The Higher Education Academy Summit Programme

The Higher Education Academy Summit programme

Developing Inclusive Learning and Teaching

Final Report – UHI Millennium Institute

Work being undertaken

The overall aim of the UHInclusion programme is to ensure that the UHI learning experience supports the individual success of all our students, without discrimination. It is an initiative with two distinct phases:

Phase 1: Clearly articulating where we are and where we want to be in terms of the UHI student experience (During the HEA Summit programme).

Phase 2: Making inclusion part of everyday practice - the normalisation of inclusive practice (Post HEA Summit programme).

Institutional context

UHI Millennium Institute (UHI) is addressing a historical wrong: half the landmass of Scotland, with some of the most rural and isolated communities in Western Europe, has never had a university situated in, and serving, its dispersed region. As a collegiate and federal partnership of colleges, research institutions and learning centres, UHI is uniquely of, and for, the communities it serves in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

It is transforming the economic, social and cultural life of the Highlands and Islands by creating a university for the region which builds on local roots in education and research, offers relevant, situated curricula and a blended learning delivery pedagogy that suits the needs of its communities. Designated a higher education institution in 2002, since August 2008 UHI has had the power to award its own degrees; a major step towards establishing the University of the Highlands and Islands.

Its mission is to be a distinctive and innovative regional university of national and international significance: a university with a pivotal role in the educational, economic, social, cultural and environmental infrastructure of its region and which reaches out to the people of the Highlands and Islands and the rest of the world through its research and teaching.

This is translated into the strategic aim of making a transformational contribution to the economic, environmental, social and cultural development of the region. It is doing this by, inter alia, contributing to the sustainability of fragile communities and the regional environment, supporting the development and enhancement of the Gaelic language, culture and heritage, identifying and targeting underrepresented groups in higher education within the region, and optimising opportunities for local access to higher education using the latest developments in learning technology.

President McAleese of Ireland described UHI in 2003 as “The greatest, the most inclusive adventure in education ever undertaken in the Highlands and Islands and possibly in these islands. The widely dispersed colleges of this institute, linked by new technologies, delivering education in a stimulating and imaginative way and enjoying broad local support, are powerful engines of enterprise and renewal.”

For UHI, inclusion is at the heart of its mission: with a history of regional depopulation, a low wage labour market and major demographic challenges, it is a project with lofty regional regeneration and development ambitions.

The Highlands and Islands of Scotland

The Highlands and Islands cover over half the landmass of Scotland, with less than 10% of the population. There are around 80 inhabited islands with towns and communities dispersed across the region. There has been some population growth this decade, but there are considerable variations across the region with some areas experiencing continuing depopulation.

Figure 1: Population in the Highlands and Islands

Source: General Register Office for Scotland

With the creation of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh in 2007, that city, with a broadly similar sized population to the Highlands and Islands has four local universities to serve the needs of its community: the Highlands and Islands still does not have one.

The area has a relatively smaller proportion of the population aged 16 to 44 years, reflecting the out-migration of younger generations. With, historically, a high value being placed on the benefits of tertiary education, the lack of higher education provision in the region contributes to a net loss of young people. Figure 2 illustrates that if the Highlands and Islands were to have the same demographic profile as Scotland, there would be an extra 20,000 people aged between 16 and 44 years.

Figure 2: Population in Highlands & Islands and Scotland by Age Group, 2006

Source: General Register Office for Scotland (adapted)

Since 2001, there has been a rise in the number of people of pensionable age and a decrease in the number of children, reflecting a population that is ageing faster than in Scotland as a whole. The region is also marked by a low wage economy relative to the rest of the country and lower levels of productivity.

The rate of employment is higher than the Scottish rate with the public administration, education and health sector the largest employer and, perhaps not surprisingly given the rich natural beauty of the region, employment in the tourism related sector higher than in the rest of the country. Self employment is also relatively high.

A regionally-based university would contribute towards sustainable population growth by providing opportunities for younger people to live and study in the area. It would also have the potential to underpin various aspects of economic development, including improvements in skills development and lifelong learning, development of the knowledge economy, and the strengthening of remote and rural communities.

UHI Millennium Institute

“It was acknowledged from the beginning of the UHI project that any new university serving this vast and complex region would have to be different. Even if it was desirable to follow an old model when the potential existed to create something dynamic and new, a traditional, single leafy campus was unlikely to meet the disparate needs of places as far apart culturally and geographically as Argyllshire, Shetland, Skye, Dingwall and Lochaber.” (Hills and Lingard, 2004:64).

