Education Strategy UNIVERSITY of LUTON

UNIVERSITY OF BEDFORDSHIRE

Education Strategy (2008 – 13): Transformational Education

1.Introduction

This document detailsa revised Education Strategy for the University of Bedfordshire to replace the current version which ends this academic year. It builds on existing practices and current priorities and is thus evolutionary in nature. The initial section provides some context to the priorities which the strategy is seeking to address with an emphasis on the external environment. The next section presents the draft Education Strategy; its key themes and core aims. The Education plan identifies four proposed strands to our work over an initial three-year period, this is followed by a discussion of the relationship between these strands and the core themes. Finally an action plan for the initial period is provided.
This is the first Education Strategy developed specifically for the University of Bedfordshire. It takes as its starting point the University’s plan for 2007 – 2012 New Futures and builds on work already underway across the University including the educational principles and priorities set out in the Curriculum Review 2008 (CRe8). It has been informed by initial discussions with staff from across the University. The main priorities for the strategy were seen to be learner development and employability. The need for relative stability and the time to work with and develop the ideas in CRe8 were central to staff concerns about curriculum issues as was the need to evidence, share and develop our existing excellent practice and allow for subject contextualisation. Increasing diversity (of students and of our operations) was also identified as a key issue as well as responding to an ever-changing external environment.
The Education Strategy covers a five-year period of the University’s plan. With a more detailed plan for the first three-years which identifies the specific actions which will be implemented to achieve the strategy together with an associated timeframe and responsibilities. The initial Education Plan covers the first half of the period of the overarching strategy (2008 – 2010) at which point it will be reviewed.

2.Context

The University’s vision is of ‘a world where all are able to benefit from transformational experiences’. The Education Strategy identifies ways in which the University will directly support the attainment of this vision and the University’s mission ‘to create a vibrant multi-cultural learning community which enables people to transform their lives by participating in excellent, innovative education, scholarship and research.’ As a new regional University with growing national and international links, this period of our strategy focuses on maximizing our potential as well as that of our students. The University has plans to grow its student numbers, both at home and overseas, as developments allow. Growth will come from exploiting new markets and ensuring that the University has an excellent reputation for the quality of the educational experience it provides.
Locally, there are new opportunities as a result of our increased regional footprint, changes in regional government and because of investment in the region and in the regeneration of Luton. The University must respond to the needs of an economically growing region for a highly skilled, creative and responsive workforce and for the wider social and cultural requirements of the local community. Providing appropriate progression routes though links with Schools, Colleges and partner organisations and with initiatives such as Campus Luton will be important here as well as ensuring that the academic community is effectively networked with the wider community of which it is part.
We will respond to changes in the 14 - 19 curriculum and the development of diplomas to ensure that these provide additional entry routes to vocational higher education, not additional barriers, and that our curricula are matched with students’ prior experiences so that there is seamless developmental progression.
Our student body is becoming increasingly diverse and their expectations of higher education are changing and evolving placing a greater emphasis on status, quality and service. We need to respond by continuously improving the quality of the educational experience and emphasising education as a partnership between the University and its students.
The Leitch report sets a challenging agenda for universities to respond to the needs of employers. As a vocational institution with close links with employers, we need to ensure that we are fully responsive to demand-led education through developing our CPD and part-time taught provision to meet the needs of the local market wherever appropriate building on the outcomes of our pilot Hefce-funded K-club project. We also must respond to changes at higher education level being signaled by the outcomes of the Burgess review and the increased emphasis being placed on students as partners in the learning process through student fees, the National Student Survey and possible changes in the QAA methodology.
An increasing number of our students are being taught in partner colleges and other organisations at home and around the world. We will continue to work with our partners to share our educational vision and support its local contextualisation and implementation so that all of our students experience a transformational educational experience tailored to local circumstances.
The University needs to respond to developments in Europe designed to support student mobility and to align more closely educational systems through the Bologna accord and other initiatives. Recruiting students from, and preparing students for, a global marketplace will be an important dimension to our work. Maximising the use we make of the potential our diverse community offers for providing a rich, diverse and multi-cultural learning experience for all our students will be an important facet of our work.
Technology is changing when, how and where students can engage with their learning. Ensuring that we harness technology to support student learning and open access to new markets will be an important feature of our work over this period. Expectations of the learning environment are being changed through developments such as the ‘Building schools for the future’ initiative. The University has agreed to make a major investment in its Luton campus which will improve the learning environment and residential accommodation. It needs to ensure that all of its sites provide a learning environment which meets, and exceeds, growing student expectations and supports the delivery of our innovative and transformational curriculum.
The unit of resource to support teaching has been in decline and this trend is expected to continue. The University must continue to review how its uses its scarce resources to support the student learning experience efficiently and effectively. This will mean examining our systems and processes as well as considering how the use of technology, together with other developments, affects staff roles and skills-sets to ensure that we are using our expertise and resources to best effect.
The educational landscape is changing at an increasingly fast rate, driven by local, national and international initiatives, by increased competition and globalization, and fuelled by technological developments and increased staff and student mobility. The University of Bedfordshire must remain aware of the likely impact of these developments and to respond in a flexible, dynamic and timely manner. The Education Strategy aims to provide a strategic framework which enables this to occur.

