Today a letter was sent from the current Business Secratery and the Minister of State for Universities and Science to the Chairman of HE Funding Council.  In a nutshell, it formally notified the addressee the beginning of a series of cuts to the Higher Education teaching grant.  I began mulling over this along with a recently listened podcast regarding Online Distance Learning (ODL) and wondered whether the use of ODL could one day soon be a viable option for Higher Education (or any education for that matter).

The podcast covered some compelling evidences to suggest that Online Distance Learning can be “engaging, enriching, and effective”. However, students (I suppose staff undertaking prof. dev could be included here) generally refrain from engagement when they feel “palmed off with an ill-considered, unstructured, and poorly moderated courses”.  Students will be increasingly akin to consumers as the recommendations of the Browne Report become a reality and no doubt they will be snuffing out under-developed, undervalued, and badly supported online courses.  Could there be yet more work on the horizon for academics?  Do they need to spend more time polishing their courses (and their tech skills)?

In the podcast, Alejandro Armellini talks about an endemic culture within HE where academics have a ‘dump, dump, dump’ the courses on VLE attitude, which ultimately leads to failure of effective delivery of courses.  Armellini says, course tutors who perceive “I’ve put my content online therefore my students are e-learning” is bound not to work, and more than 90% of ODL courses suffer this fate.  Gilly Salmon concurs and gives advice that developers of  ODL should consider and “address the problems of learning and match technologies to it by not looking at technologies first and think of what it can do for us, but look at our problems and then consider how technology can solve this issue.”

However, as the Government CSR bites, they’ll be more of a push by HEIs to move courses further into the virtual domain.  Editor of the Times Higher publication, Ann Mroz, however forewarns that: “Any broadening of provision and innovation in delivering it is welcome. But online distance learning needs careful handling. Problems will arise if courses grow out of financial and political pressures rather than considered educational strategy.”  A study conducted by TALL (University of Oxford)  identifies that although extremely difficult to find and gather on institutional websites, approximately 2,600 courses are delivered online in the UK.    Institutions are generally not worried about technologies as long as their business model and pedagogy are sound.  The study also reveals that the breadth of curriculum is not covered sufficiently and skewed towards professional-type courses (such as business); courses such as humanities and philosophy are predominantly delivered face-to-face.

If as envisaged the potential demand for ODL courses mushroom over the next few years, the supply of ODL courses will need to have quality at the heart of development, as we’ve seen above, otherwise we risk of marring the image of UK academia as having uninspiring and disengaging education.  A book is typically judged by its cover; our courses have been judged well by the content for centuries, but with ODL, the calibre of what the content is encapsulated with will also be scrutinised i.e. the learning technologies.

The study also identifies that ODL has not lived up to what some people had initially envisaged it to be, in that it’s not been successfully industrialised, where education can be delivered to masses with the tutelage of a single tutor.  ODL courses have not been very effective in so far as successfully assigning many students to a tutor, the system has a tendency to break down after a cohort reaches above 30.

The idea that technology will bring efficiency must be challenged thoroughly. ODL should not be seen as a panacea for spending cuts, indeed there are many events in and out of a typical student’s day-to-day experiences that cannot be replicated, such as networking,  socialising, recreational activities, and all that goes with living away from home.  Many of these experiences and interactions help guide an inexperienced student through the few years of studying like a sat-nav, rather than being left fumbling in the dark.

In the podcast, Richard Hall and David White make pertinent comments about the joys and woes of ODL,  and in one comment they assert that in a student’s mind, ODL is still perceived as a “cheaper alternative” or a “second class option”, when compared to face-to-face learning.  I think, therefore, if ODL is to work, whether it be in the delivery of entire courses or part thereof, then much needs to be done at an institutional level to change these perceptions of the student, bearing in mind that in a couple of years time, the student will have several hues of a consumer.

These perceptions can be challenged and subsequently eradicated by putting the learner at the centre of course creation and re-looking at, and if we have to dismantle and rebuild our courses ground-up.  As Professor Gilly Salmon says at another place, “It’s upto us to pace and create resources that make [learning as] easy as possible for [the students], and it’s up to us to emulate the face-to-face environment,  so that they can enjoy being online and working with others, even if they don’t physically meet [up together].”