All Ireland Society for Higher Education
Irish University Training Network (IUTN)
Royal Hospital Kilmainham
1st-2nd December, 1998
Partially funded by the European Social Fund
The Irish Universities Training Network sponsored Ireland's first Colloquium on university teaching and learning which took place at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on December 1st and 2nd, 1998. About 100 participants were drawn from all universities on the island together with the Dublin Institute of Technology.
President McAleese opened the Colloquium and keynote addresses were delivered by Mr Noel Treacy TD, Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Don Thornhill, Chair of the Higher Education Authority and Professor George Brown, Visiting Professor, University of Ulster. The Proceedings include two of these addresses, the other not being in a suitable form for reproduction.
Unusually for an academic conference, most of the time was spent in Working Parties charged with making recommendations. The Working Parties were:
In addition, participants met to consider the formation of a Society for Higher Education and overwhelmingly supported the concept. Further information is included in these pages.
The Proceedings are being distributed to every academic staff member of the participating institutions in the hope that interest in teaching and learning might be increased significantly.
Many thanks are due to the European Social Fund and the Higher Education Authority of the Republic of Ireland for making the Colloquium financially possible.
Thanks are also due to Ms Nicky Duff, Ms Rose Marie Lynch, Ms Louise Power, and Ms Tracy Richardson for their administrative support.
Sylvia Huntley-Moore
Trinity College
It gives me great pleasure to be here, and to have been invited to address your Colloquium this morning.
As I stand before you today, it strikes me that every single individual in this hall holds at least one concern in common. It is a concern that impacts directly upon us all, whether academic or politician, and on the lives of every other person in this state. This concern is, of course, the future of education, and in particular, that of Higher Education.
We are all aware of the huge changes that have taken place in Irish education in the past 30 years. Prior to 1970, third-level education was out of the reach of the majority of Irish citizens, a luxury reserved for the middle classes. Over the past three decades, however, there has been a fundamental change in both the way education has been run and in its availability to the various sectors of society. Even within the last fifteen years, the increase in participation rates has been remarkable. Let me give you an example: in 1984-85, around 39 percent of eighteen year olds were engaged in full-time education. Ten years later, that figure had risen to 60.6 percent. Amongst those aged 20 years and older, the rate of participation had increased from 8.9 percent to 18.2 percent--a two fold increase in the space of a decade.
Of course, with that growth has come new challenges. The role of third level education has changed and advanced substantially over the last couple of decades as our national economy and society have developed. It has moved from being a training mechanism for the middle and professional classes, in an economy dominated by agriculture, to being the fulcrum of a modern, technologically based society. Higher Education is no longer marginal. Its development provides the momentum for the development of the whole of our society. Its expansion has allowed more and more of our people to fulfil their potential and to develop their God given abilities.
Anyone who has observed the development of the government policy towards Higher Education, in recent years will be aware of its rapid ascent in the national scale of priorities. Just a few weeks ago, we announced a £180 million package for research and development. Prior to that, there was a £5 million fund, and before that again, the £250 million Scientific and Technological Education Investment Fund. While I accept that there has been a certain degree of overlap between the three, it is indisputable that this government has demonstrated its commitment to the development of Higher Education and the pursuit of excellence, not only in the sciences, but also in the humanities and social sciences. In the case of the latter, provision of funding has increased dramatically, after previously being barely existent--proof that while the sciences may fuel our economy, we are cognisant of the need for development in other areas.
Society is better served by a broad-based educational excellence, than by the myopic concentration of resources in one area.
I was pleased to note that many of the other challenges that face Higher Education appear on the agenda of this two-day Colloquium. Issues such as Quality Assurance, the updating and development of the curriculum, accreditation and training of third level teachers. These are all areas that must be given the utmost consideration if we are to maintain and improve on the standards which we have already achieved. We in government are conscious of this fact and are open to the possibility of change. We maintain close contact with the Higher Education Authority, with the Higher Education Institutions themselves and with the various bodies, ad hoc and permanent, that are concerned with this important area.
Any university system is only as good as those individuals within it. Students may enter our Higher Education institutions with all the talent in the world, but they will be sold short if the quality of the education provision which they find within those institutions is not of a sufficient standard. Remember the words of W.B. Yeats: Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. It is important that those who teach at third level, not only maintain the standards set in the past, but that they improve on them. Ireland already has a good Higher Education system. It is the role of both government and those who work within that system, to ensure that that good system becomes a great system.
For this reason, I believe a vigorous policy of staff development is an essential element, for Higher Education institutions. Clear policies should be established to encourage Higher Education teachers to focus on teaching students how to learn and how to take initiatives. Staff development programmes should encourage constant innovation in curriculum, teaching and learning methods, and ensuring an appropriate status for those teaching in Higher Education.
It is precisely that reason that gatherings such as this one here today are to be welcomed. The concentration of so many fine minds on the issues affecting the development of Higher Education can only be beneficial. The very fact that the Higher Education community is mindful of the dynamic for change, demonstrates its awareness of the developing society around us. The fact that so many auspicious members of that Community are willing to sit down and to discuss the future needs of Higher Education and to make recommendations on fulfilling those needs, shows an admirable openness of mind.
Everywhere, Higher Education is faced with great challenges and difficulties. Over the centuries, it has given ample proof both of its viability and its ability to change and to include change and progress in society. In the modern era, Higher Education institutions have a responsibility to educate highly qualified graduates and responsible citizens able to meet the needs of all sectors of human activity.
In a world undergoing rapid changes, there is a perceived need for a new vision and student-orientated paradigm of Higher Education. Both here and elsewhere, this will require new methods, practices and means of delivery, based on new types of links and partnerships with the community and with the broadest sectors of society. Higher Education Institutions should educate students to become well informed and deeply motivated citizens, who can think critically, analyse problems of society, look for solutions to the problems of society, apply them and accept social responsibilities.
Our Higher Education Institutions, need to adopt the philosophy of lifelong learning, giving the individual an optimal range of choice and a flexibility of entry and exit points with the system. We need to develop open and continuous access to higher learning, including bridging programmes and prior learning assessment and recognition.