3.The Education Strategy

Our Vision

Our vision is of a University of Bedfordshire graduate[1] who is knowledgeable, critical and creative; who understands who they are and what they want to achieve; who can communicate effectively, evidence attainments and function in context, and who has the skills, self-confidence and self-regulatory abilities to manage their own development. Such a graduate is eminently employable, capable of working with and learning from others, of adding significantly to their local community and prepared for life in an ever-changing environment.

Our aims

The Strategy is wide ranging and has been developed to integrate with other institutional strategies notably the Estates, Human Resources and Financial strategies. Its aims are to support and sustain the University’s development through providing:

An exciting and engaging curriculum which supports the transition into higher education, raises expectations, broadens horizons and provides students with the skills, knowledge and wider attributes required for employment and lifelong learning.
A learning process which recognises the needs and priorities of the individual student, promotes deep and meaningful learning underpinned by scholarship and research, provides opportunities to develop and practise employability skills in a supportive environment, and which emphasises students, in partnership with the university, taking responsibility for their development and achieving their aims.
Student support which is integrated into the learning process so that students’ learning needs are diagnosed, delivered, monitored and reviewed regularly throughout their studies.
A blended learning environment where staff with the experience, skills and knowledge required to deliver a vocationally relevant higher education curriculum provide significant added-value to the learning process and are supported in this by the physical and virtual environment, the workplace and life experiences.
A physical learning environment which enables staff to explore innovative and effective approaches to supporting students’ learning, and which creates a challenging, vibrant and exciting working and learning environment.

Achieving these aims will require action by the entire University community. The Education strategy sets an overarching direction of travel and identifies institutional actions but it also recognises that achieving our aims will require localised implementation and adaptation to reflect the needs of particular subjects and students.

The Themes

The key themes which cut across many areas of the strategy are:

Access to higher education for all who can benefit: providing an educational environment which supports students’ transition into higher education and enables them to maximize their potential and transform their lives.
Improving student learning and attainment:ensuring that all students are challenged by a contemporary, research informed curriculum and supported in maximizing their potential.
A multi-cultural and multi-national student community: recognising and learning from students’ different perspectives, and preparing them for global citizenship and a global workplace.
An employability-focused curriculum: preparing full-time students for the transition into employment, enabling part-time students to extend their knowledge, skills and understanding, and enabling all students to maximise their opportunities.
Becominga ‘distributed’ university: supporting our students’ learning in a variety of environments; the university and its various sites, partner institutions in the UK and overseas, at home, at play and at work.
Continuously improving the learning environment: providing students with a sense of community, and a responsive real and virtual infrastructure that meets their needs and those of their subject.
Using resources and expertise to maximise student learning: ensuring all our resources are used effectively and efficiently.
Developing an evidence-informed approach within communities of practice: a culture in which staff and students are empowered to explore, evaluate and innovate within a mutually supportive and developmental environment.

4.The Initial Phase (2008 – 10)

There are four stands to our work in the initial phase of our strategy.

A Curriculum delivery and the learning infrastructure

B Learner development and support

C Extending and reviewing institutional structures

D Academic staff and processes

The intended objectives for each strand are detailed below and the actions which will be taken to implement them are provided in the Action Plan at the end of this document.

