Practice and Development

Preparing for an Academic Role – Not Just a Job, but a Calling

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Before the year 2000, it was quite usual for a considerable number of postgraduate students to secure full-time academic roles even before they submitted their dissertations. Nowadays this has become extremely rare.  It is now only reserved for the very exceptional.

The Current Academic Job Market

Competition for academic roles has now become so intense that it is not unusual for a PhD graduate to go for more than a year before securing an academic role. Even then, the promise of a full-time secure academic role is increasingly becoming rare. Most early stage academic roles, such as postgraduate research or teaching fellow roles are offered on short term contracts, usually one to three years. Alternatively, such roles may be temporary part–time roles. Guaranteed employment can last for as little as a university term in the case of teaching-only roles, and for just the duration of a research project for postgraduate researchers. Some academic appointments, particularly those for teaching, are hourly paid, and they come with no guarantee for progressing to full-time academic roles.

According to the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (Academic Staff, Table 2), almost 33% of all academics in 2014/15 were on part-time, or casual, contracts. Casualisation amongst academic staff is now commonplace in most Western countries, including Australia, the United States and Canada. For the aspiring academic, this means that the academic job market has become highly competitive.  And yet, for most PhD students, preparing for the job market is usually one of their least consideration. The result is that most PhD students graduate with very high expectations, only to have them ruthlessly shattered as they start in earnest to apply for academic roles.

Preparing for a Career During Your PhD

Ideally, a PhD student should start preparing for a career right from the start of their PhD studies. There is now a lot of career guidance and support in most universities. Over the past five years I have witnessed more and more universities offering career guidance to their graduate students and postdoctoral research staff. This guidance includes training on day-to-day careers stuff such as putting together a CV, writing personal statements, and interview techniques. Universities are now also raising awareness of alternative, and potentially lucrative, non-academic career routes for PhD graduates.  However, when it comes to careers training most PhD students do the barest minimum, usually just doing the compulsory career guidance sessions. Given the tightness of the academic job market, I think this is a big mistake. Preparing for your post-PhD career should be taken just as seriously as pursuing the PhD.

The PhD has traditionally been regarded as an apprenticeship into the academic role. Even though there are now other career pathways in addition to pursuing an academic role, I feel that when you sign up for a PhD, you should still consider yourself as an academic apprentice. There is a lot to learn. This includes taking part in academic seminars and conferences, writing academic papers, and teaching and supporting learning.  All these activities mean that you gain communication and peoples skills that are critical to any professional role. Do not skimp on any of them. All these activities should be part of your day-to-day PhD timetable, starting from day one.

One important thing you need to work at is to stand out from the competition when it comes to job hunting. This requires you to gain competence in at least one skill, and to gain widespread recognition as an expert. For instance, most PhD work in the sciences and engineering requires some computer programming. Develop expertise in a programming language, and seek to gain recognition for that expertise within your subject area and beyond. Contribute to technical forums, and offer to run workshops within your university, and at your disciplinary conferences.

Sometimes your area of expertise may be directly linked to your research area. If this is the case, then make use of academic conferences to gain recognition for this expertise, and seek out opportunities to be a guest speaker in other universities. As more people within the academic field get to know you, then your chances of catching the eyes of decision makers also increases, and with that, the likelihood of securing an academic role.

You should also seek to gain recognition as an expert in teaching. After all, teaching is an integral part of the academic role. Don’t just teach to while away the time and get some payment. Invest time and effort in improving your teaching skills. This includes keeping abreast of current advances in learning and teaching. At the end of each term, students complete their evaluations of your teaching. Teaching excellency is highly prized, especially now as we move into the era of the Teaching Excellence Framework. In addition, most universities now offer Higher Education Academy (HEA) accredited teaching training schemes. These schemes are free for students and staff, and they are worth the effort. Doing one means that in addition to your PhD, you will come out of graduate school with national recognition for the quality of your teaching.

 What if You Don’t Get an Academic Job Before Graduating?

In the present climate getting a permanent academic job is more of playing the long game, and not a 100-metre sprint. At a minimum, you should stay focussed, and continue building on your academic, technical and soft skills. Most importantly, ensure that you remain connected to the academic world. Make it a point to continue publishing and attending your disciplinary conferences. If you live close to a university, look up the seminar schedule for your subject area, and get involved. Attend sessions and also offer to speak on your area of expertise. After all, seminar speakers are difficult to lay hold of. Most subject disciplines have one or more academic associations. Be active in one, thereby ensuring that you remain visible to decision makers within your discipline.

