Facing Up to Radical Change in Universities and Colleges

Steve Armstrong, Gail (both Senior Lecturers Thompson, Armstrong, Steve, Thompson, Gail (both Senior Lecturers, Sunderland Business School)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781138421417
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136354717
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This text explores how academics face up to radical changes in the learning environment. With the implementation of new technologies to support teaching and learning there is a need for more strategic approaches to teaching and learning.

Chapter 1 Changing Universities: From Evolution to Revolution

Gail Thompson

DOI: 10.4324/9780203062203-1

The last 15 years have seen a worldwide revolution in higher education. The university system has broadened to embrace a much bigger and more diverse student population, and the scope of educational delivery has been widened by the use of new technologies. A large proportion of the student population is less interested in enjoying the university experience for its own sake than in finding a job at the end of it. Many now opt for vocational courses, and following this trend, some universities recently have even started to offer degree courses in subjects which traditionally have been learned through apprenticeships.

Perhaps more significantly, there has also been a realization that completion of a course in higher education should no longer mark the end of the educational process. With today’s world changing ever more rapidly, we all must constantly adapt to different situations and acquire new knowledge. Learning has become a lifelong process for everyone, and consequently, higher education is becoming more process oriented. It is also reaching out beyond the boundaries of the traditional student population into industry, commerce and the service sector; to people who perhaps would never have contemplated taking a formal course in higher education in the past; and across national boundaries.

The revolution has largely been the doing of government agencies. Around the world, legislation has been introduced to promote higher education while keeping costs acceptable, mainly for industrial and commercial reasons. The resulting changes have been far-reaching and quite startling in the speed at which they have taken effect. In the UK we have seen:

• the replacement of the dual system of universities and polytechnics by a single university system;
• a radical overhaul of the funding system, which is now based on performance indicators;
• a significant increase in student numbers (without proportional increase in resources);
• an increase in off-campus and work-based learning;
• changes in student funding, with a shift from grants to repayable loans, and more emphasis on family support;
• modularization or unitization of programmes of study;
• movement from an elite system to a mass system.

Throughout the world, similar changes are taking place; for example in Australia, where parallel processes have been moving even faster than in the UK, in the United States, and in South Africa and New Zealand, where similar trends have been observed.

These are changes that are familiar to all of us who work in higher education. The problems and issues raised by the changes, and how we can cope with them, have been the subject of much discussion, and this may sometimes have caused us to forget why these changes have occurred. Why, in particular, have governments taken so much (costly) interest in changing a system which has evolved over centuries and which has, until recently, served its students well? The cynics amongst us would doubt that it is simply from an altruistic ambition to build the perfect educational system, suspecting more political or financial motives. In fact, one of the main forces for change has been the drive for international competitiveness. Research shows that nations that have been most successful in terms of competitiveness over recent years are those that have developed a new type of educational system. Their new model is much more broadly based than the old one; it still fosters specialization in academic or vocational subjects, but now alongside this is placed competence in a range of core skills which generate adaptability, creativity, and the flexibility to respond to changing demands. The culture of lifelong learning forms the foundation for this new model. It is clear why this has happened.

• In today’s environment, new knowledge is being acquired at a greater rate than ever before, so that knowledge gained only a short while ago is useless or obsolete.
• Advances in technology are accelerating at a rate unimagined ten years ago, and the workforce is having to change constantly to keep up to date.
• Jobs are less secure than they ever were. Gone are the days when a worker could stay in the same job throughout his or her working life. Now, most people will not even stay in the same type of job for very long.

It is easy to see that the traditional model of education, which in the main focused on the attainment of a discrete body of specialist knowledge, is no longer as relevant as it was. Employers now want their workforce to be flexible and innovative, expecting them to be capable of learning new things as the need arises. Knowledge for its own sake is no longer so important. Technology now provides us with a vast repository of up-to-date knowledge at the fingertips of everyone with the skills to access and use it.

Many universities, however, have been slow to acknowledge this trend. In 1992, Britain was ranked thirteenth on the world competitiveness scoreboard (Amin Rajan, 1993), and many researchers blame this decline on the educational system_

‘a major barrier to upgrading and even to sustaining competitive advantage in industry (has been the way) the British educational system has badly lagged behind that of virtually all the nations we studied. Access to top quality education has been limited to a few, and a smaller percentage of students go on to higher education than in most other advanced nations’

(Porter, 1990)

In 1995, a report from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation National Commission on Education stated:

‘According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Kingdom in 1992 had the lowest rate of participation of 17 year olds in full-time education in the European Community. The average participation rate for 22 countries covered world-wide was 75%; this country’s proportion was 57%.’

