Learning & Teaching Conference 2013 Panel Session
Briefing document for panel members
Where next for the Postgraduate Taught Student Experience at Newcastle University?
Thank you for taking part in our panel debate.
We expect that everyone attending will have had access to the briefing note (a copy is at the end of this document) via the QuILT web site and we will make additional copies available in the room.
The panel is chaired by Professor Ella Ritchie and she is responsible for keeping the session moving, taking questions from the audience and inviting panel members to give their responses.
We have tried to keep the topic related to the University rather than the whole of the HE sector, though obviously the external environment has a huge impact on us.
The postgraduate offer will be a focus of work during the coming months and events such as this debate will feed into that activity.
Where next for the Postgraduate Taught Student Experience at Newcastle University?
That thinking about postgraduate provision and student experience is a current sector wide concern can be seen from the Guardian Round Table debate, 7 May 2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/2013/may/07/postgraduate-students-what-next-roundtable. These notes reflect the concerns, issues and questions raised at that event and you may like to think if these are concerns that we share at Newcastle University.
Little is known about the background of current postgraduates and how this affects their progression to study. An HEA report was commissioned to address this. Link to report http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/Research/Postgraduate_transitions The report raises concerns about access to postgraduate study and investigates the reason for differential uptake. The postgraduate landscape is very complex with a huge variety of qualifications ranging from professional Masters to Research Masters and a number of different models of doctorates. It differs significantly from subject to subject, and students' motivations for going on to further study also vary enormously.
A taught postgraduate qualification is now becoming a de facto requirement for many professions. In this session we will interrogate the reasons for this and the implications for programmes.
If UK graduates are less likely to follow postgraduate study (perhaps due to undergraduate debt levels), will places fill up with international students so that we end up with UK students not participating in postgraduate study? We need to also investigate the possible growth of four year integrated Masters degrees.
Finally, what role can effective use of technology fulfill, for example, more blended learning and Massive Open Online Courses?