Flexible learning: What? Where? When? How? Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

1. Flexible learning: What? Where? When? How?Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA • July 3rd 2012 • Academic Lead: Flexible Learning

2. Flexibility in… • Pace of learning. • Place of learning. • Mode of delivery. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

3. Student-centred learning? Geraldine O’Neill and Tim McMahon, 2005. The personalisation of learning. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

4. Is this where we’re heading? JamilSalmi, (Moroccan education economist who served as the coordinator of the World Bank's tertiary education program), Higher Education Policy Institute Annual Lecture, 23/02/2011 In the future, it will be compulsory to go to university. Universities will recruit their new students on Myspace and Facebook, and in countries where it’s difficult to attract engineering students to study Engineering, they will go straight to kindergarten to start motivating them. When they enter university, new students will get a free laptop, a Blackberry, an iPad and a Kindle with all their text books. If you need financial aid, you will participate in an auction on eBay to get your scholarship. In the future students will commonly be enrolled in two or three universities at the same time studying towards a common degree. No more emails in the future because it’s too slow. We’ll be commonly using only Myspace, Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, Hi5, Blogger, Lifespace, etc. Students will take open internet exams and the validity of their degree will be only five years. And bad news for those of you who are still lecturers – you will have to redo your courses every three years. But don’t worry, it will be much easier in the future because you’ll be giving only five minute lectures. Most courses will be online and if a student needs some help, he or she will call an 0800 number to Bangalore for online tutoring. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

5. Is this a vision of flexible learning? In the future it will be cheaper to build universities because we will have no more physical libraries or labs; it will be all ilabs and elibraries. Universities will not recruit any professor who has not studied overseas. And once your graduates leave university, if they don’t find a proper job within six months, you will have to reimburse them the costs of their studies. Bad news on the financial front, of course. Public universities will receive only 10% of their income from governments, but not to worry because you will be so successful in raising money that you will be telling the philanthropists out there, “That’s enough for this year; come back next year.” Vice Chancellors will be earning £1,000,000 a year. However, your salary will be indexed to your ranking, going up and down with your ranking result. In countries where English is not a native language, parents will have surgery performed on their young children to cut the little skin that links the tongue to the mouth to improve their English language pronunciation. Obviously my parents forgot to do that to me! And lastly, in the future, those of you who are proud graduates with an MBA, forget about it, because in the future the ‘in’ degree will be the MFA, the Master in Fine Arts, because creativity will be so important. http://www.hepi.ac.uk/files/HEPIJamilSalmiLecture23%20February2011-2.pdf Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

6. Pace of delivery Accelerated degrees: Pathfinder Projects. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/flexible-learning/flexible_learning_pathfinder_final_report Only a small number of students took part in the Flexible Learning Pathfinder scheme between 2005 and 2010 (70 enrolled in 2006-07, rising to 390 in total in 2008-09) but they tended to outperform their peers on three-year courses. Anglia Ruskin University said 30 per cent of students on its intensive courses were set to gain first-class honours, while 40 per cent were on track to gain a 2:1, with academic achievement "slightly higher" than that of three-year students. Gloucestershire, Plymouth and Staffordshire universities also found fast-track students had higher marks than those on conventional courses. However, the report added that students on such courses were generally highly motivated, older and "not typical undergraduates". Anglia Ruskin reported that many students were employed in relatively low-skilled jobs, which could be why they were "more focused in their studies, aiming for better prospects of employment and/or [a] career change". Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

7. Pace of delivery • Flexibility within the curriculum. • Assessment. • Deadlines. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

8. Place of delivery Employer Engagement Report: ‘Learning from Experience in Employer Engagement’ Http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/flexiblelearning/Learning_from_Experience_in_EE.pdf Each of the publication’s three sections focuses on a common theme, identified through the findings of the 39 HEFCE-funded projects. The first section looks at engaging academic staff and approaches to embedding employer engagement within an institution. It also demonstrates how cross-disciplinary teams can work successfully across the boundaries of institutions for maximum benefit.The second section explores how to make learning accessible to adults in employment, and the final section proposes new kinds of curriculum and awards to suit the interests and learning pace of adult learners. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

9. Transfer of Credit • Bologna Process. • Various surveys taking place across the 4 nations. • HEA in the process of commissioning an audit of the state of play. • Part-time students. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

10. Internationalisation • International students studying both at home and in the UK. • UK students studying for a period abroad. • Mobility. • Gap years. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

11. Mode of delivery Technology underpins most of the flexible possibilities. ‘Resident’ way of learning and of studying? (http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/jun/08/web-learning-teaching-digital-literacy?CMP=) Mobile learning. Department of Health, 'A Framework for Technology Enhanced Learning' http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_130924 Epic, 'Mobile Learning for the NHS: Research Report', Dr Naomi Norman, March 11th 2011 http://www.epic.co.uk/assets/files/Mobile_learning_NHS_Research_Report.pdf Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

12. Mode of delivery • Open Educational Resources. • Creative commons licences. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA

13. Flexible learning at the HEA flexible.learning@heacademy.ac.uk alison.lecornu@heacademy.ac.uk Subscribe to the Flexible Learning mailing list by going to: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/my_academy. Create your personal account, and go to ‘Subscribe to Bulletins’. Tick ‘Flexible Learning’. Let us know what flexible initiatives your institution is taking. Dr Alison Le Cornu, FHEA