, articulate and systematically review and enhance the provision of learning opportunities and teaching practices, so that every student is enabled to develop as an independent learner, study their chosen subject(s) in depth and enhance their capacity for analytical, critical and creative thinking.

16. SEEC level descriptors

17. Enables • Credit transfer and progression • RPL • RPEL • WBL • Accreditation • Articulation • And other flexible approaches

18. Advert … • SEEC/NUCCAT Conference Friday 1st November 2013, Birmingham – on the new sections of the quality code and implications for credit, APL, etc

19. Two extreme perspectives

22. Credit transfer? • There is currently very limited data on the extent to which credit transfers take place in England. HESA data show that approximately 10 per cent of entrants to first-year full-time undergraduate courses in 2011/12 entered with previous experience of higher education, but we do not know how many of those gained any form of advanced standing on their degree courses. • Circumstantial evidence indicates that accreditation of prior learning is not widespread, except in limited parts of the sector. The Open University is a notable exception to this: it imports and exports more credit at the higher education level than the rest of the system combined [Watson, 2012].

23. What does the landscape look like? From the learner perspective

24. The learners’ perspective

25. What is needed to navigate this landscape?

26. The future?

27. MOOCs? • However, it is unlikely that MOOCs will – or indeed should – be a one-to-one replacement for existing modes of higher learning. This is because there are important components of higher education that MOOCS are unlikely to be able to deliver to the same standard as physical institutions. • Universities and colleges enable interactive learning and critical thinking. They give people the initial grounding to engage with complex material and topics, facilitate learning through discussion, and enable interaction and feedback in a way that we cannot do currently through technology. • Online courses offer broken down, specific knowledge in discrete areas, not the kind of synthetic, critical, immersive approaches offered by universities. • More widely, MOOCs cannot replicate the university or college experience, which involves being part of a community of learners, often at a formative stage in life. • Given how important these factors are to learning outcomes and student satisfaction, it seems likely that traditional forms of higher education will continue to be relevant and critical for the foreseeable future. [IPPR Commission on the Future of Higher Education, A CRITICAL PATH:Securing the Future of Higher Education in England, June 2013]

28. Credit transfer • In the long term, we should move towards establishing a formalised credit transfer system, in which students know what is expected of them if they wish to transfer, and in which there is transparency and fairness in the value of credits. [IPPR Commission on the Future of Higher Education June 2013]

29. The skills to navigate the future landscape?

30. A ‘Sat Nav’ is a good metaphor for learners’ needs?

32. Not fully mapped … • Student mobility across boundaries? • national • the academic and the vocational • Funding for flexible learning And learners need guidance and support

33. Some thoughts for the journey • Travel opens minds • Landscapes include motorways, roads and tracks (all have a use) • Landmarks help guide the way - but are not always visible • The more interesting parts of the landscape are often less well mapped • Beauty spots may be off the direct route (and add to journey times) • Often it is the travelling that is important – not the destination • Every journey is individual

34. Flexible Learning in HE Enabling choice and responsiveness in the • Pace, • Place, and • Mode of learning [HEA] Through the conference consider • Whose choice? • What ‘skills’ are needed? • How does this fit into the wider landscape?