Higher Education should define its mission according to the present and future needs of society and base it on an awareness of the fact that Higher Education is essential for both economic and social development. Individual institutions must use their autonomy and high academic standards to contribute to the development of society.
The importance of the development of Higher Education is something of which we are keenly aware at government level and which we have endeavoured to encourage through our financial support. However, in the final analysis, our universities are autonomous entities and the responsibility for ensuring that that development takes place falls squarely at their feet, and of course, at the feet of the Higher Education Authority.
It is gratifying, therefore, to visit a gathering such as this and to see the progressive nature of the discussion taking place. I am a great believer in the old adage that he who does not have one eye on the future is left in the past. However, this Colloquium does more than enough to reassure me that the future of our Higher Education Institutions is in good hands.
Go raibh maith agat.
The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for exploring higher education in different countries. In so doing, it provides a background for the six themes of this Colloquium. At the outset, it is stressed that the paper does not attempt a detailed survey of higher education in all the major countries. Rather it provides a set of heuristic devices for examining higher education in any country. Nor does it provide detailed bibliographic references for the information presented. To do so would require several person hours of work and convert what is essentially an opening address to a Colloquium into a scholarly review.
Not surprisingly, there are several ways of exploring any country's higher education system. Here I offer a framework based upon:-
Beneath the approaches to higher education across the world are competing ideologies which reflect wider cultural values. At one pole are approaches based on highly centralised governments who control staff, students and the curriculum. At the other pole are systems that rely heavily on market forces and preach a gospel according to freedom of choice. In between, are systems that are mixes of varying proportions of central control and market forces. Beneath these ideologies are different theories of human nature. Some ideologies are based upon the notion that people are not to be trusted, that they need to be tightly controlled and made accountable. Other ideologies are based on the assumption that human beings thrive in environments that are relatively free, that self reliance, moral responsibility and creativity flourish when people are trusted.
The dominant ideologies of a country give rise to its purposes of higher education. Not surprisingly, the more prosperous and democratic a country is, the wider the debate on what are the purposes of higher education. In Western democracies the debate may be traced to the early Greeks. Hippocrates, for example, discusses whether the study of medicine should be primarily educational or primarily vocational. In the 19th Century, Newman took the view that a liberal education was the best preparation for work and life. In the language of his day, he expressed it thus:-
`that education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to disregard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, and how to bear with them.'
(J.H. Newman,1853)
In the latter part of the 20th Century, the advent of technology has produced a reduced need for workforces and shrinking employment prospects for the young. The debate has swung towards vocationalism: the development of skills and the preparation for work. But even within the vocational perspective there are those who prefer a narrow approach to job preparation and those who take a longer view. I am of the latter persuasion. In the next millennium, graduates will change jobs more frequently and, even if they do not change jobs, their jobs will change. Hence the primary purpose of higher education should be to prepare students for uncertainty. Put less circumspectly, the primary purpose of higher education is to lay the foundations of effective, lifelong learning in order to prepare students for their working lives. Non scholae sed vitae discimus: we learn not merely for scholarship but for life.
It would be wrong to leave the purposes of higher education suspended in ideologies. There are important questions to ask and important tasks to pursue. The central question is `Whose purposes should predominate?' The expressed purposes of higher education by Government, Industry and Universities themselves need close scrutiny. For example, do the purposes take account of values, the development of culture or the personal development of students? For democrats, it is important to ask if the purposes of higher education include the development of well informed critics of an academic discipline, of industry and commerce and of the wider society. Last but not least, do the avowed purposes match the reality of the higher education provided? By examining the purposes of higher education in a country and the underlying realities, one gets a measure not just of its higher education but of the country itself. Herein, lies the importance of considering the procedures for estimating and enhancing the quality of higher education in a country, its modes of delivery of higher education and its management of change in the curriculum of higher education. One needs to look also at recognition that it accords its academics, the support provided to its academics through professional and performance development and its accreditation and training procedures. These are the major themes of this Colloquium.
Control of the HE curriculum was, and is, a major concern of many European countries and of developing countries. For example, in Britain there are some who want a national curriculum in HE. In the United States, market forces appear to prevail but not for the major professions--one sits the National Board of Medical Examinations to qualify as a doctor. Control also extends to qualifications and the status of university teachers. In many countries--Germany, Republic of China, Eastern Europe and some African countries all university teachers are civil servants. In some countries, academics may be re-located at the whim of the Ministry of Education.
Costs of mass higher education have alarmed many countries so they are seeking ways of reducing costs. In Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany, the Governments are looking closely at ways of ensuring students complete their degrees within 6 years. In contrast, in the United States, it is common for less prosperous students to take time out. In the Middle East, parts of Europe, Asia and Australia, there is concern about the political promises of free or cheap higher education.
Control and costs clearly affect the purposes of higher education, its provision and its capacity for change.
Control and costs have, arguably, led to the quality assurance movement. Ostensibly, quality assurance is concerned with the quality of the learning experience of students. In reality, it is probably more concerned with the control and cost of higher education. This movement towards quality assurance permeates most of western higher education, school education and health care systems. It is likely that the more remote the source of quality assessment is from the field that is being assessed, the more likely that quality assurance is perceived as of little value and bureaucratic. Such perceptions do not induce commitment to quality assurance.
Yet almost all Western countries have opted for a bureaucratic solution, although the French and Germans now seem less interested in centralised systems and the Italians more interested in making pronouncements about quality than changing their system of higher education. For the Anglo-Saxons, centralised quality assurance is a current obsession.
The most common method of quality assurance in Europe is a self-assessment report followed by a site visit to meet staff and students and a report by the assessors or visitors. The self assessment document is usually based on the deceptively simple questions:-
Underlying the method is a model based on `fitness for purpose'. Observations, outcomes of interviews, discussions and documentary analysis are matched against the objectives of a department or school.
In England, each of six aspects of provision is assigned a score on a four point scale. This approach has led to the construction of league tables of universities. These league tables confuse `fitness for purpose' and national standards of teaching. Fitness for purpose in England has been transmogrified into `good' and `bad' university departments. In Scandinavia, great reliance is put on the report by the subject provider and the views of international visitors. In the Netherlands the approach is very flexible--but the system is changing. In the United States there is no national system; each university has its own system, although state funded universities are expected to monitor quality.
