Tuesday 10 June 2008

Good morning everyone

Over the last two years I’ve often been asked to speak on how we, as a sector, are working to enhance the learning experience. But when I was asked to speak today, I wanted to go a bit further than that, and to explore how this crucially important agenda might evolve in the future. So I’m going to be doing some crystal ball gazing over the next fifteen minutes or so, and I hope that by doing this I will be able to provoke some new lines of thinking and discussion between us – both today and on other occasions.

First of all, I’d like to welcome to the work that is being done across the sector to enhance the learning experience. I know we can say that every institution at least has the student experience on the agenda- although it seems to me that the diversity of approaches and the varied extent to which they are fully embedded reflects the extent to which this is a problem unsolved rather than the nature of the institution in which they are being attempted.

Let’s just look for a moment at some of this work.

The last few years have seen the development of student engagement through the quality framework, and this has in turn produced much better course rep structures, and increasing involvement of students in internal quality assurance processes. The student written submission has been proven as a crucial quality assurance tool. In addition, we have developed the National Student Survey, which now enjoys a really high response rate, and is taken really seriously across the sector. Sometimes, it seems, a little too seriously.

The government is investing three hundred thousand pounds in extending the students’ union evaluation initiative, allowing us to take far more students unions through their own quality process, especially those unions that would not be able to afford to access SUEI if they had to pay the full cost. A rash of governance reviews within students’ unions show how our part of the sector is taking the way it is run very seriously as an issue – and I hope demonstrates our commitment to playing an even more important role in the higher education experience in the future.

And on those questions that are right at the core of what we do, there has also been really positive change. Higher education is continuing to expand, and as it expands, provision is becoming more flexible for students. There is an ever-growing range of courses available though collaborative or work-based routes, and an improved focus on additional services that add much-needed layers of support, in careers services and learning support, for example.

Of course, things aren’t perfect. If we look at what an HEI might consider as forming part of the “student experience”, we will find as many definitions as we find HEIs- with some, it seems, finding the very acts of teaching and learning hardest to reform. And some of the ideology surrounding the “student experience” doesn’t help either. The press- and yes, sometimes, the prospectus- still paint pictures of dreamy spires, tiny tutorials and finding oneself when the reality in all parts of the sector has changed. Crucially- we often still market the “experience” of HE whilst the realities of flexible provision, commodification and marketisation bite away at that broad experience, leaving impoverished teaching and learning exposed at the bone.

Enhancement of that learning experience is a continuous process, and the work will always bring new demands at the institutional level. There are a number of specific things I think we do need to see in all institutions, and the most important is that the QAA should bring student reviewers onto audit teams as quickly as possible. This kind of student engagement would prove that this is a serious agenda in principle, and the scheme has been proven to work in practice in Scotland. Not only that, but I genuinely think it would have a major positive impact on the audit experience.

But this is just one issue, and to an extent, I think it’s genuinely difficult to agree on the other things that institutions and agencies might do next to take this agenda forward. Perhaps the greatest cause for celebration is in knowing that in many institutions, there is commitment and a set of structures in place to ensure that enhancement of the learning experience becomes truly embedded.

I think there is one crucial area where this agenda is not yet embedded – in fact, so far from this that it will require a whole new way of thinking, and a whole new program of work to change. Today I want to expose what I think is a major gap in what we’re doing, but not only that – I want us to take a moment to imagine what we might be able to do about it.

Before I get into that discussion, though, I need to set out a few premises for us to work with.

Firstly, that a market logic is becoming more prevalent in higher education. This was an explicit intention of the legislation in 2004, and it is a relief that a full-scale market did not emerge as was originally intended. You will know that NUS campaigned against that legislation, and you will also probably know that we intend to challenge this market vision in the review of HE funding expected next year. We are setting aside our long-term commitment to opposing the idea of an individual contribution, so that we can give a higher priority to ensuring that the development of a full blown market in fees is prevented. I’m not going to dwell on the funding issue now – perhaps we will discuss it in more detail later – but the market aspect is very important to the wider argument I want to make about the learning experience.

Secondly, students are increasingly short of time. Evidence collected by the TUC and ourselves last year, as well as research by HEPI on the student experience, and a range of other sources, all show that more students are doing paid work than ever before, and they are working for longer. Not only that, but it has been repeatedly shown that long hours of paid work – anything over 20 a week – has a clear detrimental effect on a person’s learning outcomes. It is easy to see why this should be so. For many students, the time they have to study is severely squeezed, and this doesn’t simply imply fewer hours in the library, but other effects too – tiredness in lectures, an inability to socialise with peers on the same programme, a loss of the capacity needed just to think things through. Contact time with teaching staff is important to good learning, but it’s too easy to say contact time is too low – we know that the time offered needs to me more flexible so that students can take it up. Students’ lack of time might not be the sector’s fault- but adapting to it is the sector’s responsibility.

And thirdly, there is a growing consumerist tendency amongst students, which is being stimulated by influential voices within the sector and government. Witness the rise of student contracts, which are usually faulty anyway because they are so loaded in favour of the institution and offer no protections for students. But it’s more than that – the whole idea is inherently faulty because these contracts are so inconsistent with the values of higher education. They promote the notion that learning is a commodity, not a process. They imply a relationship between institution and student based on obligation, not a mutual desire to accomplish something.

