Finance, cost/efficiency gains (more students, less money), funding models
Growing consumer society
Social change – expectation to find information immediately
Technology access – cheaper, more bandwidth, mobile technologies (5yrs)
Leitch
Daily mirror/election
Validation
Cost to student – economic model
Student expectations of technology
Economic change – flexible, agile
Globalisation
Shrinking overseas student numbers/demographic
Increased levels of student qualification
Market for graduates, employability
Academic expectations of technology
Peak oil
What technology can re rely on learners having
Harnessing Technology
New builds
Skilling of the workforce
WBL, JIT learning
Good business sense ->SMT like them because of this
Courses for the public
Change of student behaviour e.g. no grant=> students have to work
Engage in the student demographic -> diversity
Make learning more engaging & fun
Competencies self selection, learner driven
Student retention
Marketplace
Provide wide range of courses
50% target
Pedagogic desperation
Environmental sustainability
Safeguarding universities
Personalisation, meaningful/relevant to students
Demand – students
Policy, Lifelong learning agenda
New learners
Digital natives
What are the processes of interest?
High impact/Hard to change
Curriculum design
Assessment
Personalised curriculum support
OER
Early unclassified results
Skills->Objectives->Job profile mapping
Transitional links
Reflection, PDP
Institutional governance
Timetabling
Enrolment
HR processes and culture/Resource mgt
Devolved facilities
Learner-driven learning
Flexible VLE
Removing legacy systems
Identity management, access, attendance
High impact/Easier to change
Assessment
Action planning
Negotiated curriculum
Tracking achievements
Connecting stakeholders
Evidence collection
Low energy lightbulbs
Pastoral support, IAG tutorials
User-generated content
Free on-demand (content?)
Flexible payment
Paperless HR process
Estates
Marketing + CRM +Recruitment
Validation (Modular, workflow)
APEL
Low impact/Easier to change
Progress reviews/students tripartite process
Student admin
24/7 support
Transition links - local processes
Define different APEL process
Negotiated awards
Mobile phones
Open Source Software policy
Interventions
These are the specific sets of recommendations developed by our groups. I'll put the video pitch and the photos of notes up soon, and transcribe the outputs.
Validation processes that are agile and proportionate, enabling smaller courses and courses on demand. The recommendation is that pilots are developed with the regulatory agencies involved so that institutions can try out more flexible approaches to designing, validating and offering courses.
Enabling the use of net resources in education, supporting teachers and students in making effective use of resources and exercising appropriate discrimination. Recommendation is for materials supporting teacher education and student skills.
Marking processes that supports personalised coursework, where the submissions are less media-specific, enabling students to submit work in media they are confident in (e.g. video, text, audio) without causing problems for markers and institutions. The recommendation is to support a toolkit for "social marking" that involves students as well as staff in holistic rather than atomic assessment of student work.
Recognising prior experience in formal education, developing support for Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning, and associated information, advice and guidance, particularly to support workforce development and linking education with employment. The recommendation is to support process modelling to better understand how APEL and similar processes fit today, and can be enhanced in the future.
Making the VLE flexible to handle new ways of learning, decoupling the processes of planning, engagement, and assessment in the VLE and reconnecting them more flexibly through a coordination mechanism, supporting, for example, engaging in academic planning and assessment in one organisation, but engagement in another - such as in a work-based system.
Validation
Questions
Does the process need to exist at all, it its present state?
Why isn't it an ongoing process? If a short run award does it need the heavy engineered process? Do we need different validation processes for different approaches? Good practice/ models.
Is there an issue with QAA saying all degrees from the universities are the same?
Drivers
Employers looking for responsive award development and flexible on/ off to programme
Leitch - widening participation, reduction in traditional learners
Employees & Learners, employability, opportunity to earn and learn, greater choice/ personalisation of award
Institutions - aware of need to change
Globalisation - links back to employers
Impact
Quicker validation
Proportionate effort for accreditation
Better tailored awards
Tried and tested models
Readiness
Some are very ready, recognising need to change from senior management with early adopters such as Staffordshire University
Intervention
Institutions need to communicate requirements to QAA for flexible learning, via groups
Institutions need to trail existing models such as flap and take it a step further with trailing using existing accredited modules to create individual awards.
HEFCE lead a review of the role/ responsibilities of the QAA and if international models would work in the UK (i.e. New Zealand)
This session will explore the opportunities for re-inventing existing processes, or designing and implementing new processes and systems, to support more flexible ways of engaging in learning.
Topics to be explored are not pre-determined but may include areas such as
agile/iterative curriculum design
streamlining course validation
flexible enrollment and registration
just-in-time, rolling, and threshold based offerings
"uncourses"
reporting and funding models for encouraging innovation and flexibility
mechanisms for recognising and accrediting informal learning
better integration work-based learning and formal education
leveraging social network dynamics in semi-open and wholly-open online courses
In addition to the processes themselves, consideration should also be given to the technologies that can support new models, or that conversely are "fossilising" the existing institutional processes
There are no pre-set presentations for this session; delegates should instead bring to the session their ideas and inspiration to be developed with the help of our facilitators.