It is too early to decide whether current systems of quality assurance are effective. Certainly, in the UK, grades awarded have gradually increased but this might be due to test sophistication. Few universities in Britain have been found to be unsatisfactory yet the central costs of the quality assurance system are in excess of £12 million pounds. To this sum should be added the costs incurred by each of the 104 universities and their loss of opportunities for research and teaching because of the time and resources devoted to quality assurance. Whether the benefits of a highly centralised system are worth the costs of the system is doubtful. My advice is, keep the system of quality assurance simple and close to home.
This well known model is derived from manufacturing industries. It provides a crude measure of a higher education system. The model stresses qualifications on entry. It assumes that qualifications are an accurate measure of an individual's potential achievement yet clearly the quality of earlier education can affect performance in school leaving certificates. If the process is quality assured, it is assumed that the outcomes will be assured. But outcomes in higher education are less precise than in manufacturing industries. Measure of outcomes may be immediate, intermediate or distant. One needs to consider carefully the question of `outcomes for whom?' and find useful ways of measuring them. Of the many possibilities to consider are outcomes for the national culture, the economy, employers, a better equipped workforce. For students, one might consider whether a degree leads to a better job--or even a job.
A prediction of this model is that if you change or increase the input and hold the process constant through quality assurance then the output will change. This simple truth appears not to have been grasped by some policymakers.
There is also a naivety about this model. It assumes that universities are merely people-processing institutions. Yet students grow and develop during their university years regardless of their specific course experience. They are not passive: they interact with their environment and each other. The idea that if one gets students with the `right' entry qualifications and `processes' them, then one will get the `right' outcomes is not borne out by experience down the ages. Further, the assumption that by producing more graduates one will advance the economy is not borne out by the evidence. The Far East, Middle East and South America have graduates doing menial tasks. Economies need more than higher education to move them on.
This model provides a slightly different perspective on a higher education system. It examines the accessibility of higher education, retention rates and performance.
However, access has widened in many countries and wider access has brought with it expectations of a relevant curriculum and better opportunities for high status employment. These expectations are based, in part, on peoples' perceptions of higher education when it was an elite system. As access widens and higher education becomes a mass system or, in some countries, virtually a `universal' system, these expectations are less likely to be fulfilled.
The widening of access has brought in its wake financial, political and administrative problems. This has led to different structures of HE in different countries. Two common approaches to the problem of expansion are:-
Set up a parallel structure: Finland, The Netherlands and Norway have just about completed the development of their polytechnic system. France and Germany have long had a differentiated system. In the UK, until 1992, there was a binary system. Usually in these systems, the polytechnic systems are not as well funded as the established universities.
Absorb all non universities into the university system: Teacher training has been largely absorbed into university systems in the UK, the Middle East and many other countries. In Australia and the UK, the binary line has been demolished and the boundary between further and higher education is blurred. Unit costs (per student) in the UK have been reduced by 63 per cent over the past twenty five years. Equality, in this context, means cheaper higher education. In the US higher education ranges from Research universities to Community Colleges that do not award degrees. But beneath these changes in a country's system there is a hierarchy of universities which may or may not be denied by that country's government.
Retention can become a major problem when governments pay the bulk of costs. There is a pressure to retain students with consequent implications for assessment and, perhaps, student support and guidance. However the matter is not clear cut. In many Western countries, it is assumed that students will drop out or drop out and return. This approach works less well for students from developing countries who are expected by their family and Government to stay at the course even if they are not suitable.
Performance usually refers to the class of degree awarded. In some countries performance is measured at a minimum threshold--pass and proceed. All degrees are apparently equal--but some students get better grade point averages than others and can therefore proceed to postgraduate programmes.
Performance is intimately related to the question of standards across degree courses within the same discipline and between universities. There seem to be three strategies: seek to impose national minimum standards, ignore the problem, allow market forces to decide.
Benchmarking is an attempt to calibrate degree standards across a nation or a set of nations. It is a fashionable concern in the United States and it is beginning to be fashionable in Europe. Whether it is a useful device is open to investigation and debate. My guess is that high levels of abstraction might yield some uniformity within subjects but accurate benchmarking across disciplines is a chimera.
There is clearly a link, if not a conflict, between the input and access models of higher education. Widening the access changes dramatically the cognitive levels of the input. It may also change the nature of the process: what are appropriate methods of teaching and assessment when dealing with an elite corps of students, may not be appropriate for dealing with a mass entry of students. The risk of lowered retention rates increases and, of course, the costs of using elite methods in a mass system soar dramatically. Last but not least, measures of performance may change.
For example, about twenty years ago just over one third of all degrees awarded in the UK were firsts or upper seconds. By 1990, more than half of degree awards were firsts or upper seconds and by 1993, in the eight most popular subjects, just under sixty percent of the degrees awarded were firsts or upper seconds. The modal class is now the upper second whereas previously it was a lower second. During roughly the same period, Higher Education has expanded from six per cent of an age cohort to about 28 percent. Resources per student have declined by 63 per cent since 1973. Not surprisingly, the increase in the number of good honours degrees awarded give rise to the question whether standards are declining. The question is complicated by changes in Advanced Level syllabuses (usually taken by 18 year olds), changes in subjects, the shifting purposes of higher education and the definitions of `standards' and `decline' that are used. It could be argued that if standards have not declined in the past 20 years, then there has been remarkable changes in the gene pool of the present generation of students or a dramatic shift in methods of teaching and learning. On the other hand, it could be argued that standards have not declined so much, as changed towards greater emphasis on preparation for employment.
Finally, here is yet another paradox. At the time that many countries are increasing access to higher education, the number of higher status jobs is declining. So higher education is no longer the gateway to jobs that it was in the past. As a consequence, postgraduate schools are expanding and perhaps replacing the undergraduate course as the point of entry into `good jobs'. It maybe that as access increases into undergraduate courses, that the postgraduate schools will become the place for `higher education'.
Underpinning both models is the notion of `value added'. This is a notion borrowed from accountancy which is used to estimate efficiency and effectiveness of a higher education system.
