Martin OliverPresident, Association for Learning Technology

As briefed by

John SlaterActing Director of Development, Association for Learning Technology

OPENING COMMENTS

ALT POLICY BOARD 29TH APRIL, 2013

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?

• Education is on the brink of being transformed through technology; however, it has been on that brink for some decades now.

(Laurillard, 2008)

• E-learning exploits interactive technologies and communication systems to improve the learning experience. It has the potential to transform the way we teach and learn across the board. It can raise standards, and widen participation […] It cannot replace teachers and lecturers, but […] it can enhance the quality and reach of their teaching, and reduce the time spent on administration. It can enable every learner to achieve his or her potential, and help to build an educational workforce empowered to change. It makes possible a truly ambitious education system for a future learning society.

(DfES, 2003)

• Games and game play tend to be treated as “out there,” beyond the school gate, in some better, more authentic, more democratic, more meaningful place, other than the current and failing educational regime. By bringing games into educational practice and theory, the hope is, it often seems, that the diseased, geriatric body of education can be treated through the rejuvenating, botox-like effect of educational game play.

(Pelletier, 2009: 84)

• The UK is seen as world class, and often world leading, in networking, content and digital libraries, access management, and many areas of e-learning. Until recently the UK was world class in providing e-infrastructure for research and in e-science. We lag behind in generating and making available high quality modern learning and teaching resources. It is essential that the UK does not lose its lead, and continues to play a full and leading role internationally in the ICT world.

(Cooke, 2008)

What has contributed to past success?

• Perceived quality (QAA, regulation, etc.)

• English language

• Pedagogy and Technology used

• Historical influence (power, colonies, legacy of status)

• Tourist destination

• Research profile

What was the way forward?

• A new approach to virtual education based on a corpus of open learning content

• Revitalised investment into e-infrastructures

• Development of institutional information strategies

(Cooke, 2008)

How much of this happened? Did it change anything?

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

• As the Government focuses on growth there are few sectors of our economy with the capacity to grow and generate export earnings as great as higher education. Every overseas student on average pays fees of about £10,000 a year and spends almost as much whilst they are here. That means 400,000 overseas students bring in almost £8 billion a year.

• Overseas students travelling to the UK to study is just one way we can grow. Last year 400,000 overseas students came to the UK to study. But for the first time this was exceeded by the record 500,000 people who benefitted from British higher education whilst living abroad.

(Willetts, 2012)

• The vast majority of ODL offered by HE institutions is at postgraduate level

• It was not easy to find ODL courses through routine searches. This problem was compounded by a lack of clarity in the terminology used by institutions to describe their ODL programmes. […] there is no reliable or accurate consolidated source of information about ODL courses offered in the UK that is readily available to students, or other parties, interested in finding ODL programmes, and much of the information on ODL currently remains ‘hidden’ in labyrinthine institutional websites.

• Technology was described as ‘vital but not central’

• Recognition of the requirement for low student-tutor ratios and regular feedback and assessment points to ensure that students are engaged and retained

(White et al, 2010)

• No significant differences? (Reeves, 2005)

• The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. […] Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se.

(US Department of Education, 2010)

• A consensus that in order to expand strategically the provision of high quality ODL courses, a robust institutional infrastructure for developing, delivering and maintaining courses is essential. A key consideration is the extent to which institutions provide central support to facilitate such developments. In many cases, ODL offerings have evolved from a ‘cottage industry’ style approach with developments led wholly at departmental level. While this approach was seen to have many benefits, not least ensuring academic quality and promoting innovation, it was also seen as a challenge and a potential barrier to expanding provision.

(White et al, 2010)

We knew this from the UKeU:

• One of the biggest challenges large-scale e-learning initiatives face is how to ensure overall coherent coordination of the project, while still maintaining a balance and respect for the individualism, idiosyncrasy, creativity and unsystematic working processes of the academics involved.

