Re-inventing institutional Processes to Support flexible Learning

One of the sessions in the JISC CETIS Conference 2008 Programme

The results


What are the drivers and influences on flexible learning?

 * Changing student demographic
 * Parallel vocational & HE
 * Up-skilling workforce, replacing retirement age, rapid retraining
 * 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

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

 * 1)       Questions
 * 2)       Does the process need to exist at all, it its present state?
 * 3)      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.
 * 4)       Is there an issue with QAA saying all degrees from the universities are the same?
 * 5)       Drivers
 * 6)       Employers looking for responsive award development and flexible on/ off to programme
 * 7)     Leitch - widening participation, reduction in traditional learners
 * 8)      Employees & Learners, employability, opportunity to earn and learn, greater choice/ personalisation of award
 * 9)      Institutions - aware of need to change
 * 10)      Globalisation - links back to employers
 * 11)       Impact
 * 12)       Quicker validation
 * 13)     Proportionate effort for accreditation
 * 14)      Better tailored awards
 * 15)     Tried and tested  models
 * 16)       Readiness
 * 17)       Some are very ready, recognising need to change from senior management with early adopters such as Staffordshire University
 * 18)      Intervention
 * 19)       Institutions need to communicate requirements to QAA for flexible learning, via groups
 * 20)      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.
 * 21)       HEFCE lead a review of the role/ responsibilities of the QAA and if international models would work in the UK (i.e. New Zealand)

What people wrote and drew
http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=20625113@N00&tags=cetis2008conference&lang=en-us&format=rss_200|title=none

The original agenda
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.