The common, and naive, approach to value added is to compare entry qualifications with outcomes in terms of degree classes. The wider the gap, the greater the value added. But given that Advanced Levels (School leaving certificates) and degree results correlate at between 0.2 and 0.4 one can hardly make strong claims about `value added'. If the correlations were much weaker then it would imply that entry qualifications are irrelevant and what would that tell us about the relationship between higher and secondary education? To complicate matters further, value added in higher education is based on the assumption that pre-entry performances are accurate and degrees are of comparable standards across subjects and universities. Both of these assumptions are, at best, weak.
Despite these reservations, there is much interest in the notion of value added. But before accepting reports of a higher education system based on the concept of `value added', it would be prudent to examine critically what is meant by the term `value added' in the report and the assumptions underlying the methods of analysis.
It would be wrong to leave this discussion of higher education systems without referring to globalisation and information technology. Put rather starkly, the purposes of globalisation and information technology are to colonise (or re-colonise) and make a profit for a small number of people. Globalisation and Information Technology are already having an impact on the economies of smaller countries and they will affect the Higher Education Systems of such countries. There has already been an upsurge in distance learning and franchised courses. Large North American Universities are setting up courses on the Net. Many Australian, Indian, Far Eastern, North and South American Universities use and export distance learning packages. The new University of Lapland uses it. The Open University in the UK is based on it and, more recently, in Britain, the University for Industry has been founded to develop distance learning courses with an industrial flavour. Private `universities' have been set up by international corporations to provide distance learning and short courses.
All of these approaches may widen access--but not necessarily to underprivileged groups. Retention may be a problem. IT approaches present special problems of process, retention, standards and outcomes. IT based courses may be effective at some tasks but the whole range of interpersonal relations and interpersonal skills are not easily developed in front of a screen or handbook. Nor are IT based courses necessarily good at developing empathy, values or critical thinking. In short, IT is important but so too is person to person teaching and group learning.
There are further risks of globalisation. Minority studies such as Classics, Archaeology and Irish studies are likely to be squeezed further in a global market yet such courses are often the mainstay of a nation's culture. Standards of courses provided by distant providers may vary and who will monitor them? One answer is to rely on market forces, the other is to regulate them. Caveat emptor or Quis custodies custodiet: which is the more important? The answer lies in the ideologies and purposes of a country's higher education.
This paper has explored the major approaches to examining a higher education system. Each of the approaches merits further exploration by providers and users of higher education. If one wishes to discover the truth of an educational system, one needs to look first at the alignment between its espoused purposes and its modes of teaching, learning and assessment. Then one should explore its approach to quality assurance and its concern for developing its students and its staff. All of this needs to be placed in the context of its approach to access and inputs, retention and outcomes. It is hoped that this Colloquium will further discussion of these issues in the context of the Higher Education Systems of Ireland.
It should be noted that the Working Parties acted independently and that the Reports and Recommendations may exhibit some inconsistencies in style and substance. On the other hand, there is overlapping which indicates considerable consensus on a number of issues.
The CHIU should establish a working party to discuss the Government circular and to develop a consultative document for circulation to all universities and higher education institutions. The report should provide a set of recommendations for Universities to:-
In the light of the above recommendations:-
In the light of the above recommendations:
That each institution adopt a Charter for Teaching and Learning.
There exist a number of factors which are leading to pressures for review of current curricula and development of new ones:
The principles of curriculum review and curriculum development can be seen as two sides of the same coin in that the criteria used to assess current curricula should also be the basis on which new curricula are developed.
Teaching may be defined as, `the creation and sustaining of an effective environment for learning'. The definition is a good basis for curriculum review and development because it reminds us that the primary purpose of teaching is student learning. Thus an effective starting point for the process of review and development should be the determination of appropriate learning objectives or outcomes. Such outcomes should list what it is the students can be expected to be able to do by the conclusion of the programme in question and should include: content-based skills such as problem solving, analysis etc. and generic skills such as written and oral communication and computer literacy. The choice of particular outcomes will vary from programme to programme as will the level of attainment. The computer literacy required of an engineer, for example will be at a much higher level than that usually required of a graduate in English literature.
Programme content should be chosen on the basis of what is needed to be known for students to meet the set learning objectives but the process of curriculum review consists of much more than judgments about the quality and quantity of content and that of curriculum development more than choice of content, important though these matters are.
The teaching methods (including assessment procedures) adopted by staff affect the choice of learning methods adopted by students and should be designed to create an environment which will assist the achievement of the learning objectives. Thus, for example, if the generic skill of computer word-processing is an objective, then provision must be made in the programme for practical classes and the skill must be assessed if the students are to take it seriously.
Another issue is the decision about learning modes. Traditionally, Third-level programmes have been open only to successful school leavers and taught by face to face teaching methods operating within a highly structured timetable. Flexible learning modes offer the opportunities to admit students on the basis of work and/or life experience, to enable learning to be based on information technology packages and to permit the students to achieve the learning objectives at their own pace and in their own time.
Finally, all good curricula build in continuing evaluation procedures to ensure and improve quality outcomes.
There are several groups with a legitimate stake in the outcomes of curriculum reviews and developments. Among them are employers, students, academic staff, government and where relevant, professional associations. Curriculum reviewers and developers should involve all stakeholder groups through a process of wide-ranging internal and external consultation and transparent decision making procedures. In practice, successful curriculum development is an iterative process which continuously invites and takes into account constructive feedback from all stakeholder groups.
Group 2 of the National Colloquium on `University Teaching and Learning : Policy and Practice' were given the following task :-
To make recommendations for the rationale, role and time-scale for the introduction of `key' (generic) skills development into the curriculum.
This paper provides a brief report of the Group's deliberations and a set of recommendations for consideration by Government, CHIU, Universities and Faculties (or Schools). The deliberations were informed by a review of research on skills. The deliberations and recommendations are intimately linked. Indeed it would be curious to merely offer recommendations in a field as complex and challenging as the integration of skills into the curriculum, without providing a background discussion of the topic. The recommendations are primarily for consideration within the Republic of Ireland. Delegates from Universities in the North of Ireland may wish to adapt the report and its recommendations for their own purposes.