(Conole et al, 2006)

Perceived threats:

• Cheap private providers, from US and elsewhere

• Specialist distance learning providers, e.g. Phoenix

• Growth of English language courses across Europe

• Cost

• Enrollments at the University of Phoenix and in the for-profit sector over all have been declining in the last two years, partly because of growing competition from other online providers, including nonprofit and public universities, and a steady drumroll of negative publicity about the sector’s recruiting abuses, low graduation rates and high default rates ... including many charges that the schools enrolled students who had almost no chance of succeeding, to get their federal student aid.

(Lewin, 2012)

WHAT PROBLEMS LIE AHEAD?

• Here in the US this week I have been struck by the surge of activity in distance learning. Professor Agarwal President of Edx, a not for profit set up jointly by Harvard and MIT, told me of his ambition to getting a billion students across the world studying online. Here on the West Coast social enterprises like Coursera spun off from Stanford are similarly ambitious. We may be at a tipping point in distance learning as technology offers more efficient and more effective ways of learning than ever before. British higher education must not be left behind.

(Willetts, 2012)

• Whether or not these rates matter depends largely on the perceived purpose of the MOOCs in the first place. If the aim is to give the opportunity of access to free and high-quality courses from elite universities and professors, then high dropout rates may not be a primary concern (Gee, 2012). However, it is widely agreed that it would be useful to improve the retention rates of MOOCs by finding out why and at what stage students drop out of courses.

(Yuan & Powell, 2013)

• If all we want is self-directed learning, why not leave it to wikipedia?

• Can we extend meaningful participation beyond the 1:25 ratio?

• The flexible student is not a spontaneous occurrence. Students (including full-time students) have been engineered to become more ‘flexible’ as a result of policies, which have put more financial pressures on them to work in particular ways. It has also the created conditions under which the only way for many adults to access higher education is via ‘flexible’ modes of delivery. In this sense, students are forced to become ‘flexible’ and the flexibility to which they are supposed to conform is a particular pre-determined set of learning practices or process.

(Clegg & Steel, 2002)

• Those with social advantage find it easier to take advantage of new opportunities; advantage can be perpetuated, not eroded, by introducing new forms of learning and teaching.

(Holley & Oliver, 2010)

• “There is a significant question for higher education institutions to address: are online teaching innovations, such as MOOCs, heralding a change in the business landscape that poses a threat to their existing models of provision of degree courses?”

(Yuan & Powell, 2013)

Will prestige providers’ MOOCs squeeze out lower prestige fee-charging institutions?

…if institutions such as Antioch University give degrees for completing them…?

• “Commercial organisations see MOOCs as a way to enter the HE market by providing a MOOC platform and developing partnerships with existing institutions and to explore new delivery models in HE.”

(Yuan & Powell, 2013)

• The kind of issues raised in this paper in terms of the UKeU project (technical, organizational and pedagogical) are crucial in any e-learning project, which by its very nature, and not only in the particular form it took in the UKeU as a public/private partnership, brings together people from different backgrounds and from different sectors into teams.

• “some of the people I was dealing with within UKEU had no conception of what we were talking about. As far as they were concerned these were clients. This was just another client and this was washing machines that were being sold. I have had people banging my table saying ‘I want you to do this’ and I’d say ‘No, and don’t talk to me like that. I ain’t doing that because it is wrong’.”

(Conole et al, 2006)

• The number of Indian students studying at UK universities fell by 24 per cent last year, as the government’s tightening of the student visa system took effect […] Jo Beall, British Council director of education and society, said the India and Pakistan falls were “very alarming indeed”.

(Times Higher, Jan 2013)

• The government’s own impact assessment for its early reforms to student visas estimated the effect on net migration as a reduction of 56,000 by 2015 (UKBA 2011), less than a proportionate contribution to hitting the target. But it has made further reforms since then, and has indicated that it will continue to make further adjustments, with the intention of ‘bearing down’ further on numbers, throughout the current parliament.