If opportunities for part time teaching or research come up, and they are in line with your field, then consider taking them up. But this is not for everyone as the salary from part-time academic roles is on the low side. However, you could be strategic about this, and take up a role that allows you to pursue a more lucrative career elsewhere. Getting a teaching role ensures that you get access to other academic colleagues, you stay connected to what is taking place in academia, and you can access online databases and publications via the university library website. Most importantly, you are able to build up on your teaching and research skills.

If you are in the sciences or engineering, or in management, another promising route into academia is via a career in industry.   People with industrial experience who are able and willing to teach are increasingly in high demand. This is because undergraduate students are increasingly expected to have industry/business awareness. And designing and running modules which equip students with appropriate industry skills can only be done effectively by someone who has been in industry. Two to three years in industry should be enough to make you competitive in the academic market.

Building Your Own Academic Brand

Finally, when it comes to being an academic, it’s all about branding yourself. Undertaking a PhD means foregoing a salary for three or more years. It also means committing yourself to hard, usually solitary work. For you to have committed yourself to undertaking a PhD, it means you have to be driven by an inner desire to search out new knowledge and to gain expertise in a particular academic field. Therefore, even after the PhD, you should continue with your academic journey. Continue with your research, wherever and whenever possible. And remain engaged with your academic community. After all, unlike most other careers, being appointed to any academic post should be seen as more of getting peer recognition of your academic progress to date, as opposed to simply filling up a role.

The Lessons We Have learnt so Far: A Review of the Large-class, Team-teaching ISEE2016 Conference Paper

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research, Practice and Development

I am currently responsible for first and second year engineering mathematics at UCL. Instead of the term “engineering mathematics”, at UCL we prefer the term “mathematical modelling and analysis”. This is because we believe that engineers don’t usually learn mathematics for the sake of mathematics. Instead, we believe that engineers study mathematics in order to gain proficiency in applying mathematical techniques to analyse and model engineering problems, and as a tool to design robust solutions to these engineering problems.

For the engineer, therefore, learning mathematics is not only about mastering mathematical theories and being able to solve contrived mathematical problems thrown at them.  It is also about using mathematics to resolve engineering problems. Given a problem, an engineer recasts the problem into a mathematical problem, solves and analyses it, and then recasts the solution back into an appropriate   real-life engineering solution. To make the analysis and modelling stages more tractable, the engineer typically uses spreadsheets, like Excel, or mathematical analysis and modelling software like Matlab. Hence, the engineer has to gain competence in Excel and in mathematical modelling software at the same time as he or she is gaining proficiency in mathematical theory. Consequently, at UCL we require our engineering students to simultaneously engage with mathematics, spreadsheets and Matlab.

At UCL we have approximately 600 students in the first year, and 500 students in the second year. Students are provided with online resources via Moodle, and have access to both Excel and Matlab. In addition, our students also have access to online study materials from Mathworks, the providers of Matlab. Students are expected to be proactive in their studies, and it is a requirement that students should adequately prepare before coming to lectures or to workshops. Lectures are meant to be headline events that rapidly cover mathematical theory, and also expose the students to research applications of the topics that they are studying. Hence individual lectures are delivered by active researchers, and demonstrations of research applications are a staple in the standard UCL engineering mathematics lecture. Workshops are meant to offer students opportunities to participate in active, collaborative, problem-based learning. Hence, the students has to be adequately prepared, and the material availed to them should be pitched at just the right level, and delivered at just the right time.

To achieve effective learning delivery, a lot of organisational effort is required. Lecturers need to coordinate closely with workshop leads, and with postgraduate teaching assistants who provide in-class and out-of-class assistance to the students. On average, 40 lecturers and postgraduate teaching assistants work on each module, and below is a simplified staffing organogram for each of the two engineering mathematics modules.

Module Organogram

This organogram depicts a hierarchical structure, but in practice, communication and control is  network-oriented. The module coordinator (IEP Coordinator) reports directly to the IEP programme director. However, he also communicates directly with each of the undergraduate engineering programme directors in each of the engineering departments, and liaises directly with the module lecturers, workshop leads, and departmental course administrators. This is in addition to communicating along the faculty-based Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) chain of command.