The term `skill' is now used widely in university subjects that have a vocational orientation (dentistry, engineering, law, medicine and nursing), in secondary and primary education and in industry and commerce. `Skills' therefore provide a useful language for discussions within and across educational systems and between educational systems and industry and commerce. However, the term `skill' is more complex than it first appears so it is prudent to clarify the meaning of the term and to consider briefly the main characteristics of skills and the necessary conditions for their development.
A skill may be described as the `ability to perform at an appropriate standard in a given context'. This definition leaves open the question of `appropriate standard' and `given context' so the term may be used at different levels of an educational system, different years of a degree programme and in different contexts. For example, improving `writing skills' is a common goal in university courses and in secondary schools but the standards expected are different. Within universities, the standards of writing expected of first year students is different from those expected of third year students. The writing skills required in the context of Engineering are different from those required in History. These considerations lead to some important features of skills. All have implications for the design, delivery and evaluation of courses and degree programmes in universities.
Skills may transfer from one context to another. Transfer of skills from one context to another is not a natural process. For students to be able to transfer their skills from one context to another, they need to have knowledge and understanding of the skills, of the new context and opportunities to practice skills in a diversity of contexts. The capacity to analyse contexts and reflect upon experience are a sine qua non of effective transfer.
Skills may be used as:-
However there are three caveats with regard to skills as a vehicle for course design, delivery and evaluation. First, the purpose of higher education is not merely to furnish students with skills. Knowledge, understanding and attitudes are also important. As indicated in Section 1 of this report, knowledge and understanding are the bases of skills and skills are the basis of furthering knowledge and understanding. Secondly, skills are a useful starting point for thought and discussion of a curriculum: they are not a substitute for these activities. Thirdly, there are dangers of being unduly prescriptive or vague. Over-prescription becomes a strait-jacket for learning, personal development and assessment. Too broad a description of skills may offer no useful guidance on course design, delivery and evaluation. Despite these reservations, skills, when used sensibly, are useful heuristic devices.
There are two tasks involved in introducing skills into the curriculum:-
There are several published lists of skills which can be adapted for use in a programme or course. Almost all of them include, in some form or other, the following skills:-
| Cognitive skills | Social skills | Personal effectiveness (Conative skills) |
|---|---|---|
| Information retrieval | Written communication | Initiative |
| Information organisation | Oral communication (including persuasion and negotiation) | Independence |
| Analytical skills | Teamwork | Flexibility |
| Problem solving | Time management | |
| Critical thinking | Career management | |
| Creative thinking | Leadership | |
| Evaluative skills | ||
| Reflective skills | ||
| *`Learning to learn' skills (A meta-cognitive skill) |
*(`Learning to learn' skills are those concerned with the ability to reflect upon one's own learning styles and enhance them. `Conative skills' are those concerned with the will to succeed. All the skills are inter-dependent.)
Whilst such lists as the one above are useful starting points, it is more important for each faculty or department to identify and own its set of skills. Some of these skills are likely to be specific such as control systems in chemical engineering or documentary analysis in history, others are likely to be generic, such as problem solving or written communication. As indicated in Section 1, the precise nature of the skill is determined, in part, by the context. Problem solving in history is rather different from problem solving in histopathology.
The second, and perhaps more challenging task, is the implementation of skills in the curriculum. The first hurdle is to help people to recognise that skills are implicit in any curriculum. The challenge is encouraging course designers and course teams to use the concept of skills. The approach suggested by the Colloquium group may be summarised as `promotion, persuasion and persistence'. Successful implementation is a political process. One needs to prepare the ground as well as plan. Leadership, encouragement, continued support and ownership are necessary conditions of successful implementation. Pilots, field testing and opportunities to modify the innovation need to be built into the implementation.
As indicated above, skills are implicit in any curriculum but time and perhaps, other resources are needed to make skills a vehicle for course design, delivery and evaluation.
The amount of time required to integrate skills into the curriculum varies according to the subject area, its existing course design, its culture and the state of skills development in the subject. Other factors are the university's culture and the willingness of its senior managers to implement a skills based approach across universities. Estimates of time required for this task varied from the optimistic to the pessimistic, from one year to well into the millennium. A reasonable expectation might be that, within three years, :-
Whilst it is unlikely that substantial resources will be provided directly by Government to universities for this task, Government might wish to provide modest development funds to assist some department or networks of departments (subject groups) to develop and disseminate good practice in the implementation of skills in the curriculum.
Graduates should
Graduates should
Graduates should have
Graduates should
Graduates should he able to
(From Brown, G., Bull, J. and Pendlebury, M (1997) Assessing Student Learning in Higher Education London: Routledge)
The academic profession must be one of the very few in which members are not prepared formally for one of their primary roles, namely teaching. Most new entrants have received a comprehensive research training, either through formal courses or by way of the research degree `apprenticeship'. Of course, many have limited experience of teaching during their postgraduate studies as Teaching Assistants, Tutors or Demonstrators. This, however, provides only restricted exposure to the many dimensions of teaching at Third-level.
This approach may, however, need to change. Governments at one end of the spectrum and students at the other are calling for quality assurance and quality improvement programmes. Academics themselves are increasingly aware of the need for professional development. More insidiously, growing class sizes and worsening staff:student ratios are beginning to lead to breakdowns in the effectiveness of traditional methods of teaching and learning. The new technologies have the potential to solve, or partially solve these problems but the costs involved may be considerable. One such cost is the professional development of both new and experienced academic staff.
A 1994 Report into the provision of courses in teaching methods for recently appointed academic staff in Australia noted that, at that time, such courses were chiefly notable for their variety `in terms of length, educational philosophy, content and teaching methods' (Martin and Ramsden, 1994). The authors were particularly critical of the inadequacy of the shorter courses which concentrated on teaching techniques and ignored the need for on-going collegial support. In general, there was little evidence of Departmental or institutional support for the programmes.
