Students at the heart of the system? White papers and taking control

The government has issued a long-awaited White Paper on the future of higher education.

Its title, “Students at the heart of the system”, prompted this comment on The Student Room:

“You can’t produce a report titled Students at the Heart of the System but then produce it in a format that only 1% of students will actually read?!”

Very true. In many ways, this White Paper is telling academics and policy makers that they need to make the student the heart of the system.

photo by M.Angel Herrero

photo by M.Angel Herrero

Perhaps all you need to know as a student is that *you* are now in control. If you’re not happy, the system had better sort things out. Pronto!

Otherwise what? Well, otherwise satisfaction goes down and restrictions get put in place that make life difficult for a university.

As with anything, it’s not that simple, but the strength of the ‘student as consumer’ idea is growing by the day.

Want some quotes that prove that point? Here you go:

“…doing more than ever to put students in the driving seat.”

“…we want the sector to become more accountable to students, as well as to the taxpayer.”

“…the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) [is] taking on a major new role as a consumer champion.”

“…institutions must deliver a better student experience; improving teaching, assessment, feedback and preparation for the world of work.”

See what I mean? If nothing else, the White Paper is telling those working in HE to listen to the students, because the student population have the power to change the way things work.

By being at the heart of the system, so long as you continue beating away, the sector keeps working. The sector is meant to change in order to help the heart keep going.

I’m being a bit twee and simplistic at this stage, so let me change tack and go over a few student-specific points that I noted when reading the Executive Summary.

This won’t be exhaustive, but this is still a long post. Take a deep breath, everyone…

First up, the White Paper says:

“To be successful, institutions will have to appeal to prospective students and be respected by employers. Putting financial power into the hands of learners makes student choice meaningful.”

I’ve talked a lot about marketisation of HE and the student experience before. The reality of giving students more power is not clear cut, even if it sounds pretty awesome and sensible.

Student choice is meaningful only if students understand what their choices are, why they have those choices, how to move forward in terms of those choices, and so on.

That doesn’t involve financial power. But, let’s say for a moment if did. Would that change anything? Not really. Financial power cannot itself be helpful in terms of education and what the student would genuinely benefit from. As things stand, there is a missing link.

“…a more dynamic sector in which popular institutions can grow and where all universities must offer a good student experience to remain competitive.”

This is another difficult one. A ‘good student experience’ is unique to each student. And satisfaction can play into the hands of being given a relatively easy route through to a degree. Why put pressure on yourself when you can glide through somewhere else without breaking into a sweat?

This attitude is a real danger for all parties involved. Nobody is at fault because it is just a result of the particular situation. Nevertheless, the situation is worth noting, because the issue has legs. The impact will likely increase before anything tempers the beast.

The White Paper also talks of providing more information to prospective students. Sounds great. But a lot of information already exists. A more important element to this is in helping students understand *how* to use the information.

Due to the unique experiences we have as individuals, there is no single useful way to use that information. Policy makers talk of ‘information, advice and guidance’, because information alone isn’t enough. Advice and guidance are necessary too, because instruction doesn’t help. Each person must take responsibility for their own choices.

Yet choice isn’t easy for young adults.

The White Paper states the aim to “deliver a more responsive higher education sector in which funding follows the decisions of learners and successful institutions are freed to thrive”.

The idea that “funding follows the decisions of learners” takes us into utterly unknown territory. Yet it will be used to fuel the future of the HE sector and the future of many young people.

My decisions as a child and as a young adult were not as clear and thought out as they are now. I’m not an exception. Far from it.

I’m the norm.

I have great respect for the very few who have plans, passions, and other big-picture ideas that enable them to move in a direction that genuinely suits them, despite a young age.

It doesn’t matter what your upbringing and how much familial advantage you’ve had; decisions don’t often come naturally and easily. Surely, therefore, that is a key area to concentrate and help thrive.

The paper continues:

“The overall goal is higher education that is more responsive to student choice, that provides a better student experience and that helps improve social mobility.”

Based on what I’ve just said above, this may turn out to be a contradiction. Responding to student choice could hinder social mobility. And while it may improve the student experience, will it achieve the same for the graduate experience? A big question.

The government do start to cover the graduate angle. As part of the increased information package, students will be told about employment for past graduates, starting salaries, and so on. I won’t go further down this line, though, because it begins a whole new set of discussions about the purpose of university, the differences between now and several years in the past, and so on.

For now, I’ll stick with what’s set to be on offer to new students. Back to the White Paper:

“Student charters and student feedback will take on a new importance to empower students whilst at university.”

Students like feedback. Some wish they had more feedback from tutors. So the concept won’t be new to you.

But care must be taken. There is an unfortunate link made between hard work and lack of enjoyment. The link can be false, covering up the real issues, but that doesn’t stop the link from being perceived.

But what if a degree course ticks all the right boxes for you, yet seems a lot harder than the workload of your mates at other unis or on different courses? You may feel hard done by, even if the work is necessary.

Before accepting feedback and charters as a win-win situation, a learning curve is required from both an academic AND a student angle. This could take time and will at least experience some teething trouble, if not long-term problems that stubbornly refuse to go away.

