Higher Education Academy Annual Conference 2009

Back to Reports from the Sector

^{The Future of the Student Learning Experience}

^{Report by Dr John Wrighton, E-Learning Support Officer (Aberystwyth University)}

^{Wordle from Twitter updates by @DrWrighton from #HEA09}

 ^Introduction

Participation at the HEA conference proved to be an invaluable opportunity to engage in a diverse range of conversations regarding the future of the student learning experience.It included an extremely full program with high-quality presentations, relevant case studies and representatives from the pioneers of progressive thinking in higher education. A selection of the papers attended have been summarised below, both to give a flavour of current thinking (synthesizing core values to give a proleptic view of the future of the student learning experience) and documenting some specific examples of policy in practice.

 ^{Thematic Strands}

• Designing higher education of the future
• The students lifecycle
• Internationalisation
• Innovation
• Students of the future

^{Keynote Day 1: Uncommon Thinking for the Common Good}

Dr Diana Oblinger (President and CEO, Educause)

The title for the plenary address “uncommon thinking for the common good” referred to the implied social compact between higher education and society, i.e. that society looks to the sector not only for education but also for innovation and competitiveness, benefitting both in terms of economic prosperity and in fostering its citizenship.

Whilst our tendency is to describe the student body in the third person, Oblinger emphasised the importance of allowing for and listening to the student voice. At the same time, students (at least students of school-leaving age) were characterised as consummate information gatherers – fearless of technology, but not necessarily sophisticated users – and highly mobile – with a strong online sense of community.
Oblinger also looked outwards describing a globalised (interconnected) modern world that is both hyper-competitive and knowledge-driven; where innovation and entrepreneurship are key skills for the contemporary workplace. In this context, Oblinger commended those opportunities where students can work with others to develop these core skills, e.g. in research parks.

Oblinger identified three trends in designing the future of Higher Education:

1. Flexible, experiential learning
2. Networks (access & sharing not ownership, e.d. Google docs, clouds) and collaborative intelligence (e.g. platforms like Wikipedia redefined expertise)
3. Integrated education systems (fluid lifelong learning)

Technological advances are clearly the driving force behind these changes and Oblinger stressed that the internet is not merely a technology but heralds a change in mindset, providing the architecture for collaboration & participation.

^{Beyond the Essay? Innovation and tradition in assessment practice in English Studies}

Dr Jonathan Gibson (English Subject Centre)

Gibson began with the observation that the conventional written essay remains the privileged mode even within those departments that are embracing innovative forms of assessment (constituting in the main at least 50% of summative assessment).

The dominance of the essay is in part recognition of the:

• Flexibility and openness (which can be exploited by intelligent students, allowing for originality and independent thinking), combined with
• Testing and development of core threshold concepts (i.e. synthesis of complex arguments etc.)

In recognition both of the increased staff:student and the rising number of students without adequate academic writing skills, alternative forms of assessment are being introduced.

Gibson listed four aptitudes that the subject area seeks to foster through the essay assignment:

1. Reading
2. Gathering and understanding information
3. Constructing argumentation
4. Writing skills

And suggested a number of ways to address these aptitudes using innovations in assessment:

1. Small-scale creative writing activities, e.g. re-write a passage from a novel; helps to foster critical reading skills
2. Multiple-choice tests, e.g. students have to map a concept to a theory; enables broader subject testing than the usual two set-texts of an essay question
3. Portfolio assessment where conventional essay is fragmented into its constituent parts – planning, introduction, different types of paragraph (analytical, descriptive etc.)
4. Students write notes during seminar following the discussion argument (which are subsequently assessed) – attentive to the nuances of negotiation and debate.

References: 
Peter Womack (1993) ‘What are Essays For?’ in English in Education, 27 (2) Summer 1993 pp. 42-48 Available online here.

^{"Peer-Mentoring: Students Supporting Students through the Student Lifecycle"}

Baljit Gill (Aston University)

This session described a university-wide Peer Mentoring program for over 500 students offering additional support and facilitating transition across the student life-cycle.  The program covers the duration of the students’ university career including both pre-entry and post-graduation e-mentoring.