The Report was quite influential and the situation has changed for the better in that, there now exist a number of Semester or year long programmes at Graduate Certificate levels which articulate into Diploma and Masters Awards. Reflective practice and curriculum development in the context of the broad academic environment are now common features. Some universities require successful completion of the programme as a prerequisite for the granting of tenure with exemptions being granted for those staff who can demonstrate experience and excellence in teaching at Third-level.
Readers will probably be more familiar with the United Kingdom scene. For some years, the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) has accredited university courses in teaching and learning. To date, 57 programmes have been approved with a further 17 under consideration. More than 1000 staff have graduated from the programmes with 400 enrolled currently (SEDA Statistics, 1999).
The future of SEDA accreditation is, however, far from clear. Following publication of the Dearing Report, the Institute for Learning and Teaching has been established which will, among other tasks, `accredit teaching and learning programmes/pathways for higher education staff'. At this time, the Institute has rejected mandatory training on accredited courses for all academic staff but has not ruled out the possibility in the longer term.
In summary, universities in the two countries with education systems very similar to Ireland's are rapidly developing programmes for initial professional development of academic staff and are well on the way to accepting nation-wide accreditation for those programmes.
On this island, systematic professional development courses for new academic staff are available only at The Queens University of Belfast and at the University of Ulster. In the Republic, the common pattern is short induction courses of less than one week, together with ongoing teaching development workshops open to all academic staff.
The Working Party supported strongly the view that collaboration between universities on both sides of the border should be encouraged. To this end, it recommended that a common core curriculum be established for the professional development of staff with teaching responsibilities. The curriculum would not be binding on universities but would provide a framework for institutions to develop their own courses relevant to specific requirements. The curriculum should take into account the specific needs of experienced and part-time academic staff as well as those of staff entering the profession and those support staff with a teaching role such as information technology and Library staff and those staff who assist in the preparation of learning packages.
Further, there should be reciprocal recognition of professional development courses which implies that consideration be given to their formal accreditation. The Working Party made no recommendation in relation to whether any professional development programmes should be mandatory except to suggest that the question should be investigated further as should the resource implications and possible funding sources for all such programmes.
More generally, the Working Party recommended that recruitment and selection processes should reflect the importance of university teaching.
The most appropriate vehicle for furthering these recommendations is the Irish Universities Training Network (IUTN) which includes representatives from all universities on the island.
This Report does not go into great detail about the deliberations of the Working Party because, since the Colloquium, events have to a certain extent, overtaken them. The Republic's Higher Education Authority has funded a project entitled, `Introduction to Third-level Teaching: developing and implementing a common core curriculum'. The project will be co-ordinated by Trinity College with a Reference Group consisting of representatives of all members of the IUTN. In addition to work connected directly with the project, the Reference Group will discuss further the Recommendations of the Working Party.
`Performance Development' is an extension of the concept of appraisal or review as it is known in the United States. For simplicity, this paper will use the term `appraisal' to discuss schemes already in place and defines it as a systematic process aimed at assessing performance and nurturing the development of staff.
There have been three recent comprehensive reports describing and analysing the state of appraisal schemes in universities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States respectively. It is clear that the schemes are widespread. In Australia, appraisal for staff development became compulsory for all academic staff in the early Nineties as a result of a ruling by that country's Arbitration Commission. In the United Kingdom, implementation of compulsory appraisal was a condition of the 1987 pay settlement. The situation is somewhat different in the United States with its more decentralised Higher Education structure. Nevertheless, in the last decade, there has been a rapid growth in appraisal schemes and a 1995 `survey of 680 public and private institutions found that 61 percent of respondents had a post-tenure review policy in place and another 9 percent had a policy under development.' [Licata, p. 2]
Appraisal schemes may be widespread in English speaking countries, but are they efficient and effective? Alan Lonsdale, who reviewed the Australian experience, concluded that `in most institutions staff development outcomes beyond those already occurring had not resulted and were unlikely in the future, and that other outcomes which may have enhanced institutional functioning did not result'. [Lonsdale, 1997, p. 2] Of the UK scene, Hughes concluded, `Appraisal has yet to fulfil its considerable promise.' [Hughes, p. 3] Licata et al are cautious about making an overall judgment about the America scene but conclude that, `The benefits of instituting post-tenure review appear to outweigh the costs.' [Licata, p. 33]
It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe and analyse the reasons for these conclusions which, in any case, vary from institution to institution. One problem, however, does stand out. Hitherto, most appraisal schemes have concentrated on the performance of individuals isolated from the context of strategic leadership and institutional and departmental planning.
Nevertheless, it is important that appraisal schemes be not rejected out of hand. In a rapidly changing educational environment, individuals and institutions need to be able to change to meet external and internal pressures, not the least of which is accountability. Individuals and institutions not wishing to have inappropriate evaluation schemes imposed on them are well advised to develop their own in a professional manner. Furthermore, the authors of the Reports in question are optimistic that the schemes, when extended to incorporate strategic leadership and planning, are likely to realise their potential. Hence `Performance Development'.
The remit of the Outcomes Group was to examine Performance Development in the context of teaching and learning but many of its conclusions are relevant to other forms of academic activity. The Group began its work by exploring some of the implications of a widely accepted definition of teaching, `The creation and sustaining of an effective environment for learning.' The advantages of the definition are that it is student-centred and that it reminds us that students learn in an environment of which the classroom performance of academic staff is only a part. The following table indicates the principal elements of the learning environment. Performance Development implies the development of the performance of all major elements.
| THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT | ||
| The Government | The Institution | The Faculty |
| Academic Leadership | The Department | |
| Valuing Teaching | The Teacher | |
| Personnel Policies | ||
Governments influence the learning environment in a number of ways, chiefly by developing and implementing policies for Higher Education which reflect and demonstrate the level of importance given it by the State and by providing funding to enable institutions to fulfil their Missions.
The Group identified three areas in which Government actions would have an immediate effect in improving academic performance; initial professional development programmes, teaching development grants and the improvement of sub-standard teaching facilities.
Very few academic staff in this country have been trained to teach and entry to the profession is normally by way of a research degree which is of limited relevance in assisting staff to cope with a rapidly changing learning environment. The state requires its doctors, lawyers and engineers to be properly qualified before dealing with the public. Academic staff have at least an equivalent effect on their students spread over many years.