You can see how this all adds up to a student mindset of great concern for the return they get for their investment – both of time, and increasingly, of money – and less of a focus on the potential rewards of a broad and well-rounded learning experience. It used to be that we all agreed that students wanted the total university experience – but now, in the pressure cooker world of education and employment, students and recent graduates are becoming more and more focused on getting in to what is perceived to be the ‘right’ university, and getting out with the ‘right’ kind of degree. This means that new avenues for exploration or departures in thinking – are often seen as distractions, best avoided. The old characterisation of higher education as a gravy train for lazy, subsidised students has gone completely – and rightly so. But in its place, we run the risk of producing a generation of students who can’t get off the treadmill.

So I think the one major area where we haven’t yet got close to embedding a culture of learning enhancement is in the mindset of students themselves. In fact, I’m worried that they are drifting in the opposite direction. And if we don’t enable students to reflect on what they’re doing here, then it’s possible, even likely, that this changing student mindset could have a reductive effect on the learning that takes place within our sector. To avoid any doubt, I’m by no means blaming students for this condition; they are victims of the way our sector is evolving, in the ways I have just set out, and indeed the way that our society and economy are changing more broadly.

The consequences are potentially very serious. I referred earlier to a growing disconnection between academics and students – I think this can only get worse as students, under massive pressure to perform, increasingly blame their teachers for shortcomings that are often not the teacher’s fault. And academics, also under massive pressure to perform, especially in research, will struggle even more to respond to genuine student needs. So we will have a vicious cycle that threatens to undermine the single most critical relationship in higher education – that between student and teacher.

And that’s not all. Student perceptions of their own learning will become more and more instrumental, and they will become so focused on certain, highly particular outcomes, that they miss out on the other potential outcomes they never knew were there. A concern for getting value for money is fast becoming an obsession with getting value for money. Government is driving that change of ethos, through a rhetoric of market choice, ‘investment’ in learning, and other fiscal analogies. But we know in our hearts it is an incomplete vision.

So how can we avoid this? As I have already said, I want to see the sector take responsibility for the response, and if the solution involves action from others as well as internal change, to start to engage on that basis. But to begin that process, I want to propose three strategic aims.

We must ensure that students are not only fully engaged in their subject and the work on which they will be assessed, but are also prepared to actively seek out enhancement to their own learning.

To enable this, we must train students much more effectively and rapidly in the values of independent learning, as well as its mechanics.

And I think we must draw these things together, by establishing within our sector a genuine sense of mutuality in the production of learning.

I want to look at how these aims might be pursued.

It begins, I believe, in ensuring that students have planned ahead when they start their course. They should understand the structure of the programme and the options they are able to take – and this can be achieved through a commitment to improving student information, although in many places it is already very good.

The next step, though, is to enable and support students to build in additions to support their own learning. For example, for a given module students might be asked to identify their own extended reading list, or to find a suitable conference they could attend at some point during the year, or to run a study group with other students. This essentially amounts to a much more sophisticated form of personal planning, which supports students to manage their time. But it would bring about a further benefit – self-directed but institutionally supported enhancement to learning.

This would represent the first step in a shift towards supported flexible enhancement. But institutions should do more. Perhaps every degree course should begin with a short course on independent learning. I know that some universities will complain that this is remedial work, and that the school system is supposed to teach it, but I think that’s passing the buck. The emphasis here is on helping students to take responsibility for making their own learning more effective.

And working across all this, we need a commitment to rebuilding the relationship between teachers and students. Sometimes I am attacked because certain academics view the learner voice agenda as a driver of consumerism. But this is a red herring – building the kind of dialogue I describe is the antidote to consumerism because it focuses attention on the processes and outcomes of learning, not on mechanistic contract terms. I don’t claim that the relationship should be based on equality – only that it should be underpinned by a sense of mutual endeavour.

But above all, we need a deeper understanding of our students- and a much better sense, at all levels, of what it is we are supposed to do in response to that understanding.

There is a school of thought amongst widening participation advocates that says you need to prepare people to fit HE. Inspire them, summer school them, and study skill them so they’ll fir when they arrive. Of course the trouble with that approach is that it suggests that HEIs can be let off the hook once different sorts of students are in. They can’t. We need to adapt and modernise the understanding of the “student” and their “experience” during as well as pre-entry.

There’s a different school of thought that suggests you widen participation by making HE fit the student. Work based learning, 2 year programmes and other forms of flexible provision all matter- but we need to be careful. All of those efforts focus on the raw acts and locations of teaching and learning, but often ignore the wider questions of the benefits of an immersive and developmental HE experience. If the logic of the market means that the middle classes are trained to find themselves, but the rest wait for an impoverished qualification to find them, we all lose out.
 
So very briefly, and in conclusion:

The sector is doing good work on enhancing the learning experience, which I’m sure will be highlighted and showcased throughout this event.

But even with this being the case, good learning is under threat from growing individualism, consumerism, and market logic.

Part of the answer to this must be to fundamentally change the way that we support students to learn, engage with scholarship, and relate to their teachers and each other.

It also involves a better understanding of students and their lives- and the whole sector considering both how it can change in response at the so called top, and ensure an HE experience that goes beyond the qualification at the so called bottom.

Which, above all else, means dismantling the market- and all its unhelpful effects- for good.

I don’t doubt that these things represent a major challenge, and there will be those who do not agree with the analysis or the proposals I have made. But whatever your view, I invite you to engage us in a debate about how the learning experience in higher education can be improved still further in the years ahead.

Thank You

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/wesstreeting/275543.aspx