Unique to the scheme at Aston University is the compulsory training (including scenarios and role plays) for both mentors and mentees together. Mentors are also awarded a certificate in recognition of training undertaken and experience gained. The scheme allows mentees to chose from certain criterion (e.g. the gender of their mentor), although emphasis is placed on the importance of the process rather than the mentor themselves. Mentoring sessions constitute a half-hour weekly meeting though the chief concern is towards maintaining contact with the mentee.

In the ongoing process of feedback and evaluation, a survey of the areas of support requested showed the following percentages:

The Peer-Mentoring Program at Aston University has been fully embedded into students’ Personal Development Planning and is available to all students on a voluntary opt-in basis, not just for those who are perceived to be “struggling” with their learning experience. Further information can be obtained by contacting Baljit Gill.

Teaching & Learning Research Programme's Ten Evidence-Informed Principles for Higher Education

Prof. Alan Brown (University of Warwick)

The Teaching & Learning Research Programme’s (TLRP) ten evidence-informed principles synthesized the ‘big messages’ within TLRP’s project findings and thematic analysis for Higher Education. Covering 60 UK universities and colleges, TLRP has carried out 15 HE projects (including 7 widening participation projects and a number related to teacher education and training) from which these evidence-based principles are designed to inform policy, practices and pedagogy. Professor Alan Brown highlighted a number of the principles/key findings:

• Vocational routes into HE aid WP
• The personal networks developed by students at university should be highly valued, as well as opportunities to work with different people
• Whilst the emphasis is often on deep rather than surface learning, the ability to sustain an “organised effort” (often fostered in surface learning) is a key employability skill
• There should be a high premium on learning how to learn, and on supporting the learning and creativity of others

Supporting the Transition from Classroom teacher to E-Teacher

Alison Dickins and Kate Borthwick (Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies)

The Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS) is supporting teachers in developing expertise in the creation of effective online learning materials using a tried and tested pedagogic model for e-learning developments. Click here for the resulting LOC Tool Learning Object Workshop Repository.

The pedagogic template for the LOC tool was originally developed by Modern Languages at the University of Southampton and is based on Diana Laurillard’s conversational framework (discussion, adaptation, interaction, reflection).  With the provision of HEA/JISC funding this template was first used to create the offline LOC tool that was made available to subject teachers new to e-learning via a series of face-to-face workshops through 2007-08. In 2009, the online version together with a series of blended workshops has furthered the overall objective to support the transition for teachers to e-learning.

Key features of the LOC Tool include:

• clear pedagogic approach
• activity-led on-line learning materials
• scope for formative feedback
• supports a variety of content
• includes pop-up pedagogic tips

The Wiki Way to Develop Academic Writing Competence

Dr Rob Spence (Edge Hill University)

This paper presented an account of an ongoing investigation into the use of wikis to develop students’ academic writing skills through collaborative work. Undergraduate students of English were invited to collaborate on writing tasks with the specific aim of developing their competence through peer review and appraisal.

The motivation for the wiki project arose from the widely-commented (if only anecdotal) decline in student writing skills/literacy in HE. In particular, the wiki project sought to address three widely-perceived problems: students’ lack of confidence, students’ inability to deal with complex issues, students’ substandard written work and the tendency to “Wikipedia cut-and-paste”. 

The project aimed to address these problems by making the collaborative project work to these ends, in other words, to engage students in the writing process, encouraging them to reflect on the nature and purpose of academic writing, and to enable them to develop communication and collaborative skills.

The project also sought to provide a “real-world” context by specifying an audience for the wiki thereby allowing students to master the appropriate register and tone.

Whilst it was recognized that students learn highly-valuable and transferable skills in collaborative work, a number of limitations to the approach were identified:

• unequal distribution of workload across group
• unfamiliarity with working practices of the exercise (where students expect – and are generally more comfortable with – the conventional lecture-seminar framework)

In discussion, suggestions were forthcoming to address these issues:

• tutor assigns specific roles within the group
• tutor organizes the groups according to ability or even attendance record