It is little wonder, then, that the British government has acted with such conviction to press ahead with substantial changes to the system, and of course the picture will be the same in all countries trying to stay competitive.

However, I would not want to pretend that our educational revolution has only political or economic advantages. We should not ignore the fact that the very nature of our society has changed significantly over the last generation, and that this in itself has brought about a need for a review of the role of the educational system. Rogers and Freiberg explain it thus:

‘Forty years ago the education of students was sustained by five pillars of support: families, culture, religion, community, and the school. The high rate of divorce, combined with the economic and personal needs for both parents to work outside the home, has shattered the ability of families to focus on and support the education of their children. Divorce, job changes, and housing mobility resulting from poverty have also destabilised the community. According to researchers, if current trends remain the same, by the year 2020 nearly 50% of all students will be educationally disadvantaged.’

(Rogers and Freiberg, 1994)

This picture is starting to look rather gloomy for those of us in higher education. It seems that not only do we have the responsibility for the wealth of the nation on our shoulders, but we now also have to make up for the shortfalls in our society! We should, however, be cheered by the fact that the changes that we are seeing have sound educational principles behind them, even if they do sometimes seem to be secondary. We now have a system that is open to a much wider range of people than ever in the past, and at last there seems to be a widespread acceptance of the idea that the true role of educators is to show students how to learn. So much emphasis has traditionally been placed on teaching that learning has often been relegated to second place, and this fact has not gone unnoticed or without comment.

‘It seems that, to most people, teaching involves keeping order in the classroom, pouring forth facts usually through lectures or textbooks, giving examinations and setting grades. This stereotype is badly in need of overhauling …the primary task of the teacher is to permit the student to learn, to feed his or her own curiosity. Merely to absorb facts is of only slight value in the present, and usually of even less value in the future.

‘Nearly every student finds that large portions of the curriculum are meaningless. Thus, education becomes a futile attempt to learn material that has no personal meaning. Such learning involves the mind only: It is learning that takes place ‘from the neck up’. It does not involve feelings or personal meanings; it has no relevance for the whole person. In contrast, there is such a thing as significant, meaningful, experiential learning.’

(Rogers and Freiberg, 1994)

With the spread of student-centred learning approaches, distance learning, group projects, and so on (admittedly introduced mainly because of the strain on conventional methods and resources) teachers are being forced into the role of facilitators of learning, and perhaps this is one of the major advantages of the changes we are seeing. This theme is addressed in several chapters of our book.

In addition, the higher education system is increasingly focusing on the importance of quality assessment, assurance and enhancement. The changes in higher education have resulted in educators being much more accountable to all their stakeholders, not least the students. Perhaps because students are now required to make much more of a personal financial commitment to their own education, they are outspoken in demanding good service. There has been a growth in formal quality systems which many would argue are cumbersome and hinder the educational process. Nevertheless, the systems have made education much more transparent, and as a result many positive changes have been made.

So, herein lie the roots of our revolution. It is a revolution because of the speed at which the changes are being made, and because it demands a culture change, to one of flexible, lifelong learning available to everyone.

Universities that fail to face up to the changes are unlikely to survive, and we are already seeing widespread strategic development of institutions to take them into the next century with the new culture and ethos. But change does not come easily. Higher education has a long history embedded in the traditional approach, the changes have no precedent, and they are happening at breakneck speed. Additionally, many of the staff within the system began their careers long before the start of the revolution, and are understandably still immersed in the old methods and traditions. Trying to change their whole approach while dealing with the heavier workload resulting from the vast increase in student numbers has been no easy task for even the most committed, enlightened, and enthusiastic academic manager.

It is therefore little wonder that there is a significant strategic gap in higher education. On the one hand, we have a rapidly changing environment demanding quite a different higher education experience to the traditional model, and on the other are the deliverers of education, finding it difficult, for varied reasons, to reject the established paradigms that have always worked in the past. Of course, students and staff alike are caught in the middle of this gap formed by the mismatch between demand and established practice, and many are finding it difficult to cope. It is this issue that we aim to address in this book. We look at the issues from four perspectives.

In Section I, we examine how technology is being used to support teaching and learning. While there has been a great deal written on this subject in recent years, the main emphasis has been on the learner perspective. In Chapter 2, Philip Barker takes a fresh approach by concentrating on how technology can be used to support teaching. His chapter addresses the important issue of how computer technology can be used to enhance and augment lectures, increase their accessibility, and improve their quality from both the staff and student perspectives.

