JISC

The Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience is scoping the future environment for the delivery of higher education. Factors relevant to student expectations and experiences of learning, which institutions need to build into their strategic plans for the future, include:

• Changing demographics and greater competition for talented students
• Higher education being available on a global scale, with the geographical area in which students are prepared to travel for an excellent study experience being pushed out to the EU border and beyond
• Shifts in educational practice in schools, leading to expectations of more sophisticated and pervasive technology use in HE and FE
• Employees being required to continue learning and developing skills throughout their working lives
• These skills continuing to encompass constructive thinking, complex problem solving, communication, teamwork, networking etc, but with more of these activities taking place in virtual or blended environments
• Knowledge, including high quality academic content, being increasingly available for download and repurposing over the internet, eroding knowledge as the ‘unique selling point’ of university study
• Technology trends continuing towards social networks and services; digital ‘native’ cultures centring on sharing, collaboration, participation and group knowledge-building

One of the features of HE institutions that the Committee of Inquiry expects to continue relatively unchanged is their responsibility for designing and accrediting curricula. Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design is a new JISC programme investigating how technology can make institutional processes more fit for purpose, enhancing the curricula that are offered to students and so transforming the experience of study. Institutional processes that projects are engaging with include information management, systems integration, processes of validation and review, the policy framework, allocation of staff time and resource, capacity building, advice and guidance to students, and business/community involvement in the curriculum. Addressing all of these, institutions can be better prepared to respond to the changes ahead.

For shorter-term institutional planning, the JISC ‘Learners’ experiences of e-Learning’ programme has produced a set of resources based on findings about students’ current expectations and experiences. It has found, for example, that students have relatively conservative expectations of study, and suggests ways in which the induction process can give students a clearer insight into their responsibilities and entitlements in respect of technology. It has also confirmed indications that the digital divide among students may be getting narrower but deeper. There are implications for institutions in terms of how they balance equality of access to digital opportunities, with enhancing and enabling students’ diverse approaches to learning with technology.

Podcast: Listening to students - Changing the learner experience

Listen to the podcast (Duration 10:22)

Download the podcast