Paul Ramsden was asked to consider the student experience in higher education.
How institutions respond to increasing information from students is an important facet of today’s higher education landscape.
Prof. Ramsden has now delivered his report: The future of Higher Education - Teaching and the Student Experience [PDF 172 kb] which is publicly available for you to comment on. (An executive summary [PDF 24kb] of this report is also available. As are the appendices and bibliography for the report.)
You can join the continuing discussion on the issues and recommendations by posting your views on any aspect of Prof. Ramsden’s report on this blog.
Comments made on this page will be brought to the attention of the respective policy handlers for this issue on a weekly basis.
We look forward to hearing from you.
(Comments posted on this topic earlier in the higher education debate process are still available in the archive for you to consult should you wish.)
I wish to share my mature full time / part time student experiences:
1. Full time medical related degree 5 years(1970)
2. Full time BTEC computer science 2 years(1997)
3. Full time computer degree 3 years(2000)
4. Part time MSc.2 years(2002)
I found all coures to be very demanding, with tight time scales and constant evaluation of progress. But without doubt the best structured was the BTEC, which not ownly required high attendance from the student(95%), but provided great bredth and depth in subject material throughout. The quality and commitment of staff was very high. The assessments and reports of staff were shared with the students throughout, and a detailed evaluation of the students strengths and weeknesses provided with the final diploma. Employers please note!
I was able to appreciate this as a well motivated mature student, and have used all my aquired skills since then (I hope to good effect). All courses were funded by part time jobs, often on saturdays and sundays.
It could be argued that good facilities already exist, so why change the system if it isn’t broken? Change for changes’ sake suggests political manoevering of self interested groups, rather than a genuine wish to improve. It should be the focus of government to maximise the investment already made. Accountability certainly should be at the fore front of any organisation, and the flatter the structure the more likely this will be. But don’t squander that most precious of resources, the well motivated and inspirational staff please!
(I am not in education)
I have been disappointed by the lack of debate on this blog, despite been pointing colleagues across the country to the website. Perhaps this says something about the use of electronic delivery! Or perhaps it says something about the culture of fear in which many academics work?
Although Paul Ramsden has some useful and interesting things to say - the Swedish system is worthy of greater consideration than he had space to expound, but so too is the Dutch experience - I wonder whether he is the right person to do this.
After all, the Higher Education Academy is the tool of vice-chancellors and principals, not an independent organisation in its own right. This makes it difficult for Paul to take an objective, critical stance. To my mind, universities have been increasingly reliant on PR to gloss over the differences between rhetoric and reality and the Higher Education Academy has been reluctant to challenge this. This is apparent in Paul’s report where little attempt has been made to go behind the official statements and to test the evidence to support the assertions made. Yes, there may be changes in thinking towards the student experience but I would find it much more likely that vice- chancellors are becoming much more ‘media-savvy’ and trying to change their image without changing their practices.
Too many initiatives (eg NTFS, CETL, even QAA latterly) have relied on the gentlemanly principle that universities will always tell the unvarnished truth. My experience has been that universities have been only too willing to go beyond mild hyperbole in order to gain pecuniary advantage or an increase in prestige or to head off unwanted criticism. No wonder that plagiarism thrives in such an atmosphere.
Perhaps the time has come for an independent Higher Education Academy to lead a reinvigoration of university ethics and values.
Hi. I’ve posted a few thoughts on this report here - http://terrywassall.jiscinvolve.org/2008/12/19/teaching-and-the-student-experience/ and on a linked wiki page - http://sites.google.com/site/hefutures/teaching-and-the-student-experience. I found the report very useful and I welome particularly the emphasis on rewarding learning related scholarship and the revaluation of learning and teaching as a career path, in addition to the thought provoking ideas on inducting students into a partnership relationship with the institution and its academic and research staff. I had some reservations about seemingly overly rosey picture of the current state of affairs as this does not match my own experience, not so much at my own instititution but on the basis or the circumstantial evidence gleaned across the HE sector from conferences and the educational blogosphere. However, the report qualified many of its more positive claims in the detailed sections.
My experience of teaching students, particularly postgraduate taught, is that we are now in a phase where students are trying to study while at the same time trying to make the most economic route to graduation. Therefore they are finding money but at the expense of time that their full time study becomes the same number of hours as part time study (if that) and their success suffers.
Inevitably this will lead to downgrade in academic performance from the student, but at the same time technology is improving and likewise the approach to daily work is changing. Learning experience has to change with the times and this calls for an increase in alternatives to learning such as e-learning support, incentivising the production of good learning resources (such as textbooks for advanced study which are in short supply) and productive in class tutorials.
All the above will provide flexibility to help students study to the agenda they are able to in order that they can increase their ability to put in the hours they need to put into their study.