HEPI report - Rebooting learning for the digital age

Interesting to see this report just released from HEPI, with a focus on the use of technology in support of campus-based education.

The reports makes seven recommendations:
  1. Higher education institutions should ensure that the effective use of technology for learning and teaching is built into curriculum design processes. This should include consideration of win-win methods, which offer both improved outcomes and lower costs.
  2. To support this, the UK higher education sector should develop an evidence and knowledge base on what works in technology-enhanced learning to help universities, faculties and course teams make informed decisions. Mechanisms to share, discuss and disseminate these insights to the rest of the sector will also be required.
  3. Institutions that do not currently have learning analytics in place should give consideration to adopting it at the earliest opportunity.
  4. Education researchers should consider how the learning analytics big dataset can be harnessed to provide new insights into teaching and learning.
  5. Digital technology should be recognised as a key tool for higher education institutions responding to the TEF. Providers should be expected to include information on how they are improving teaching through the use of digital technology in their submissions to the TEF. The Department for Education and the TEF panel must ensure the TEF does not act as a barrier against institutions innovating with technology-enhanced approaches.
  6. Higher education institutions should ensure the digital agenda is being led at senior levels – and should embed digital capabilities into recruitment, staff development, appraisal, reward and recognition.
  7. Academic leads for learning and teaching should embrace technology-enhanced learning and the digital environment and recognise the relationship with other aspects of learning and teaching.
There's not much that is new here - which actually underscores the importance of the recommendations! The value of the recommendations lies in their end-to-end consideration of the student journey and institutional practice, from planning the curriculum right through to senior governance. Linking technology with the Teaching Excellence Framework is another promising suggestion.

The only suggestion I have here is adding an eighth recommendation:

8. Higher education institutions should ensure that the lessons from learning analytics determine improvements to institutional practice.

Adopting analytics is easy, if not expensive; the actual return on investment relies on an institution having the courage to let what it learns actually make a difference to teaching and learning. It's possibly implicit in recommendation 1; it's clearer in recommendation 6, however that particular recommendation is not so directly concerned with pedagogy. It might also overlap with recommendation 7, though that recommendation does not necessarily address those with decision-making or systems-changing responsibilities.

We need to hard-wire continuous, data-feed improvement across our teaching and learning activity. Gathering, analysing and interpreting data are not the difficult tasks. Adapting to their truths is. Rebooting for the digital age requires leadership - and that the seven recommendations are not new is evidence that it is likely the eighth recommendation that is lacking.

It's not easy to change on-campus (or even traditional distance for that matter) education into what the seven recommendations describe here. It's arguably far easier to begin again, with an effective online, analytics-driven approach built-in from the ground up, and a curriculum aligned with TEL possibilities. Perhaps new entrants may have an advantage...?

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