In 1975, at a conference organised by the regional economic development board in Inverness, the distinguished Highland educationalist Dr Farquhar MacIntosh proposed that a new Highlands and Islands University should take a radically different form. Instead of a single campus, the institution should amalgamate the new and old colleges and learning centres which were scattered throughout the region, to form “a federal university or polyversity for the Highlands.” (ibid:22) Dr Macintosh’s innovative proposal was given impetus and drive by the development in the early 1990s of a range of new technologies, including the internet and video conferencing which meant that for the first time the geographic barriers could be effectively overcome in the Highlands and Islands. These developments were recognised at another conference held in Skye in 1992 to debate the new university. Sir Robert Cowan, chairman of HIE, told delegates and speakers from across Scotland and northern Europe that: “We have to eschew conventional thinking. We have to aim for something radically different and of supremely high quality . . . The University must be widely accessible to new sectors of our population, flexible in format and delivery - and here our new information technology capability will be an important factor.” (ibid:43).

UHI is now a federal partnership of colleges and research institutions, the academic partners, with strong roots in their respective communities and a unifying mission (Theodore, 2006). This collegiate structure and the links to the diverse communities of the Highlands and Islands are potentially key strengths of the institution. Through its constituent colleges and research institutions, UHI delivers a wide range of higher education across the Highlands and Islands, including degree and higher national courses, continuing professional development and lifelong learning, research degrees and research programmes. It has built upon existing facilities and infrastructure, rather than developing a central green field campus, to develop an institution that seeks to join up tertiary sector provision. UHI was designated as a higher education institution in 2001 by the Scottish Executive and gained degree awarding powers in 2008.

UHI is trying to develop new and innovative solutions to post-compulsory education: including widening access to ‘non-traditional’ students, seamless progression between further and higher education, lifelong learning and the use of new technologies. It is a distributed model of higher education using technology where necessary to provide access to learning materials and existing infrastructure to support that learning in local communities. The academic partners have a network of learning centres in some remote island and mainland communities to enable access to their provision from those not based near the main campuses, as well as provision that is entirely online.

The geographical dislocation and sparcity of population of the region are amongst the greatest challenges facing UHI. UHI staff often comment that they cover an area the size of Belgium with a population the size of Brussels. Substantial use is made of VLE, video-conferencing facilities to overcome distance: on any particular day UHI is usually making more use of video-conferencing than the rest of the UK higher education sector combined. UHI is not a “virtual” institution, however, and it is the physical presence of staff in academic and support roles across the region that underpin the student experience.

UHI delivers lifelong learning opportunities to students who would be unable otherwise to access higher education due to personal or social circumstances and, increasingly, attracts students to the area to study on a range of courses distinctive to the culture, environment and industries of the region. UHI is also unusual in the way that it links up further (FE) and higher education. Most of the academic partners were FE colleges prior to UHI’s establishment, and FE provision continues to form the bulk of their operations. However, since the same colleges also offer HE opportunities under the UHI banner, it is possible for someone to progress from FE to HE in the same building, with the same group of peers and often with the same lecturers.

UHI bases its provision on the Scottish Curriculum and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) and offers a very flexible system of exit and entry points and progression routes to try to encourage students to engage in learning in a way that suits their own circumstances. A brief portrait of UHI:

Delivered university-level courses to 8,156 students in 2008-2009.
Has awarded more than 1600 undergraduate degrees since 1999.
Is the only higher education institution (HEI) based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Achieved taught degree awarding powers (tDAP) in 2008.
Provides access to university-level study through a partnership of colleges and research institutions.
Provides Gaelic language learning opportunities and delivers degrees through the medium of Gaelic.
Has an associated network of over 50 outreach learning centres.
Is the UK leader in using video conferencing technologies in education - not to create a virtual institution but to bring people together so that they can learn from and with each other.
Includes over 40 undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses and over 100 higher national awards and other vocational qualifications with flexible ways of studying.
61% of our students study on a part-time basis.
61% of our students are over 25 years old.
Covers half the land mass of Scotland, including many islands.

The HEA Summit programme offered UHI a framework to continue the development of its inclusive learning and teaching practices, to learn from other institutions, to provide some intellectual space to reflect on how the above context has informed and shaped our students’ experiences and to identify and improve what needed to be done.

Strategy

The small team working on the HEA Summit programme decided that the overarching approach would be to pull together existing practice and initiatives with the planning framework to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Inclusive learning and teaching vision underpins a great deal of UHI’s mission including the following strategic objectives:

Enhance the employability of our graduates (Objective 3)..
Be a centre of excellence for the development and enhancement of the Gaelic language, culture and heritage (Objective 4).
Enhance the impact of our cultural engagement activity (Objective 5).
Contribute to the sustainability of fragile communities within our region, ensuring growth is shared (Objective 7).
Enhance the student learning experience, including the social dimension of learning (Objective 8).
Achieve optimal outcomes in all areas of external quality assurance (Objective 11).
Deliver learning that is relevant, flexible and adaptable to the needs of employers and individuals (Objective 12).
Optimise opportunities for local access to higher education for students who are not geographically mobile (Objective 13).
Identify and target under-represented groups in higher education within the region (objective 14).

