Griffith University. Submission to Online Higher Education Working Group.

Transcription

1 1 Griffith University Submission to Online Higher Education Working Group Contact Officer Terry Hogan Office of the Vice Chancellor and President Griffith University Phone

2 2 Introduction Griffith University welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this timely review of the opportunities presented by online learning. While there are significant benefits, there are also many issues to be addressed. The broad trends for the tertiary education sector worldwide are already clear. They include greater flexibility in delivery modes that open up both the time and place of student learning; potentially higher productivity achieved through using infrastructure throughout the year, but at the same time putting more stress on existing infrastructure and introducing the need for different infrastructure; a more complicated landscape with networking of institutions and public/private partnerships; more involvement by the corporate sector in education services; rapid growth in student demand and in the numbers of high quality institutions in countries such as China; increased attention to inclusion on qualitative world ranking indexes driven by research outputs and quality; opportunities for lifelong learning and re-accreditation; and greater numbers of highly mobile international students. All these factors are inter-related. A perceived shift in the terminology from student to consumer is significant. Some of the conceptual challenges of online programming include changing the traditional model from providerdriven to consumer-chosen, as students have far greater flexibility in how they learn and from where they access knowledge. Students will expect to be able to choose their learning mode to suit their lifestyle, their employment and their location. Although some students studying online will have neither the time nor the opportunity to engage with the physical campus, this does not diminish the importance of the on-campus experience. In this new environment student retention will be an issue for many institutions, and this applies both for individual institutions and systemically. New support systems will need to be developed for students and more nuanced understanding of the learning dynamics. Traditional cost-centre budget models will be challenged as students have the capacity to choose an institution or course based on relative costs, and can make rational choices based on cost alone while they potentially pick and choose their progress through multiple providers. In this context final program accreditation also becomes a potential issue. The practice of simply making courses freely available online through MOOCs is financially unsustainable in the long term. Indeed, the sustainability of some campuses or institutions may become problematic. Technologies now have the capacity to shape the market, rather than providers deciding where the boundaries and content should lie. Knowledge is advancing so rapidly, and becoming so easily and widely accessible, that the traditional degree is increasingly an enabling qualification rather than a statement of current expertise. Professional accreditation models will need to accommodate this, and there will be even more emphasis on postgraduate qualifications with the attendant funding and staffing implications. Quality Australian universities are recognised internationally for their high quality. Regardless of delivery mode, the intrinsic quality of a qualification from an Australian University must not be compromised. According to the Times Higher Education rankings, our universities rank only behind the US and the UK for the number of institutions in the top 100 worldwide. Griffith University itself is recognised as among the top 100 new (that is, less than 50 years old) universities. Our national and institutional reputations must be preserved in the face of strong and growing international competition and the sheer scale of what will be available from multiple online sources, not all of which will be of high quality. While institutional rankings are to a large extent dictated by reputation for research quality, there is clear overlap with the quality of the teaching and learning environment.

3 3 Online learning offers the potential for much greater productivity across the Higher Education sector with ready access to ongoing professional development in the workplace or at home, achieved through more efficient use of built campus infrastructure and the use of new technologies. Academic programs can be accessible in flexible modes, either on or off campus or a mix of both. However, online learning should be seen as an adjunct to and not a replacement for the totality of the campus experience, which in Griffith s view (particularly at the undergraduate level) remains the cornerstone of a quality education environment for students of Australian universities. Enhancing national productivity is a singular outcome of higher education, and maintaining course quality will be critical for Australian competitiveness. At present, the reputation for the high quality of our teaching is informed by the quality of the research undertaken by academic staff. It is vital that Government and corporate financial support for research is maintained and enhanced for the national productivity and teaching excellence that it promotes, including research into emergent teaching modes. Wide subject and mode choice will be a key characteristic of this new environment, and there will be heavy competition from international providers. These may be domiciled in Australia, in multiple countries or have only a virtual presence in the cloud. The experience of some years ago with the surge of international student numbers into Australia and the resulting problems in assuring quality is instructive for the future in terms of maintaining the generic quality of the programs offered by Australian institutions, including in conjunction with a non-domiciled provider. Australian employers will need assurance that the skills of graduates from online international institutions are at least comparable with those of graduates from a more traditional academic background, and this may require international protocols at Government-to-Government level, for example between regulatory bodies. Domestic quality assurance institutions such as AQF and TEQSA and professional accreditation entities must have the capacity to assess the content of new modes and to make informed judgements. It is moot whether these regulatory models are able in their current form to deal with the emergent environment. Staff The current generation of students is comfortable with rapidly changing communications technologies including social media to the point where these are practically the preferred modes of communication. This level of comfort will not be as widely shared among current teaching staff of universities; some staff may feel uncomfortable in the new environment, and there will be transition issues to be managed. All staff will need to be trained in the technologies and some will adapt more readily than others. It is likely that we will need to recruit a cohort of academic staff with the capabilities to effectively use the technologies and be comfortable with a flexible teaching and learning environment. This gives added urgency to the debate about a new cohort of teaching-intensive staff, including workplace management and broader industrial relations implications. There is likely to be a variety of flexible arrangements around the sector for managing this according to local circumstances, including staff who spend less time on campus provided they are electronically accessible. Content and program delivery Teaching online will influence aspects of the teaching process as it involves different experts and skills in discipline content, in educational and website design, in assessment modes and learning facilitation. The practice and content of online programming is attracting theoretical interest from many practitioners for example research by two Griffith academic staff, Jeremy Williams and Marty Fletcher

