On the final afternoon we explored the possible future of higher education in terms of the key trends of personalisation, globalisation and employability.

Dr Tony Bates joined us by video link from Vancouver. He talked about the rapid expansion of the knowledge economy and the requirement for employees to have a new bank of transferable skills: problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, computing, independent learnership, entrepreneurship, initiative, flexibility, networking. The knowledge explosion has given rise to a need to be smarter rather than to know more stuff. This has affected a shift from objectivist to constructivist epistemology and a change in pedagogy.
There was a lot of discussion about this afterwards, with the usual arguments between people who don’t like dichotomies and people who don’t like continua, but the really useful bit of Tony Bates’ speech was his model for institutional implementation of learning & teaching (incorporating e-learning) strategy. There’s a presentation about this on his website. In summary, he strongly believes that the best model is one where an initial top-down decision gives rise to departmental or subject working groups where the use of e-learning within a specific subject area is discussed and decided upon.

A recent graduate from the University of Leicester, Aaron Porter presented a student perspective of e-learning. He spoke about student expectations of e-learning, which he suggested are becoming more defined with every year’s new intake. He reported that today’s students don’t see e-leaning as being discrete from the rest of their learning experience but embedded within it. Students now expect and demand a more flexible learning experience.

Aaron gave an interesting perspective on the omnipresent dissatisfaction with assessment and feedback. He reported that students feel the common modes of assessment and feedback bear no relevance to how students’ professional progress and attainment will be assessed once they enter the workplace (although this has never really been the case!). Another interesting comment was that students now expect a ‘tracking’ system for their coursework submissions and examinations – have they been received? Have they been marked? Is it ready for collection? Podcasts & videos are generally considered useful, and students are used to this media in their everyday lives. Virtual worlds such as Second Life are not generally viewed by students as potential educational tools at this time.

Students appear to be concerned about the future loss of face-to-face interaction – a point that was questioned by a number of delegates, who suggested that this could be a romantic notion rather than an informed opinion, and that once students have actually had an interactive online learning experience, they usually prefer it to more traditional teaching methods.

The issue of boundaries and appropriate levels of interaction with staff was raised. Aaron suggested that if staff presence is too strong it can stunt informal learning. Finally, he reminded us that students are increasingly seeing themselves as consumers, and they want a product that is tailored to their needs and wants, in terms of teaching style, curriculum and place/time.

Linda Creanor began the second half of this session by talking about current generations – Boomers, X, Y and Z – and the different ways they approach thinking, working and learning. Then she played that YouTube clip we’ve probably all seen by now – A Vision of Students Today (the viewer comments beneath the clip are always amusing).

Linda led the recent JISC-funded LEX project on learner experiences of e-learning. The project aimed to answer the following questions: What makes an effective learner in an e-learning context? How are learners using technology in their learning and outside? The study, which involved 55 second-year media policy undergraduates (70% female), concluded that effective e-learners:
• believe technology should be used only with the specific goal of enhancing learning
• are willing to engage & expect tutors to do the same.
• are able to deal with strong emotional reactions to technology
• are skilled networkers
• engage with the ‘underworld’ of digital communication – Text, IM etc

The study also found that students were using the following technologies:
• Wikipedia – 95%
• Social networking – 88%
• Blogging – 18%
• Second Life – 5%
• Del.icio.us – 3%

Linda is also involved with REAP – a project working on the redesign of assessment practices to incorporate student-regulated, technology-enabled assessment for learning. Many of the delegates I met at the conference, including Gilly Salmon, spoke very highly of this project, so their site is probably worth a look if you’re not already aware of what they’re doing.

Phil Candy chucked some interesting references at us, including the following:
Eilif Trondsen (2006), Virtual Worlds for Learning & Training
The Long Now Foundation – about thinking for the future
Seeley-Brown & Duguid: Universities in the Digital Age (John Seeley Brown also has a wide range of relevant speeches and papers on his website)

Phil’s key themes were using technology to solve enduring pedagogical problems, enabling self-directed learning and addressing the radical discontinuities that exist between universities and workplaces.
(Phil also used a lovely Buddhist quote as an analogy for the internet – I liked it very much).