For effective teaching, lecturers have to communicate closely with each other to ensure smooth handover from lecture topic to lecture topic. At the same time they have to communicate directly with the workshop leads who will be guiding the students in the problem-based workshop exercises taking place within the departments, and with the postgraduate teaching assistants who maintain close in-class and out-of-class contact with the students. Despite differences in personal and departmental perceptions of “good mathematics teaching”, the teaching team has to work effectively as a well-oiled machine.  Effective team rapport is paramount, communication has to be timely and absolutely clear, and role and task-assignment has to be non-ambiguous. This requires effective planning, coordination, task-scheduling, and sensitivity to the teaching and learning environment.  As shown in the diagram below, team-working skills are central to our ability to deliver each of the two mathematics modules in a manner that enhances the overall quality of the student experience.

Team Teaching Roles

There is currently very little coverage of large-class team-teaching in the engineering education literature. One could be forgiven for believing that all that is needed to be an effective engineering educator is mastery of the engineering subject content and the ability to deliver spell-binding lectures. Indeed this is what the typical student witnesses when attending classes, but in a large-class team-taught module, this is only the outcome of a coordinated array of activities spanning multiple departments.

And our message to the engineering education community is this: Effective team-teaching skills are essential to good teaching practice, don’t underrate them.

And for faculty and departmental heads in the engineering schools, our message is this: Don’t just randomly assign people to undergraduate programme management roles, including coordination of early stage engineering modules. Seek for people with the right people skills, in addition to their subject competence. And invest in them through appropriate team leadership training, and be available to support them throughout the academic year.

And for the engineering academic, our message is this: Teaching is no longer just a lecture-and-examine process. In today’s world, higher education teaching has become a highly complex role that demands subject-matter competence, teaching delivery skills, team-working and team-building skills. Therefore, if you want to excel as an engineering academic, then you should invest time and effort in acquiring and sharpening these skills.

Now that Brexit is done – Whither the University?

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development

Brexit has been a painful, unexpected outcome for the entire university community. In one stroke, the nation has made a decision to undo decades of painstaking work by the university community to build enduring links with our brothers and sisters in Europe. Hugely beneficial scientific projects are at risk as future EU funding becomes uncertain, widely taken for granted continental networking opportunities are at risk of drying up as freedom of movement suddenly falls under threat, and cross-Europe study programmes for students, notably the hugely successful ERASMUS project, are suddenly at risk of coming to an abrupt standstill. Indeed, for the university sector, the world has been turned upside down, and we are in mourning. But mourning has its own place, and its own time, and life still has to go on. The university community now needs to quickly take stock of the damage that has been wrought by the Brexit tsunami, and to plot how to effectively defend itself from the Brexit fallout.

What We have Learnt from the Brexit Outcome

Painful as it is, Brexit comes along with important lessons that we in the university community need to grapple with urgently. The first lesson is that 52% of the entire UK population, that proportion which voted to leave the European Union (EU), completely ignored our plaintive cries for them to side with us and vote for the country to remain inside the EU. It was as if we were speaking in a language that they couldn’t understand. And in the few moments they heard our argument, it was as if it was no concern for them. Indeed, analysis by various newspapers now reveals that we, the university community, and the majority of the people who voted to leave belong to entirely different planets. According to the various analyses, Leavers (as those who voted to leave prefer to be called) are more likely to hold non-university level qualifications, are more likely to live in non-university neighbourhoods, and are more likely to belong to population segments which traditionally have little or no access to university education [see The Telegraph, for example]. In short, a significant proportion of Leavers do not perceive any tangible benefits that the university has brought to their lives.

Another factor that has now become clear is that the values that the university hold dear are at variance with the values held by a significant proportion of our society. Whereas the university extols the benefits of globalisation,  revels in increased internationalisation, and takes pride in the multi-culturality of the university community, a significant proportion of Leavers are strongly anti-immigration, anti-globalisation, and increasingly nationalistic in outlook. Whereas the university community is intent on an open, welcoming environment, the rest of the nation, as epitomised by the Leavers, is intent on an inward looking, non-welcoming, circumspect, self-preservation outlook. The only people who appear to share the same values as the university community are the young, educated people, and those population segments for which going to university has always been the norm.

What We Stand to Lose

It goes without saying that as a university community, we have benefited immensely from membership of the European Union. UK universities have been extremely successful in attracting EU and non-EU academic talent to its ranks. UK universities lead on at least a third of the projects funded by Horizon 2020 – Europe’s largest funding programme, worth nearly €80m; UK universities are involved in cutting edge prestigious projects funded by the EU, including the Oxfordshire-based Joint European Torus (JET) laboratory, which is the world’s largest and most powerful fusion reactor worldwide[The Register]. In addition, a steady stream of non-UK EU students have been flowing into UK universities,  with at least one in five students at some universities being non-UK European nationals [The Times Higher Education]. All this has brought prestige and money to UK universities. Suddenly, Brexit has pulled the plug, and the entire university community now faces a dark unpalatable abyss. Our standing in the world is now at grave risk. For one, the resources to maintain a world-beating university system are now severely threatened.

