I had no idea about Quality Assurance before I became the Deputy President (Education) and after going to multiple meetings that are 2 – 3 hours long, I still don’t fully understand Quality Assurance and Enhancement, but to put it in the simplest of terms - Quality Assurance is making sure there is no horsemeat in your burger, while Quality Enhancement is trying to turn your standard burger into a gourmet one. A poor analogy but one which was stated at the National Quality Assurance conference I attended on Tuesday, in Edinburgh.
I did learn quite a few things in various talks and sessions from this conference though (the best ones are discussed below), as well as trying to eat as much deep fried and battered food, while I was in Scotland for the first time in my life.
Session 1 – The value of ‘quality marking’: building confidence in quality and standards
The Quality Assurance Agency has developed a QAA mark of quality, which will be rewarded to courses and institutions in both the higher and further education sectors. This quality mark has a 5 year expiration date and institutions can choose whether they want it to appear on UCAS, when students are applying and we were told that the unistats website could be using it in the future.
However, there were some questions to be raised on this.
1) Is it useful for prospective students (both UG and PG)?
2) Should it be just a pass or should it be graded?
3) Should it be compulsory?
The answer to the first question at the moment is no, well at least for Imperial. Since I think Imperial (both UG & PG) and other Russell Group university applicants go mainly by reputation and location, not whether it has a QAA stamp of approval. Additionally, I don’t think current UG students know what quality assurance is – let alone 17 year old applicants.
The issue of whether it should be a pass or fail was discussed as grading the quality assurance gives institutions a way of being able to differentiate themselves from their competitors. I personally would rather have it graded, since just having a pass or fail scheme means some institutions aim for the minimum threshold. It was reported that Singapore has 3 grades of quality for private higher education providers, which works very well, so more enhancement may take place in the UK if this was adopted.
Some argued that the level of understanding for students was not there for it to be compulsory and a few people thought negative press on institutions that don’t manage to obtain the quality mark would help the wider public to understand what it stood for.
At the end of the session I felt that the QAA were making a step in the right direction but some small tweaks were needed to be made to their quality mark scheme.
‘MOOC mania – challenges and opportunities for UK HE quality assurance’
For those of you who don’t know what a MOOC is, it stands for Massive Open Online Course, where the best known examples are probably EdX (from Harvard and MIT) and Coursera (from Stanford). It acts as a platform for people from around the world to learn high quality material that would traditionally be taught in higher education institutions, which students need to be pay thousands of pounds to learn at a university. Over the last few years it has both scared and excited academics across the globe, as this movement may totally change the higher education sector.
In this session it was discussed that FutureLearn, the MOOC from the UK with 17 institutions signed up, ran a course with the BBC that was based on the Frozen Planet documentary’s material. After months of the documentary being aired, they launched this course, which had a significant waiting list (they had a waiting list since they had a finite number of assessors) and it received a 7% proxy. With this conversion MOOCs can make a considerable amount of money if they ask people to pay a small fee. The Open University, who is behind FutureLearn, has even managed to deliver an English course to around 900,000 people in India, who are now putting it on their CV as employers are accepting this as a qualification.
It was also stated that the UK government doesn’t want to financially back MOOCs as currently venture capitalists are falling over themselves and therefore want them to fight it out. However they are concerned about the possibility of courses being accredited and being sold as part of a degree, which is where they want the QAA’s input.
The QAA pointed out that the MOOC has 2 directions that it envisages: 1) they deliver quality higher education material, which just teaches people who want to learn or 2) people pay for credited modules as part of a degree. The second scenario is what the QAA is interested in as they will have to ensure that the quality of the course is high enough to meet the minimum QAA requirements, but currently their procedures are founded on a traditional higher education system and this fast moving market will be a challenge for them.
However before you get too might get caught up in the MOOC mania movement, remember that it won’t totally replace the traditional higher education system. Since you won’t be able to carry out practical work, group work, peer-peer learning or tutorials, all that are face-to-face, that helps us develop the softer skills employers ask for. One Vice-Chancellor of a Russell Group University recently said to the Aldwych group: “What is better, seeing the Rolling Stones live or listening to one of their recorded songs?”
Saying that, Imperial will most likely join or develop one and use it as a marketing tool, since when I was talking to the University of Manchester’s Education Sabb, I found out that Brian Cox could be delivering a Manchester branded MOOC course. I think staff in the Physics Department at Imperial may be slightly annoyed/jealous about this and if Imperial wants to compete with this, I predict the College will have numerous MOOC courses in the future.
MOOC mania panellists
Jack Grove (Chair) – Times Higher Education
Rajay Naik – Director of Government and External Affairs at the Open University, he is also involved with FutureLearn.
Stephen Jackson – Director of Reviews at the QAA
Martin Williams – Director, Education & Government Procurement Industrial Strategies, Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) and also advises David Willetts, the Minister of state for Universities and Science on MOOCs.