(Cavanagh & Glennie, 2012)

• With news stories like London Met, and competition from Australia, Malaysia etc, how will the UK fare?

• Vietnam and Malaysia have the top highest growth rates for eLearning products in the world at 44.3% and 39.4%, respectively. Thailand, the Philippines, China, and India are also in the top ten countries with the highest growth rates on the planet.

• There are three major catalysts in Asia. Two catalysts — the massive content digitization efforts across the school systems in every country in the region and the large-scale deployments of tablets in the academic segments — essentially create a new delivery platform for suppliers.

• The third catalyst is the explosive growth of online higher education enrollments. Combined, these catalysts have created a massive demand for packaged content.

(Adkins, 2012)

SUMMARY

• A period of profound change, with technology set to transform education …

…again.

• “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”; (Santayana, 1905)

• Preoccupation with MOOCs, standing for wider issues

• Globalisation

• International markets

• Education (not just learning by the few) at scale

• Higher Education’s social contract

• Relationships between public and private institutions

REFERENCES• Adkins, S. (2012) The Asia Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2011-2016 Forecast and Analysis.

Ambient insight regional report. http://www.ambientinsight.com/Resources/Documents/AmbientInsight-2011-2016-Asia-SelfPaced-eLearning-Market-Abstract.pdf

• Cavanagh, M. & Glennie, A. (2012) International Students and Net Migration in the UK. London: Institute for Public Policy Research. http://www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2012/04/international-students-net-migration_Apr2012_8997.pdf

• Clegg, S. & Steel, J. (2002) Flexibility as myth? New technologies and post-Fordism in Higher Education. Proceedings of Networked Learning, 2002. http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2002/proceedings/symp/08.htm

• Conole, G., Carusi, A., de Laat, M., Wilcox, P. & Darby, J. (2006) Managing differences in stakeholder relationships and organizational cultures in e-learning development: lessons from the UK eUniversity experience. Studies in Continuing Education, 28:2, 135-150.

• Cooke, R. (2008) On-line Innovation in Higher Education. http://www.dius.gov.uk/policy/documents/online_innovation_in_he_131008.pdf

• DfES - Department for Education and Skills (2003) Towards a Unified e-Learning Strategy. DfES: Bristol. http://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/towards%20a%20unified%20e-learning%20strategy.pdf

• Holley, D. & Oliver, M. (2010) Student engagement and blended learning: portraits of risk. Computers & Education 54, 693-700.

• Lewin, T. (October 17, 2012). "University of Phoenix to Shutter 115 Locations". The New York Times.

REFERENCES• Laurillard, D. (2008) Digital technologies and their role in achieving our ambitions for education, A professorial lecture,

Institute of Education, London. Republished by the Association for Learning Technologies, Oxford. http://ioe.academia.edu/DianaLaurillard/Papers/452697/Digital_technologies_and_their_role_in_achieving_our_ambitions_for_education

• Pelletier, C. (2009). Games and Learning: what's the connection, International Journal of Learning and Media 1(1), 83-101. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ijlm.2009.0006

• Reeves, T. C. (2005). No significant differences revisited: A historical perspective on the research informing contemporary online learning. In G. Kearsley (Ed.), Online learning: Personal reflections on the transformation of education (pp. 299-308). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

• US Department of Education (2010) Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. Washington DC: US Department of Education. http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

• White, D., Warren, N., Faughan, S. & Manton, M. (2010) Study of UK Online Learning: Final Report. Oxford: Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/projects/UKOnlineLearningStudy-FinalReport-Mar10-FINAL- FORPUB.pdf

• Willetts, D. (2012) Keynote Speech on international higher education, Goldman Sachs-Stanford University Global Education Conference. http://rnn.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/Press-Releases/David-Willetts-s-keynote-speech-on-international-higher-education- 67baa.aspx

• Yuan, L. & Powell, S. (2013) MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education. A White Paper. JISC CETIS, http://publications.cetis.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/MOOCs-and-Open-Education.pdf