ACurriculum delivery and the learning infrastructure

The Curriculum Review for 2008 (CRe8) sets a broad agenda for teaching and learning. During this stage of our Strategy we will:

A1Enable students to produce evidence of their achievements and attainments drawn from curricular and extra-curricular experiences

A2Further support the implementation of a curriculum which emphasises student development throughout their course

A3Extend the opportunities for students to gain and benefit from meaningful work experience

A4Further integrate our research and scholarship into our curriculum, and enable students to value, develop and apply research skills in a variety of contexts

A5Set learning in a framework which emphasisesethical issues and students understanding how to function in context

A6Expand the role of e-learning so that a blended approach is the primary mechanism of delivery and there is increased supported distance learning in selected areas

BLearner development and support

Supporting the personalised needs of our diverse student body as part of a partnership with our students, will remain a priority. During this phase of the Strategy we will:

B1Further integrate the work of professional support staff with that of academic teams in raising aspirations and responding to students’ needs

B2Exploit the use of the Portal to provide access to integrated support mechanisms for students studying in the University, at home, in the workplace and overseas

B3Implement actions designed to develop students’ sense of belonging to, and being integrated with, a community especially at the department/course level

B4Provide detailed transcripts for all our students which provide evidence of learner development and attainment

B5Continuously develop our schemes to hear the student voice and to respond appropriately

B6Extend our ability to recruit, monitor and support the learning of a diverse student body

B7Further develop approaches designed to encourage student self-regulation, motivation and engagement

CExtending and reviewing institutional structures

We will continue to ensure that we have a learning infrastructure that meets the needs of our curriculum, our students and those who support their learning. During this phase of our Strategy we will:

C1Extend the opportunities we provide to students for part-time CPD and personal development

C2Extend schemes to support student progression and lifelong learning

C3Review our framework for Foundation degrees and the opportunities they provide for widening access to HE and for progression

C4Review taught postgraduate structures and support mechanisms

C5Continue to develop learning spaces which support an experiential curriculum

C6Develop a systematic approach to increased Internationalisation of our student body and of our curriculum

C7Explore the development and use of ‘value-added’ indicators to measure the impact of our curriculum on student attainment

DAcademic staff and related processes

The effective delivery of our curriculum to a diverse student body in an ever-changing world requires staff who are knowledgeable and flexible facilitators of the learning process. During this phase of our strategy we will:

D1Review and revise staff roles and support mechanisms

D2Extend support for part-time staff, and for visiting and associate lectures across all our provision; including PCE to FE partners

D3Review the roles of those who support the learning process to ensure that staff experience, skills and expertise are being used effectively and efficiently

D4Support staff and curriculum development through developing a community of practice to sustain curriculum development and innovation at the individual tutor level, and focusing institutional-level educational and curriculum development on the work of course teams

D5Foster a culture of action research and evidence-informed practice

D6Continue to develop a close, dynamic and synergistic relationship between research, teaching and student learning

5.Relating the themes and strands

Truly transformational education requires us to ensure that the entire university community is mobilized to support the needs of individual students in a way that broadens horizons and opens up new opportunities. This section links the themes and the intended outcomes (identified in brackets) for each of the strands.

Access to higher education for all who can benefit

Our Access mission leads to diversity in our student body in terms of aspirations, maturity, nationality, gender, ethnicity, prior attainment, prior study, mode and location of study. Valuing and responding to this diversity requires work at the institutional, course and individual student level.
The personalised learning dimension of CRe8 is designed to address this issue, it sets a framework within which we can respond to the needs of all our students, whatever their ability and motivation. The next stage of our development is to embed monitoring and support processes robustly into the curriculum so that students’ needs are routinely identified and supported. The major responsibility for this will lie with course teams supported by the specialist areas of the University and through increased integrated on-line support. (B1, B2)
Preliminary work underway within the University has highlighted that it is not sufficient to provide an appropriate learning environment and an exciting and engaging curriculum, for some of our students we need to look at processes that will change their resilience, self esteem and self-efficacy beliefs. This is a challenging agenda but one where the rewards in providing a truly transformational experience are large. We will continue to work in this area, using an evidence-based approach to foster student engagement and motivation and to view learning as a process rather than a series of events and activities.(B7)
The University must ensure that it is not advantaging or disadvantaging any one group within its diverse student population. We need to develop routine systems of monitoring and action planning to ensure that we are providing equality of opportunity. Understanding the impact of our curriculum on our diverse student body and ensuring we meet our ethical and legal responsibilities will be a core part of our work over the period of the Strategy and we will also explore ways in which we can measure the ‘value-added’ of our curriculum to our students. (B6, C7)
Widening access also includes the provision of courses and units to support continued life-long learning.