Some Irish universities provide short induction courses for new staff, but limited resources have hitherto prevented the implementation of the kind of comprehensive courses needed which should last at least a term. Resources are needed, not only to appoint suitable qualified staff to teach the course, but to enable participants to have a reduced teaching and research load while they are attending it. This matter is considered in more depth in the Report and Recommendations of Group 3--`Accreditation and Development for Third Level Teachers'.
The learning environment is always changing: class sizes are growing; new teaching and learning technologies are becoming available; student profiles vary; and so on. In some other parts of the world, governments have recognised the need for innovation in Third level teaching and have provided significant grants which enable academic staff to investigate new ways of helping their students learn.
In Australia, for example, the Commonwealth Government has, for a number of years, made Teaching Development Grants to individuals on a competitive basis. The sum set aside in 1999 is $A2 million (grants are between $A10,000 and $A50,000). Broadly speaking, Teaching Development Grants are of two types: those which involve innovative developments likely to result in improvements to the quality of teaching, student learning or assessment; and those which involve the uptake or adaptation of existing products or processes which have previously demonstrated their value in other contexts. The term `innovation' should not be interpreted as meaning only technological innovation. It also includes incorporation of research findings into teaching/learning, curriculum planning, course management and delivery and flexible learning in any of its manifestations.
The Group believes that the introduction of such grants to Ireland would stimulate interest in teaching at Third level and would lead to a significant improvement in performance.
The physical environment can stimulate or impede teaching and learning. The Group believes that there are some serious `black spots' in the sector which should be remedied as soon as possible. In some instances, classrooms must be put to use for which they were not designed and others are shabby and not fit for purpose. Short of a systematic audit of all teaching and learning spaces in the country, it is impossible to gauge the extent of the problem but it is believed to be serious in some institutions.
The university itself is an important constituent of the learning environment and its formal and informal statements about teaching and learning and their importance send strong messages to academic staff and students. The Group recommends the HERDSA `Checklist on Valuing Teaching' to readers as a set of institutional performance indicators. After considering the Checklist, the Group focussed on four areas of common concern.
In comparison with their counterparts in Australia and the United Kingdom, Irish universities have employed few academic development or learning development staff, with the result that some teaching development programmes tend to be somewhat ad hoc. The situation varies from institution to institution and there is welcome news that several new appointments will be made in 1999. Most universities, however, have appointed Deans of Research whose very existence raises the profile and status of that activity and who have been able to assist academic staff to improve their research performance both directly and by developing and implementing comprehensive research plans. Equivalent appointments for teaching support would be welcome.
On the basis that teaching is a fundamental role of any university, the Group recommends that resources be made available to strengthen teaching development programmes and to raise their status in the academic community.
While observing considerable variation from institution to institution, the Group noted that there is little strategic planning in relation to teaching and learning although developments in the areas of Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement may force the more reluctant universities to approach planning in a more systematic way. See also the Report and Recommendations of Group 6, `Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement'.
Irish universities are now of a size which inhibits good internal communications. In each institution, there are undoubtedly many instances of outstanding and innovatory teaching and learning practices but members of the Group admitted that these were generally unknown outside of the Department in which they took place. Institutions are encouraged to develop interest groups, websites and/or in-house newsletters and journals which may alleviate this problem. See also the Recommendations relating to the formation of an Irish Society for Higher Education.
Teaching is still too often equated with classroom instruction and course design too often begins with the selection of content. Thus, teaching improvement courses tend to concentrate on classroom instruction and on better ways of transmitting information. Given our student-centred definition of teaching, it is clear that this view is too narrow. Universities could radically improve much teaching by insisting on clearly articulated learning objectives in particular and by reform of the curriculum development process in general. See also the Report and Recommendations of Group 1, `Managing Change in the Curriculum' and Group 2, `Key Skills in the Curriculum'.
The performance of at least new generations of academic staff would be improved if recruitment and selection procedures emphasised teaching much more than they do at present. Position descriptions and advertisements should emphasise the need for high quality teaching performance in addition to listing the areas of the discipline to be taught.
Senior recruits ought to be able to demonstrate the quality of their teaching performance and extent of teaching experience and should be required to do so. While many entrants to the profession will have had limited teaching experience, they should be able to reflect on it and be able to demonstrate that they have taken advantage of any teaching development courses available to them as postgraduate students. (Making such courses more readily available to postgraduate students would itself lead to improved performance.)
Requiring short-listed candidates to give a demonstration class is desirable but limited as the process only evaluates one dimension of teaching and emphasises the importance of lecturing at the cost of other, perhaps more important and useful methods. At least one referee should be asked to comment on the candidate's teaching experience and quality.
Group members reported that, in most institutions, little attention was given to teaching in the granting of tenure or the award of promotion. One or two institutions give prizes for excellence in teaching, but overall, the situation is bleak, there being remarkably few incentives for good performance. It is sometimes argued, on the basis that many staff could earn considerably more in commerce or industry, that the joys of academic life are their own reward. But, of course, quality research is rewarded--by promotion, by travel, by sabbaticals by Fellowships and by prestige. In such a situation, it is not surprising that, where the demands of teaching and research conflict, so many choose to emphasise the latter at the expense of the former.
It is also argued that teaching cannot be evaluated and hence cannot be taken into account in reward/incentive schemes. The argument is based on a false premise. In other parts of the world, teaching is rewarded in various ways including promotion, the process being based on the vast amount of research available into the evaluation of teaching. See Marsh, Ramsden and Webb for extensive accounts of the research and the practice. While good teaching cannot be measured quantitatively, the use of multiple sources of evidence (peers, students, graduates, Heads), each of which is capable of supplying valid and reliable information about one or more dimensions of the activity, can be the basis of sound evaluation.
To this point, this paper and its recommendations have urged strongly that performance development is a broad concept and that governments and institutions have key roles and key responsibilities in enabling and ensuring improvements in the learning environment. This is not to deny that individual members of the academic staff have a key responsibility in `creating and sustaining an effective environment for learning'. Institutions, therefore, should consider the adoption of a performance development scheme for individuals which goes beyond appraisal and review processes.