Wendy Hall and Su White consider that the technology revolution has been very slow to take hold in higher education, largely because the sector has been so resistant to change. In Chapter 3, they describe how their own organization has overcome this resistance via their TLTP-funded Scholar Project, which has, they argue, successfully changed the culture of the university and allowed bold objectives to be set for the use of computer-based learning in their programmes.

Chapter 4 draws on experience from outside the higher education sector. Gerald Prendergast of Gloucestershire Constabulary presents an extended case study of how computer-mediated communication has been used on a distance learning course to enable a tutor in one location to facilitate the supervisory skills of distributed students. He shares with us his successes and his problems from his pilot cohort, and offers reflections on the role of the tutor in this type of learning situation. It is particularly interesting to look at the way that he describes how electronic communication media are able to support teaching and learning processes that we used to think were exclusive to the classroom. His case study shows us that support, good humour and friendly interaction can all take place, even though the students are dispersed and not always working in real time.

In Chapter 5, Ray McAleese asks the reader to think seriously about how we can make sure that technology is used to serve educational purposes, rather than education being adapted to suit the technology available. This cautionary note is a suitable way to close section one, for it is important that as we plan for change in our universities and colleges, we should be both pragmatic in the ways in which we use technology and visionary in the way that we embrace product change.

Section II comprises five chapters that consider the new strategies and policies that will have to be developed by academic managers in order to ensure that our universities and colleges can cope with the radical changes that we are facing. T Dary Erwin opens the section with a US perspective. This has the familiar story of budget cuts, increasing class sizes, and frozen vacant posts. He argues that the solution to improving this situation may be in our hands, explaining that a review of institutional assessment and evaluation processes is vital to provide the data with which we can support our arguments for additional resources.

In the next chapter Mike Laycock describes the ‘QILT’ process that has been adopted by the University of East London. He argues that this approach facilitates changes and improvement in his organization, in contrast to the traditional quality assurance approach adopted by most universities, which, he maintains, only serves to slow change and stifle improvement. The chapter describes how the whole institution is becoming involved in the improvement process, and the experience leads the author to argue strongly that university staff development should not be centralized but should be the responsibility of managers at a local level, who can ensure the development of all their staff.

Next, Alastair Pearce provides us with a really radical vision of the future. He suggests that modularization and unitization have not gone far enough towards providing a truly effective system of education. He suggests that that if we move to learning outcomes as the ‘unit of delivery’, students will be able to tailor their education to their needs and pick up elements that are most useful to them. He has also been brave enough to consider the problems that this might cause in university administration systems!

In Chapter 9, Sally Anderson and Fred Percival address the very topical subject of extending access. They describe two projects from Napier University in Edinburgh which are aimed at extending access to two groups of potential students: those in the FE sector, and those who do not have a traditionally accepted qualification, particularly among the unemployed. The paper describes how the two schemes were set up, and how some of the associated problems were overcome.

A chapter by Barry Jackson concludes the section on strategy and policy. He considers why academic managers have so far been largely ineffective in facilitating change in teaching practices within HE. His conclusion is that before organizations can change, the managers themselve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Contributors
• 1. Changing Universities: From Evolution to Revolution
• Section I: Using Technology to Support Teaching and Learning
• 2. Assessing Attitudes to Electronic Lectures
• 3. Teaching and Learning Technology: Shifting the Culture
• 4. Using Computer-Mediated Communication to Develop Supervisory Skills
• 5. Technology in Education to Technology of Education: Concepts, Conflicts and Compromises
• Section II: Developing Strategies and Policies for Changing Universities
• 6. Developing Strategies and Policies for Changing Universities
• 7. QILT: A Whole-Institution Approach to Quality Improvement in Learning and Teaching
• 8. Splitting the Atom of Education
• 9. Developing HE Staff to Appreciate the Needs of Flexible Learning Access Students – Developing Flexible Learning Access Students to Appreciate the Needs of HE
• 10. Managing to Help Teachers Change: An Agenda for Academic Managers
• Section III: Responding to Changes in the Student Body
• 11. Dissertation Supervision: Managing the Student Experience
• 12. The Rise of the ‘Strategic Student’: How Can We Adapt to Cope?
• 13. From Teacher to Facilitator of Collaborative Enquiry
• 14. Issues of Power and Control: Moving from ‘Expert’ to ‘Facilitator’
• Section IV: Staff Development Approaches and Methods
• 15. Reducing Stress in Teaching and Learning
• 16. Reinventing Lecturers, Students and Learning Programmes
• 17. Some Issues Impacting on University Teaching and Learning: Implications for Academic Developers
• 18. Facing up to Radical Changes in Universities and Colleges