None of this even starts to cover private providers, variable fees, scholarship funds, and so on. An early NUS response to the White Paper covers a lot of this and explains that the paper “raises more questions than it answers“. If you want more detail on these other issues, I suggest check out the NUS summary of the White Paper.

Whatever happens in the aftermath of all this, the government state that they want students to get as much value from their experience as possible. Therefore, HEFCE will be “taking on a new role as consumer champion for students and promoter of a competitive system”.

To specifically state ‘consumer champion’ shows the government’s real belief in the marketisation of the HE system. In which case, helping students to understand precisely why they want to be in HE and how to further their own goals has to be the way forward. If students MUST act as consumers, the key is to let them become far more than that. If stuck in that single mindset, there is not enough space to expand. Without that space, no amount of HE provision is going to set the student free to explore the possibilities truly available to them.

Regardless of how you may feel about the White Paper, the real challenge now — as I hope it has always been — is to give each and every student the best chance possible to achieve as an individual.

You aren’t simply being given control of the HE sector. You’re being given control of yourself. Make that a satisfying, worthwhile experience and you can make everything else follow suit.

When Facebook and Academics (Almost) Collide

Have you ever thought of Facebook as a learning community? I’m guessing it’s not crossed your mind that much…

What if a tutor started using Facebook for some of your academic work? Would you feel comfortable letting the professor in to your profile? Maybe not.

Anouk Lang undertook a project to find a way to build a learning community within a social networking situation, but without infringing on students’ more personal space.

Lang wanted to overcome the barrier whereby students were negative about using Facebook to study. Even those who weren’t so daunted, they usually got uncomfortable past minor administrative and timetabling communications.

Lang chose to experiment with a set of peer mentors, who formed a distance between the student and tutor. Final year students would talk with second years and pass on their own experiences and knowledge, acting as a bridge between the student and the academic.

Conversation was able to grow academically because “those giving this input and doing this moderation were still peers and therefore not sufficiently different or forbiddingly unknown to the extent that their difference would stand in the way of other students participating”.

Even better, Lang’s experiment didn’t bother with annoying applications. This stuck with the basics, like posting on walls and sending private messages.

Peer mentors started conversations informally, with friendly chatter; something Lang highlights as important for the process to work effectively:

“…getting this right can be a powerful tool in increasing the attractiveness of the group by strengthening its relational interests.”

Students were happy to ask questions. In turn, the final year student mentors were equipped to give answers, because they had been in a similar position in the past.

Better still, anxieties were quickly tempered by mentors. Situations wouldn’t have necessarily been addressed so quickly and effectively using other methods. Facebook win.

But what if Facebook got overtaken by another service? It wasn’t that long ago when Myspace was dish of the day…

Lang explains that proper mentoring requires understanding of online social worlds in general. Methods of communication are key, rather than being an expert in Facebook or any particular service:

“The peer mentoring model is, then, a way of ‘futureproofing’ the resource, as students will be more likely than academic staff to know which technologies are most popular with their peers, and once a framework for online mentoring is established, the SNS can if necessary be migrated in future years to different sites or applications as students’ usage patterns change.”

Can social networking sites benefit learning and student support? Lang argues that they can, “if such sites are conceptualised not as virtual versions of classrooms but rather as places where individuals come to participate in communities of practice”.

Online services are simply tools. They can be used in a number of ways. You can’t effortlessly blend social life and academic work without feeling a bit uncomfortable. But, as Lang demonstrates, it is possible to keep enough distance to enable the social and academic to operate on the same platform without muddling together.

If you didn’t have to sacrifice your informal digital identity, would you be happy to be a part of a social networking learning community? And if you are already, how is it working out for you?

Why applying to Oxbridge shouldn’t be scary

Speaking in The Guardian, Mary O’Hara looks at applying to Oxbridge:

“Twenty years on from my graduation, it is upsetting that many of the barriers my generation faced are so prevalent for poorer youngsters today; that they are still so underrepresented in our top universities, and that those from privileged backgrounds retain their stranglehold on the professions. Just 7% of children are privately educated, yet they account for more than half of top doctors, judges and barristers.”

Oxford and Cambridge both conduct extensive outreach programmes, yet great difficulties remain in setting a more reasonable balance.

Nevertheless, the work goes on for staff at Oxbridge and they continue to face the challenge head-on. In most circumstances, it’s not for want of trying… Outreach is important; Oxbridge want to hear from engaged minds, no matter what their background and situation in life.

photo by deadstar 2.1

photo by deadstar 2.1

University College Oxford (also known as ‘Univ’) produces an Alternative Prospectus to help dispel fears and break down some of the barriers that exist for some students who would otherwise find a great place waiting for them. The guide, written and produced by current students, aims to give prospective students an idea of life at the college. It recently reached the finals of the Higher Education Liaison Officers’ Association (HELOA) Innovation and Best practice Awards 2010-11.

Anne-Marie Canning, Access Officer at Univ, kindly took some time out of her super busy outreach schedule to talk with me about the success of the Alternative Prospectus:

What first prompted you to design an ‘alternative’ to what was already on offer?