Activities completed or currently in progress

Institutional Analysis

An analysis of UHI in relation to inclusive learning and teaching concluded that current strengths included the following:

Institutional mission statement that supports inclusive teaching and learning.
Highly motivated staff with strong commitment to widening participation and student success.
Already demonstrably a widening access institution.
Expertise in designing and developing online and blended learning material that enhances inclusive teaching and learning, especially to remote and rural students.
Significant investment in Wider Area Network and capital investment in distributed campuses and learning centres.
Geographical spread of staff and students: providing local access to learning.
Experience of overcoming challenges of rurality.
Equal Opportunities Committee and Equality and Diversity working group.
Expertise in use of videoconferencing.
Networked student support.
Previous research, for example, induction for non-traditional students.
LEARN and e-learning teams (see below).
SDB funded posts in retention, progression and networked support.
Experience of bilingualism.

It also concluded that there were the following drivers for change:

Internal drivers

UHI Strategic plan underpinned by aspirations about inclusion.
Need to improve UHI’s student retention figures.
UHI’s blended and increasingly networked curriculum architecture and delivery model must balance need to use technology to reach isolated students with the potentially excluding nature of e-learning for some students.
Equality and diversity, and inclusive learning and teaching, as themes in the new Quality Management process.
Evidence from UHI and national student surveys.
Anecdotal evidence of exclusive practice gathered by UHInclusion team.
Development of UHI student engagement strategy.
Existing good practice: aim to be champions of excellence.
Bilingualism.
Need to enhance UHI’s ‘university-ness’ in preparation for title application.
Need to revise UHI Student Charter and define UHI student entitlements.

External drivers

Equality legislation – imminent single equalities framework but generally low level of awareness of equalities issues across UHI.
Changing general population demographics and greater student diversity, including more international students.
QAA Graduates for the 21st century Quality Enhancement theme;
Employability agenda.
External stakeholder expectations.
Scottish Funding council’s Learning for all and Access and Inclusion Committee putting greater emphasis on social inclusion.
Existing research evidence about the moral and business case.

Enabling Plans

The UHI Strategic Plan is underpinned by a series of operational ‘enabling plans. UHInclusion activities are directly and explicitly included in these plans and are now being updated, implemented and monitored on an ongoing basis.

Inclusive learning and teaching: a vision for UHI

Using the model presented at the HEA Summit residential, the UHInclusion team submitted the following vision statement to the UHI Learning and Teaching Committee. This was warmly welcomed by the committee and the VP (Academic) was keen to ensure that the vision was linked into the UHI Core Values statement currently in development as part of the Graduates for the 21st Century Enhancement Theme.

UHI is fully committed to inclusive learning and teaching, and manages the learning experience to achieve this:

Diverse student perspectives are proactively sought and acted upon.
Students are engaged with high level policy setting.
Commitment is long term and sustainable.
There is genuine and proactive senior management commitment across the partnership.
Inclusive learning and teaching is reflected in appropriate policies, strategies and procedures.
It is embedded in quality assurance and enhancement practices.
Sufficient human, financial and physical resources are committed to it.
Staff recruitment, development, recognition and reward processes promote inclusive learning and teaching.
Monitoring, data, research and evaluation are used for continual improvement.

UHI’s curriculum is designed to be inclusive for all students.

The curriculum is based on an analysis of student entitlements, and is sufficiently flexible to meet these changing requirements.
It is culturally sensitive and varied, offering different perspectives and building on students’ educational backgrounds, interests and experiences.
Timing of delivery is accessible to all students.
Inclusive learning and teaching is promoted within validation, revalidation and review processes as well as the quality assurance framework..
There are opportunities for individual pathways within coherent programmes
There is appropriate use of technology.
Consideration is given to the range of stakeholders engaged in delivery.
An equality impact assessment is used to identify the extent to which a course is inclusive of all students.
UHI works in partnership with professional bodies to ensure competence or fitness to practice standards do not discriminate against particular student groups.

The curriculum is delivered across UHI’s provision to be inclusive of all students.

There is student-centred learning.
There is flexibility with regard to location, timing and delivery methods.
Delivery is tailored to individual entitlements and requirements.
Accessible practices are used with regard to resources and materials, location, pace, delivery style, availability in advance, different formats and so on.
There is a range of modes of delivery.
Peer interaction and support are promoted and facilitated.
Attention is paid to discrimination and awareness raising amongst students and staff.

Each UHI student is able to develop academically, professionally and personally to fulfil their potential.

Support is based on a positive view, rather than a deficit view of students from diverse backgrounds.
Student development spans the whole student lifecycle from pre-entry to progression into the labour market or further study.
Induction is planned to maximise learning and development.
Academic and professional development are embedded into disciplines and proactively delivered.
Additional specialised academic development is provided.
Personal development is embedded into the curriculum.
Student development is recognised and accredited.
All students have access to appropriate information, advice and guidance and support services regardless of location.

Assessment and feedback are designed, implemented and managed to meet the needs of all students.