There is a growing awareness of the usefulness of regular Departmental Performance Reviews involving external scholars in the relevant discipline. Recommendations from such reviews can lead to substantial performance improvement, both individually and collectively.
Some Group members reported that the protocols for such reviews frequently require the provision of much quantitative data about teaching but little or no information which would assist assessors to comment on the quality of teaching. Care would have to be taken to avoid the excess paperwork and pressure of the British Quality Assessment procedures, but those of the Group who had experienced that system testified to its benefits as well as its costs.
The Group used Lonsdale (1997) as its major working document. It is relatively short, concise and looks to the future rather than dwell on the shortcomings of current appraisal systems. Readers contemplating the introduction of Performance Development schemes in their own institutions should, in addition, consult Hughes and Licata.
The methodology used by the Group was to examine Lonsdale's detailed recommendations for establishing and implementing `fourth generation performance management' [his term for what we call `performance development] and to select the most important and relevant to the Irish situation. This is not to imply that Lonsdale's other recommendations, such as the use of 360 degree feedback, are neither important nor relevant. Individual institutions may have different needs and different priorities from those the Group considered most significant.
Nevertheless, the Group believes that all successful Performance Development programmes will combine career development of individuals with systematic departmental planning.
*This paper contains more detail than that published in the AJE.
The Group discussed three aspects of flexible learning and delivery, namely the place of teaching in academic work, the nature of flexible teaching and learning and the role of libraries in facilitating flexible learning.
Teaching is not simply a delivery and dissemination process, it is indivisibly linked with a variety of complex modes of learning and at the third level of education with scholarship and research.
There are different models of teaching and learning which frame flexibility. A pedagogy of practice needs to be considered, one which entails a research base in and of itself, generating a symbiotic relationship where teaching informs research and research informs teaching.
There should therefore be a parity of esteem between teaching and discipline-based research which should be formalised and validated by recognising effective and innovative teaching and learning practices by giving them the same status as such research. Research into the teaching and learning process should itself be recognised and rewarded in the same way as all other forms of scholarship.
Just as academic staff are given opportunities and encouragement to develop and practice research skills in their chosen disciplines so there is necessity to support and encourage them to engage with the scholarship and practice of effective teaching.
Flexibility is not a simple concept. It can and should be manifested inter alia in:
Increased flexibility helps to resolve the tension that exists in our current examination-driven system between preoccupation with teaching content and the need to develop the students' capacity for life long learning. To achieve this end requires the transformation of much current practice and perhaps even changes to the structure of third level education. Such a transformation should produce a flexible learning environment which provides the learning community with a diverse range of guided choices and where students are encouraged and supported to take greater responsibility for their learning and to make informed decisions resulting in greater autonomy and empowerment.
The role of libraries in the development of policies and strategies for flexible learning will focus primarily on information and communication technologies (ICT).
The main areas of activity will be:
The Working Party addressed itself to the objective of producing recommendations for embedding Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement in the design and delivery of academic programmes.
The Group warmly welcomed the affirmation of the Minister for Science and Technology and the Chairman of the HEA at the Colloquium of the high level of quality achieved in the delivery of academic programmes in Irish universities. Thus going forward we can be confident that we are building on a foundation of strength. The quality of Teaching and Learning (T&L) activity within the university sector is assured at present through a number of channels:
The quality of the T&L activity is validated through:
The Group, however, recognise that there is no room for complacency about the quality of the T&L activity within the sector. Our stakeholders which comprise our students, their parents, taxpayers and the wider community have the right to demand no less than excellence from our teaching institutions. The processes in place within the university sector for assuring and improving quality need to be periodically reviewed to ensure their relevance to modern demands and to changing priorities. The context for stocktaking at this stage is the 1997 Universities Act. The Group viewed this legislation as an opportunity to build upon the acknowledged high quality base by developing structures and policies within the higher education sector designed to develop and deepen the quality of the delivery of the T&L function.
The Group recommends that the most effective way a high-quality T&L function can be assured within the university system would be through the adoption by each institution of a Charter for Teaching and Learning. This Charter would set out a strategic framework and vision designed to deliver the best possible programmes and courses of education. Each institution will naturally want to determine its charter so that it is congruent with its own unique ethos and tradition. The Group therefore felt it should not be overly prescriptive in laying out guidelines for the contents of the proposed Charter. We confine ourselves to suggesting some general principles which we hope will be modified and extended by each institution as it sees fit.
The Charter should set out a series of integrated policies which build upon the existing structures and supports for T&L within each institution and extend these where appropriate. While the experience of each institution is different, the Group felt that the foundation for an institutional commitment to T&L was likely to be based on three mutually dependent pillars:
Students have the right to expect to receive the best possible education from whatever institution they attend and to be treated with respect and courtesy at all times.
Commensurate with this right is the responsibility to adequately participate in the T&L experience. The quality of the T&L experience for our students can be enhanced by, for example:
The professional academic at university level is expected to perform to a standard of excellence in terms of teaching, research and service to the institution and the wider community. The Group were of the view that parity of esteem must apply to each element of this role. The parity of esteem principle as far as the key T&L function of the university academic is concerned can be promoted by imaginative and innovative incentive mechanisms, for example:
Creative leadership together with a determination to commit the significant resources that will inevitably be required from the uppermost levels of university administrations is essential to ensure that the adoption of the proposed Chapter will be reflected in tangible benefits for all stakeholders. Structural innovations which may be considered could include:
A plenary session at the Colloquium examined a number of models of societies concerned with third-level education and considered several options including membership of overseas societies already in existence. In the event, the meeting voted unanimously to recommend in principle that an Irish Society for Higher Education be established.
The IUTN is considering a draft constitution for the Society and will announce further developments as they occur.
Possible aims for the Society include:
Facilitator: Ms Meri Huws, Dublin City University
Facilitator: Professor George Brown, University of Ulster
Facilitator: Ms Sylvia Huntley-Moore, Trinity College
Facilitator: Dr John Panter, Trinity College
Facilitator: Ms Mary Mallon, Northern Ireland Network of Education
Facilitator: Professor Don McQuillan, NUI Dublin
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