Massification, quality and student success: chalenges for Open Universities and the SDG's

HOU Symposium 2015 1

Massification, quality and student success: challenges for Open Universities and the SDGs

‘Alles Ständische und stehende verdampft’

‘All that is solid melts into air’


Key question

• Are the open universities the key mechanism for massification of Higher Education for the period of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) 2015-2030?


Post secondary needs for SDG period 2015-2030

• Higher Education places to grow from 200m to 400m by 2030

• For universal primary education we will need globally 25.7m new primary teachers by 2030

• Need yet further numbers for junior secondary following ‘UPE’ achievement

• Growth nearly all concentrated in still developing countries


UN Sustainable Development Goals

17 SDGs and 169 targets in total, 2015-2030• Sustainability runs through most• Also ‘safe, secure and resilient’ societies• For all countries, only only poor countries• Agreed by UN September 2015


So…

• Are Open Universities the solution for major expansion of Higher Education for 2015-2030 as they were in period 1970-1990?


Field identifiers for open universities

• Flexible opportunity for adults• Scale• Learning off campus at a distance• Technologies for learning and teaching • Access and inclusion


Open Universities

• Perhaps 60 in world?• 7 in Europe• In all world regions: Latin America, Canada,

Africa, India, Asia, Arab • Not in significant countries, e.g. USA,

Australia, France, Russia • New ones still being proposed: Ghana, Kenya,

Botswana, Namibia

Student success in ODEL1 Student success rates are widely reported to be lower for part-time than fulltime students, and lower for ODEL than for part-time students as a whole. 2 There is an imperative to improve student success rates firstly for the sake of students who invest their self-esteem, time and money in ODEL programmes, 3 and also for the reputation of ODEL’s contribution to educational systems and of the institutions who teach significantly or entirely using ODEL methods



Where is the data?

• Module pass rates?• Qualification completion rates?• Variable of openness of entry qualifications

• Much written about quality but achievement of student success still very variable

The poles of explanation

The characteristics of • students in ODEL• ODEL as a collection of methods for learning

and teaching


Students in ODELStudents on Open, distance and e-learning (ODEL) programmes are more likely to be adults or post-experience, in the sense that they have not come to study directly from school• be studying in the post-secondary sector• be part-time students with family or work responsibilities, or both• gained access to programmes of study that are more open than those of the elite universities• In addition, students on ODEL programmes may to a greater or lesser extent

depending on the educational culture and history of their country come from families with less or no history of postsecondary education,

• and to come from lower socio-economic demographic cohorts than those in traditional universities or programmes


Success rates in ODEL

• It is certainly widely though not universally the case that student success in part-time modes of study is less than that of full-time students,

• and within the part-time cohorts students on ODEL programmes generally do less well in terms of qualification completion than part-time campus based students.

• Exceptions to these generalisations have been recorded…


Institutional mission

Open universities who seek to admit and serve these students take a deliberate and purposeful risk in doing so, in accord with their mission and values


Competing narratives of excellence

institutional missions that are focused on access and inclusion are in conflict with the mission of those institutions who developed narratives of excellence based on selection and exclusion, and who widely dominate accounts of excellence and hierarchy in education



http://icde.typepad.com/student_success/


Student success in open, distance and e-learning

• Learning design as framework•Pre-study information, advice, guidance and admission•Curriculum or programme for student success•Intervention at key points and in response to student need•Assessment•Personalised support•Information and logistical systems•Managing for Student Successhttp://icde.typepad.com/student_success/


Open Universities: a mixed picture• 1970’s: Open universities new powerful actors, pushing

aside commercial correspondence schools• 1970-1990 Open Universities the paradigm of innovation

for access, scale, and technologies for learning• Achievement and reputation?• Some have grown, some not• Some have achieved high reputation, some not• Some have better records of student success than others• Rhetoric of quality versus reality of student success


From distance education to open education

• All campuses have learning management systems• Learning resources available on campus through

LMS• Students on campus Email with lecturers• Assignments submitted electronically• MOOCs within modules• Learning decentred from campus• c. 100 of 160 UK Universities offer some Masters

teaching online


MOOCs from 2008: who stole our cheese?

• 2012 move out of pilot projects to major phenomenon, 15-18m MOOC learners

• Scale innovation from research based universities such as MIT and Stanford

• Major MOOC platforms not from open universities• E.g. expertise in University of East Anglia MOOC• Painful for self-image of Open Universities:

-- ‘Access, pedagogy and completion are poor! ‘– and– ‘How dare ‘conventional universities’ lead in innovation in TEL?’– FutureLearn and European MOOC initiatives now reclaim innovation


Open Education

• MOOCs• Open Education Resources• Will Open Universities dominate space for

innovation with technology, scale and access in future?


Open Universities: a solution for the time?

• UK 1971, HE participation rate 6%• UK 2015 HE participation rate 42%• Pool of non graduates now ? Half what it was• So need for large-scale solutions in still developing

countries 2015-2030• Need for undergraduate programmes in Open

Universities in developed countries?• Would move to Masters and Professional updating be an

adequate mission?


Conclusion

• Do we need to rethink role of Open Universities in developed countries?

• How will we assure quality and student success, including for open universities in still developing countries with so much to do 2015-2030?

Massification, quality and student success: chalenges for Open Universities and the SDG's

Education

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