Analysis of questionnaires Jon Rosewell

PLA on blended & online HE

21-22 Sept 2017, Brussels

2

QA agency – main issues

● Strategy and planning for blended learning

● Cross institutional consistent approach backed by governance

● Consistent approach with all collaborative partners

● Infrastructures and resources - researched as fit for purpose

● Learning resources, materials and delivery mechanisms

● Approval processes for programme design and accreditation

● Management of assessment and authenticity

● Published expectations on blended learning

● Support available to learners and equality of opportunity

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QA agency – main issues

● finding peers with expertise in the field of study (of the planned program) as well as ICT-based modes of teaching and learning

● a more differentiated role system between authors (responsible for the content), teachers, online editors, tutors, etc. than in traditional study programmes on campus

● When it comes to QA the Swedish Higher Education Authority doesn't make a difference between campus, blended or online programmes.

● Our Agency has already set the specific standards and criteria for safeguarding the quality of distance learning programmes. These criteria and standards are used for both internal and external evaluation.

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A rough and ready analysis!

Qualitative analysis of HEI responses

●Responses for all questions lumped together

●All responses tagged, with themes emerging from text

●Positive and negative comments not distinguished

●Tags categorised ● Strategic management

● Curriculum design

● Course design

● Course delivery

● Course evaluation

● Student support

● Staff support

● Quality assurance

Tags by category

5

Tags – with 3 or more occurrences

8

mod_accessibility

Tags – with 3 or more occurrences Row Labels Sum of Count

Course delivery 9

vle_platforms 9

Course design 10

mod_accessibility 4

mod_modern 3

mod_synch 3

Curriculum design 8

cur_flexibility 4

cur_modern 4

Evaluation 22

eval_analytics 3

eval_dropout 3

eval_general 3

eval_of_teachers 5

eval_student_feedback 8

Miscellaneous 15

misc_admin 3

misc_finance 4

misc_language 5

misc_local_centres 3

Quality assurance 37

qa_accreditation 5

qa_external 4

qa_general 4

qa_indicators 4

qa_instrument 4

qa_internal 11

qa_unit 5

Staff support 9

hr_staff_skills 4

hr_staff_training 5

Strategic management 23

sm_blend 5

sm_digitalization 4

sm_online 3

sm_open 4

sm_other 4

sm_planning 3

Grand Total 133

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What are main issues for blended and online?

●Staff support – staff skills, staff training ●Huge differences … regarding the pedagogical skills needed ●Network of “digital tutors” … peer groups … networking events ●Digimentors supporting teachers ● Institute for Distance Education … provides … on-demand staff-training ●The university has provided only little support to teachers and staff

●Media specialists ● Professional infrastructure and support for the creation of AV

●Staff support – workload ● Capacity of teachers and other staff ●Small number of faculty members, small numbers of administrative personnel

to support the increase of programmes and increased number of students

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What are main issues for blended and online?

●Curriculum design – flexibility ●Ability to quickly answer to emerging labour market needs with effective

programs ● Flexibility in didactic provision ● Inflexible process … rapid response to externalities is a problem

●Curriculum design – modernisation, employability ●Need to modernize current programmes of studies ●New programmes needed with employment prospects in mind

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Are there strategies for online & blended?

●History matters – ODL, online only, campus, … ● Provides open and distance education at both undergraduate and

postgraduate levels ● Providing Bachelor and Master degree programs fully online ● Increase online education … lifelong learning … independent of time and place

●Digitalization ●Holistic strategy for digitalization ●A long history of e-learning … choice of media … further shift to online

● Lifelong learning / continuing education ●Adult education will be the piloting area. ● Integration of degree education with more flexible programs for continuing

education and open education

13

Examples of good practice?

●General ●Open University practices inside the University ●Open University system for Finnish students

●Collaboration and partnership ● Common curricula / double degree … developed and produced with the

collaboration of the best professors from all the Euro-Mediterranean area … fully available in 4 languages … students from 60 countries. … a real network of institutions and people.

●TEL / AV units ● Institute manages pilot programs and innovation, also provides [advice and

training], guidelines for creation of educational resources and peer review. ●No Educational Materials Laboratory yet in operation to promote … the

development of multimedia/multiformat educational material.

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Issues for blended learning?

●General ● Curriculum framework, evaluation of curricula ● Low students' participation in face-to-face group tutorials, thus most

programmes employ online teleconferences and not blended education. ●Geographic dispersion of students and tutors.

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Issues for Quality Assurance?

● Instruments ● Choice of the best quality system ●Accreditation ●The negotiation of fair indicators for quality assessment

●Good practice ●Quality work is well integrated inside the education. It is not a separate

issue. ●The quality assurance culture has been built from the foundation of the

Institution.

●Other ●The identification of international students online

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Yes – but mix of internal and external

Do you use a systematic approach?

● Instruments ●Development of an specific ERP / EFQM label / E-xcellence label ●Our internal quality assurance system has been certified by the national

agency

●QA unit ● Permanent steering group for the quality / QM Manager ●A university QA body is in charge of verifying and put in practice the

strategic objectives of quality improvements. … defines year objective and measures the compliance of all the University staff

●Quality assurance unit conducts yearly assessment [which collates wide variety of information] stakeholders receive statistical analysis reports.

●QAU conduct external evaluation every four years with the national accreditation agency

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Other – course design

●Accessibility (re disability) ●Specialised unit … deals with accessibility matters

●Accessible (re low prior educational attainment) ●Modern and accessible educational material ●Diversity range of our students may be challenging ●Accessibility for all kind of students

●Synchronous tuition ●A challenge to get students to attend any synchronous tutorial provision ● Low students' participation in face-to-face group tutorials, thus most

programmes employ online teleconferences ●More hybrid and online teaching takes place. Face-to-face group tutorials are

rather limited. ●Skype and other synchronous communication channels

18

Other – course delivery

●Platforms ● [Good practice:] Udacity, Coursera, EdX ● Common study platforms with other UASs and universities ● Flexible study platforms ●State-of-the art eLearning platform based on Moodle ●A mixed [blended] model … now based on an on-line platform and a set of

OER, with different combinations for degree education, continuing education and open education.

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Other – evaluation

●Analytics – learning / course ● learning analytics used to help teachers ● production of indices for students’ performance (e.g. success rate, grade

distribution)

●Student feedback ●Use of students' feedback questionnaires at the end of each academic

semester ●Students assessing tutors’ e-learning/e-teaching practices, educational

material quality, module design/organization and quality of administration services

●Evaluation of teaching staff ●Module coordinators assessing tutors’ e-learning/e-teaching practices

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Other – miscellaneous

●Financial ● Financing. MOOC's sustainable business models, especially for Universities. ● It has been cost-effective solution to increase flexibility of education. ● Lack of resources for high quality multimedia/multiformat educational

material.

● Language ●English as a second language … English is increasing in the delivery of the

courses ● “Language Education for Refugees and Migrants” has been recognized as an

example of good practice ●Work in two languages ●Available in 4 languages (italian, english, french, arabic) [by] simply subtitling

or oversounding the videos

●Other ● [Compared to online teaching:] The degree-education and research get a major

attention in the university.