A workshop organised as part of an HEA Pathfinder project. The aims of the day were to bring together quality managers and e-learning managers to identify issues in quality management that arise from the use of technology in learning and teaching, and identify ways in which quality management procedures could be made more effective in this regard.
I attended with a particular agenda – we have an integrated approach to learning and teaching at Bath, supporting the use of e-learning where it is pedagogically appropriate to do so, but we are also clear that there is a balance to be struck between an integrated approach and the need to ensure that reflection on and evaluation of e-learning as a particular strand of activity isn’t lost. As part of this, I am in the process of doing summer updates to some of our guidance documents, so I was hoping to use this day be able to underpin existing quality management principles and processes with further practical questions that can guide staff who participate in quality management processes to ask the right sorts of questions (whatever the mode of learning).
The workshop was a good opportunity to think through and discuss the issues outlined above with colleagues in other institutions across fields of expertise – discussing quality management with people from e-learning backgrounds has been helpful in defining my own thinking.
There were aspects of the research as presented that I found were less than well defined and evidenced. In places, e-learning was used interchangeably with distance learning. The use of the term ‘technology enhanced learning’ contains, for me, an a priori assumption of the value of technologies, when surely the very question that the quality management process should ask is ‘does technology enhance learning?’. Similarly, some causal links were implied, e.g. between low survey response rates and distance/e-learners, when the case study presented could also easily have been interpreted as illustrating poor survey practice (e.g. not closing feedback loops). I’m afraid such issues of definition and evidence did present me with something of a barrier in terms of credibility.
One thing that was notably missing from the event was a focus on students and their learning. Overall, there was a focus upon outputs rather than outcomes. I noted that a number of references were made to enhancement of e-learning as if this were an end in itself rather than a means of enriching the student learning experience. Similarly, in reports of group discussions on annual monitoring and periodic review, there was a tendency to concentrate on the processes and their outputs (e.g. reports) rather than the outcomes (e.g. focusing upon the ongoing improvement of the student learning experience). The fundamental question that all quality managers ask in relation to assurance and enhancement is ‘What does this mean for the student learning experience?’ – if we lose sight of that in e-learning or any other mode of learning, then quality management becomes a bureacratic exercise detached from the reality of student and academic experience.
What do I take away from all that? I’m reassured that the fundamental principles of quality management can be applied across e-learning, so I’m back to thinking about the sorts of support and guidance that can help people along their way:
- the periodic review process at Reading seems to place emphasis upon an ongoing collaboration/conversation between services and departments prior to periodic review – so advice can be sought from an institutional e-learning team that can support the self-evaluation by the department and inform the ensuing recommendations. I see this being a useful approach – the idea of establishing a dialogue and shaping the review so that it can be of most use to the department;
- simple questions that might be shaped for guidance documents for approval, monitoring and review of programmes, not necessarily just e-learning, but also part-time study and distance learning: how are you going to deliver this approach? What support is in place for staff and students? What are the resource implications (including staff development – do staff have the necessary skills)? What is the evidence that this approach is of benefit to students? What is the impact of this approach/its benefit in preference to other modes of learning? How do you know that this is the best way to do it? Why are you proposing/taking this approach? The questions are very open-ended but can elicit a sense of how far a particular proposal/approach has been thought through, what further advice might be needed, and how far assertions are evidence-based.