AMC: Alternative prospectuses are a bit of an Oxford tradition. Written by students for students they’ve been running for a few years. We’d had one at Univ for the past few years and we realized we kept running out of them before we ran out of our ‘normal’ prospectus. So we decided to reduce expenditure on our traditional formal prospectus and spend a little bit more on the alternative version. The alternative prospectus gives students more freedom to produce something really exciting. The students were really key in setting out what sort of publication they wanted to produce and we worked with a really imaginative designer to facilitate the project.

The alternative prospectus has a great feel as a newspaper. But how do you push the alternative side to those who prefer a more digital flavour?

AMC: We do have a PDF version of the alt prospectus available and we experimented with an e-reader but we found it to be fairly inaccessible and a bit buggy. You can see the new PDF is treated in a way that gives it an newspaper look. We also have a cool little tab on our Facebook page that loads up the lo-res PDF once you click it. It’s worth a little gander!

The ‘Univ guide to Oxford’ map is a great idea. Do you have any plans to make it an ongoing, interactive effort that can change and expand over the academic year?

AMC: The guide changes each year and we put a big map in the lodge with loads of pens and pins and people come and pop their favourite place. It’s not live but it does evolve and I really like the idea of keeping things nice and simple and lo-fi. I think on the ground engagement has a lot to be said for it rather than just having a techy solution. It also raised a lot of awareness and interest in the prospectus project amongst the student body. We obviously used lots of online media platforms to generate content though, so I think the answer is to use a mix of the two approaches.

How do current students and academics feel about the work you’re doing? Do you find them jumping in to help the cause?

AMC: I would say work that we’re doing rather than what I’m doing!

Current students drive much of the work we do here in college. Univ was the first college top set up an ambassador scheme which supports over 60 students in visiting schools in their home areas and volunteering on a variety of outreach projects. The ambassador scheme is a collaboration between the College and the Junior Common Room. Students are involved with e-mentoring, video-making, creating their own taster days and volunteer on a regular basis to welcome school groups to University College. But my favourite project is our Roadshow to South Yorkshire – 8 students go up to south Yorkshire and visit as many schools as possible in the space of four days to talk about the application process and what it is like to be a student at Oxford.

I think the fact that our tutors were willing to submit photos of themselves as teenagers for our alternative prospectus shows just how involved they are! Our outreach plans are made in conjunction with fellows of the College. They go and visit schools themselves and are really pivotal in offering a variety of subject taster days and our teachers’ conference and open days.

Is the alternative prospectus a hit with high-performing students who wouldn’t usually consider Oxford?

AMC: The alternative prospectus is enjoyed by all different sorts of applicants. I think giving an honest view from the ground is really appreciated by everyone. This year about 80% of applicants to University College said the alternative prospectus was invaluable in helping them to make their application choices.

Your “What is a tutorial?” page is useful, putting across an important aspect of the learning process at Oxford. How daunting do prospective students find new ways of learning, in your experience?

AMC: The teaching style at Oxford is unique. We don’t want people to apply to Oxford because we’re Oxford. We want people to apply because they love their subject and think the tutorial system would suit their learning style. Yes, it’s challenging but it’s also exhilarating. Here at University College we do a lot to support students in transitioning into university level study. We run a pre-sessional Maths week for all of our students in the sciences and maths subjects to consolidate their knowledge. We also team up 1st years with 2nd and 3rd year students via our study buddy scheme. The study buddies scheme gives first years a friendly face to ask any questions and get some advice related to their studies.

Does any one aspect of the prospectus outshine the others when students are choosing where to apply?

AMC: No, students would like information about all elements of the Oxford experience in my experience. Potential applicants want the full picture!

Higher education is going through a great deal of change right now. What type of changes, if any, do you envisage for future editions of the alternative prospectus?

AMC: I think we’ll respond to what our prospective applicants would like. We love our little newspaper but if people want something different then we’ll respond to their needs!

Finally, do you have any other words of wisdom or reassurance to high-grade students who aren’t entirely sure about applying to an Oxbridge college?

AMC: We’re looking for two things in our students. One is academic achievement and the other is passion for your subject. If you have those two things then give it a go! The only way to ensure you don’t get into Oxford is by not applying to Oxford. And if you don’t get an offer the chances are you’ll be going to another fantastic university (like York, my own university)!

—

Anne-Marie also told me that Univ have just launched a stop motion tour of the college, so you can get an inside view of the place. I’ll leave you with the tour below. Remember, you saw it here first. 🙂

EduLinks – Week ending 17 June 2011

Due to difficult personal circumstances, I’ve not been able to keep on top of current happenings as much as usual.

However, to make up for that, I’ve set up a ‘UKHigherEd‘ topic at Scoop.it.

Visit my UKHigherED topic for higher education news & links for students, academics, administrators and pretty much anyone involved in HE.

Already linked are stories on the facts on tuition fees, losing sight of the true meaning of education, prejudice against private universities, and lots more.

Want to know more about Scoop.it? This video should explain:

A few more quick news items, just to keep you sweet: