Discerning Futures

COURSE LEADERS’ CONFERENCE 2013

Professor Sally GlenDeputy Vice Chancellor, Student Experience

PLENARYINTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

Professor Graham Gibbs

IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE THROUGH IMPROVING COURSES

‘Dimensions of Quality’

Literature review to inform debates about:

➔ whether UK HE is comparatively good

➔ whether university league tables are valid

➔ whether the NSS and KIS provide info students can trust

‘Implications of ‘Dimensions of Quality’ in a Market Environment’

Review of institutional behaviour

➔ is how universities are responding to their PIs likely to “drive up quality”?

➔ which enhancement strategies are working?

‘Presage’ variables

➔ Resources per student predict much less than one might expect (but learning resources predict effort)

➔ Selectivity predicts performance, but not learning gains, or engagement, or use of pedagogies known to enhance engagement

➔ Research predicts performance, but not engagement, and negatively predicts satisfaction & measures of learning gains.

➔ Who does the teaching predicts performance and gains

➔ Reputation predicts only selectivity, funding & research

➔ Peer ratings only reflect reputation (US and TQA)

‘Process’ variables

➔ Cohort size, class size, ‘close contact’ with teachers (SSRs) (cohort effect avoidable...)

➔ Not class contact hours but total study hours

➔ Quality of teaching: training, student ratings, but not teachers’ research

➔ Quality of research environment: not at u/g level

Consequences for learning:

➔ Deep and surface approaches

➔ Engagement: close contact, high and clear expectations, good quick feedback, active and collaborative learning, time on task

‘Product’ variables

➔ Degree classifications

➔ Retention

➔ Employability

... too many confounding variables to be able to make much sense of any of this data, and degree classifications and employability data are highly unreliable

What to pay attention to in terms of pedagogy?

➔ Changing students: effort, internalisation of goals and standards, meta cognitive awareness, self-efficacy

➔ Changing teachers: who, and how sophisticated

➔ Moving from solitary to social learning

➔ Changing curricula: ➔ Focussing course design, review and evaluation around learning hours

➔ Shift from summative to formative assessment

➔ Making programmes coherent, with comprehensive changes implemented by course teams, not only by individuals (no matter how wonderful)

Departments and social mediation of quality

➔ Programmes vary widely in quality within institutions (except where ‘institutional pedagogy’)

➔ It can be very difficult for individual teachers to adopt effective pedagogies if no-one else does

➔ Institutions with no QE focus on programmes have problems

➔ Communities of practice (Havnes)

➔ Talking about teaching at programme level (TESTA)

➔ Employment practices (adjunct faculty, pseudo departments, Fordism)

➔ Modular structures, no assessment (or even shared understanding) of programme outcomes

➔ ...implies increased developmental focus on depts or or course teams (Lund, Oslo, Finland, Utrecht)

The ‘how’ of change...

1 Using teaching PIs to improve quality

2 Unanticipated impacts on curricula

3 Managerial vs devolved change

4 Student engagement

5 QA

1 Using teaching PIs to improve quality

➔ Unprecedented attention to quantitative PIs➔ Average NSS scores up every year➔ Some institutions climbing rankings every year➔ ...by paying attention and using clever change processes

➔ Exeter

➔ Coventry

➔ Winchester: TESTA assessment and feedback

1st degree programme at Winchester to use TESTA, now top ranked nationally

University of Winchester

1 Using teaching PIs to improve quality

➔ Unprecedented attention to quantitative PIs

➔ Average NSS scores up every year

➔ Some institutions climbing rankings every year

➔ ...by paying attention and using clever change processes

Exeter

Coventry

Winchester: 24 Universities now using TESTA

2 Unanticipated impacts on curricula

➔ Whole is less than the sum of the parts (OU, Plymouth, module level NSS scores)

➔ Course rationalisation, abandoning joint degrees

➔ Abandoning modularity altogether

➔ Bigger, longer, fewer modules, fewer in parallel

➔ Planned programme assessment regimes, including programme level learning outcomes

2 Unanticipated impacts on curricula

➔ Whole is less than the sum of the parts (OU)

➔ Course rationalisation, abandoning joint degrees

➔ Abandoning modularity altogether

➔ Bigger, longer, fewer modules, less in parallel

➔ Planned programme assessment regimes

... but this may cause

Less choice, less engagement

Larger classes

3 Managerial/centrist vs devolved change

➔ Institutional vs Dept level targets for PIs

➔ Volume of feedback

➔ Criteria and standards (and hence learning outcomes)

➔ Institutional learning outcomes/graduate attributes

➔ Volume of assessment

➔ Class size

➔ Use of VLE

4 Student engagement

➔ Students as change agents across departments (Exeter)

➔ Students as educational researchers across programmes (Winchester)

➔ Student teams as developers across Faculties (Sheffield)

➔ Changed practices, changed student attitudes

➔ Better engagement in studies (USA, NSSE)

➔ Improved NSS scores (2008-12 7%, Av 2%)

5 Quality Assurance

➔ Annual reviews of NSS scores trumping all other QA and QE processes

➔ Valid dimensions of quality entirely missing from formal quality reviews (e.g. formative-only assessment, Jessop 2012; student effort)

Conclusions

➔ Teaching quality PIs in the public domain are changing the market and will become more valid, more useful and more influential – and they operate at programme level

➔ It is possible to improve your PIs faster than the others

➔ The best way to do this is to

take local responsibility at programme level and change the institutional infrastructure to enable this to happen

involve students in the change process

➔ Local leadership of teaching is the new key role in universities