Dr Alison Le Cornu, SFHEA, FSEDAAcademic Lead: Flexible learning 10 April 2014

Choice and opportunity: Are these realistic goals for higher education?

Sets out HEFCE's high-level approach to tackling the challenges and opportunities of higher education reform.…‘We have identified a number of key principles – opportunity, choice, and excellence – which will drive change in higher education and guide our future work.’https://www.hefce.ac.uk/about/howweoperate/strategystatement/

Hefce strategy statement (2011)

We will aim to support a higher education sector with a diverse and flexible range of provision, embracing all academic disciplines and building further on the wide range of qualifications currently available through full- or part-time study and accelerated learning.

• Students need to be able to make informed choices

• Location and type of courses must reflect student demand

• New approaches must not compromise quality or standards

• Inclusion of more private sector providers 3

Choice

A renewed commitment to high-quality higher education that is more responsive to student choice, which provides the best possible student experience and which helps improve social mobility.

• International reputation

• ‘New arrangements’• Internationally

excellent and world-leading research

4

Excellence

People with the potential to benefit from successful participation in higher education should have the opportunity to do so.

• Widening participation• Monitoring the effects

of the new financial system

• Renewed focus on the whole life-cycle of higher education from pre-entry, through admission, study support, successful completion at undergraduate level and progress on to further study or employment.

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Opportunity

Choice in how, when, where and at what pace students will learn

Pace, place and mode of delivery

(Image source: http://taspolicies-elearn.wikispaces.com/FACS+and+Problem-Based+Learning; accessed 17 March 2014)

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Flexible learning

Internal• Student fees and

loans• Earn while you learn• Employability

(Image source: http://www.eitacp.com/program-fees/; accessed 17 March 2014)

Click icon to add clip art

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Drivers

External• Mobility• Mobile technologies• Employment patterns• Outcomes-based

employment?• Globalisation• 24/7 culture• Individualisation and

personalisation• Big data

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Drivers – or facilitators?

• Universities mostly administrative campuses

• Nutbeam: The end of the university campus?

• Lifelong learners – MOOCs?

• Mobile learners, mobile employees

• Huge consortia of collaborating universities (quality, standards, credit transfer)

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The extreme view!

http://www.hepi.ac.uk/files/HEPIJamilSalmiLecture23%20February2011-2.pdf; accessed 17 March 2014.

Little change• Students claim their

rite of passage from childhood to adulthood

• Loan system functions adequately

• Ongoing division in fee structure dividing full-time and part-time students

• Credit transfer not widely accepted

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The conservative view

Image source: https://www.temple.edu/medicine/education/student_affairs.htm; accessed 17 March 2014.

Necessary• Equip students for a

changing world• Shift to a part-time

paradigm for everyone

• Commonly-agreed and accepted robust credit transfer system – worldwide?

Possible• ‘Massage’ university

systems and structures to introduce (small-scale) flexibility

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What is necessary and possible?

Provided on handout. Available in Flexible Learning Summit Report

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Barriers and enablers

Are choice and opportunity realistic goals for higher education in the 21st century?

Questions and comments welcome.

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What do you think?

Report: Professor Ron Barnett, Emeritus Professor, Institute of Education, London• Published 2nd week of

June• Supported by 6 other

reports available on HEA website

Is the future flexible?• Guardian Round

Table event, 23 May 2014

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Conditions of Flexibility: Securing a more responsive HE sector

Keep in touch• Join the flexible

learning mailing list through ‘My Academy’

• FL email: flexiblelearning@heacademy.ac.uk

• Twitter: @HEA_flexible

More opportunities• HEA Annual

Conference, 2 and 3 July, Aston UniversityBooking: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/annual-conference/booking-information

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Thank you!