4 of the Griffith Business School, shows how much more is involved than just putting Powerpoint lecture notes on the internet for students to access. (Mainstreaming the Disruption: Five Recommendations for University Leaders manuscript in preparation for publication). Online learning challenges the traditional semester model. Students can potentially enter a course and finish at times that suit them with all course content available to them concurrently rather than sequentially, and this means more flexibility in the way courses might be programmed. Traditional entry accreditation models may continue to suit many students who progress in a linear fashion as well as suit the staff who are accustomed to this model, but exceptionally able students or those with extensive life experience may be able to meet knowledge criteria at much younger ages and/or more quickly and expect more flexible treatment. This issue raises pedagogical and quality assurance issues, among them the length of time a student should be exposed to new material and the management/timing/integrity of examinations. An obvious problem emerges with the teaching of online science-based and other courses where significant laboratory experience is essential. Issues of safety, individual aptitude, cost and supervision come into play. The costs and availability of e-texts is an issue that must be addressed by publishers and by universities through their collective buying power. Also in terms of content, Australian copyright legislation must be able to deal with international norms. Submissions to the Australian Law Reform Commission s review of Copyright (Copyright Advisory Group Schools Standing: Council on School Education and Early Childhood- November 2012) noted that a fair dealing approach should replace the current outdated exceptions and licensing model. Without this, Australia will not be competitive in the world market. Among other issues, Australian copyright legislation must be capable of providing fair use for learners while affording appropriate protection to the rights of creators in a very competitive digital environment. An appropriate copyright regime is a matter for prudent judgement, and requires urgent action. Many tertiary education institutions are actively engaged in, or developing their capacity in, flexible modes of delivery. For its part Griffith University is already a major player in online learning, and is now the leading provider of units through Open Universities Australia (OUA). Griffith s long-term goal is to have a significant number of programs able to be studied in either online or on-campus modes, or where students may opt to study in a flexible way by mixing their modes of study. Currently, approaching 10% of Griffith students are studying online, with most of these coming through OUA. This is the equivalent of over 5,000 EFTSL studying their programs online through OUA or directly through Griffith. Over the next few years, Griffith intends to expand its own online offerings, adding an extra dimension to the University s profile. The experience of Griffith is probably common around the sector, though there will be different responses shaped by how institutions view their strategic interests. There is obviously increasing interest in online learning among Australian institutions and this is likely to expand rapidly as competition grows and as the technological enablers such as NBN come on line. In this context it will be critical that the national communications infrastructure, in whatever form, has the capacity to cope with this demand alongside demand from business, domestic and all other users and should be affordable, ubiquitous, both wired and/or wireless. Similarly, it will be critical that adequate, robust overseas communications links are in place. 4

5 5 Costs Online learning is not a cheap option vis-à-vis campus teaching, and promoting its benefits should not be taken as an opportunity to reduce funding to the sector. There will be significant start-up and on-going development and support costs for all institutions seeking to engage in this area. The additional costs include appointing new staff or retraining existing staff with the attendant implications including industrial relations noted above; the development of learning materials where these cannot be accessed from external providers, and many other practical considerations. At the other end of the equation, students must have access to appropriate technologies and taxation concessions (for example, internet access charges) or direct assistance with equipment costs could be instrumental in assuring successful take-up. There will be a mix of on-campus, off-campus, face-toface and online modes for individual students and their teachers, with different costs for each mode. The flexibility needed to facilitate this new environment brings its own costs, some of which cannot yet be foreseen or quantified, and Government will need to be open to this and to providing assistance.