And the Brexit contagion has gone beyond the EU as well. Such has been the bitterness of the Brexit campaign that across the entire world, there is an increasing feeling that the UK no longer welcomes foreigners. Social media, with its instant connectivity, has made a bad situation much worse. For instance, a blog title by a German-born UK academic – ‘I’m scared’: German academic in the UK on the Brexit vote – has been retweeted 198 times in less than 12 hours. This suggests that Brexit is likely to drive away hundreds, if not thousands, of prospective international students in the short to medium term.  And the Leavers couldn’t care less, and the current crop of politicians, who pander only to the whims of the majority, couldn’t care less as well.

What the University Community Needs to Do

The people have voted, but that’s not the end. We are told that exit negotiations can take anything up to ten years. Untangling 40 years of engagement with the EU is going to be messy, and deciding what to take, and what to leave is going to be contentious. Up and down the country competing interest groups are making their individual cases known to the government. The financial services are hinting that they will relocate to the continent; and so is the motor car industry, and who knows who else?  The government is in a state of paralysis at the moment, and civil servants and politicians seem clueless as to how best to proceed. This means that government will listen to the strongest voice, and we need to argue our case as a university community, and we need to do that very strongly. A wrong deal, and the university system as we know it can all but disappear.

And we need to bring the disenchanted majority to our side. Universities have brought economic and social revival to whole regions up and down the country. Universities are magnets for investment, and we need to go out into the community and share that message. Above all we must take community engagement much more seriously. For instance, how many Professors of Engineering  have reached out to their local communities and small businesses? How many academics can positively confirm that their work is known outside of the university campus?  We need to bring in both the Leavers and the Remainers to our side, and there is much work to be done.

We also need to bring in our European friends to our side so that they can put in a good word for us in Brussels now, and so that they can fight for us when exit negotiations with the remainder of the EU start in earnest. The European University Association has stated:

“Regardless of the result of the referendum, British universities are and remain an essential part of the European family of universities, which extends beyond EU borders. This community of knowledge and learning is strong and longstanding, and it will surely overcome this crisis, although the questions and consequences of the British exit are certainly formidable. EUA will continue to work with and for British universities. The Europe of universities will not be divided!”

Let’s not squander this opportunity.  Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science, tweeted soon after the Brexit results: “Big decision. Let’s make it work.” Let’s get working, and let’s get working right now.

2nd Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship Conference (#ESLTIS16)

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research, Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Increased focus on the quality of higher education provision by employers, students, parents and the government is driving the sector to invest in more innovative and effective education practices

The second Enhancing Student Learning through Innovative Scholarship Conference (Twitter #ESLTIS16) will bring together leading education-focussed academics in the UK to take stock of the rapidly changing education landscape within the UK. The conference is being hosted by the Centre for Engineering Education at University College London, and will take place over two days, from Tuesday 28th to Wednesday 29th June.

The aim of the conference is to raise the profile of education-focussed academics within UK higher education by shining a spotlight on the innovative learning and teaching they undertake. The conference is therefore a forum to share innovative scholarship across disciplinary boundaries and to develop a national voice for education-focussed academics.

“This year’s conference comes at a very critical time for higher education,” said conference Co-Chair Dr Abel Nyamapfene, a Senior Teaching Fellow with the Faculty of Engineering Science, UCL. “Access to university education is no longer reserved for the academic elite, but for everyone. This notion is further reinforced by the recently published white paper on higher education entitled ‘Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice’, recent proposals for a regulatory body called the Office for Students, and the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework.”

Over the next few years, higher education is expected to undergo profound changes as the Teaching Excellence Framework takes roots, and as more competition from the private sector is introduced. The profile of learning and teaching is now expected to grow rapidly so that in the near future it will be on par with research. There is now an expectation that all academics should have training in education, and throughout the sector, institutions are moving rapidly to appoint academics to education-focussed roles. Currently, education-focussed academics constitute around 25% of all academics at UK universities.  In addition to day to day teaching, education-focussed roles now include specialist education functions like programme management, curriculum design, and scholarship focused specifically on teaching and learning enhancement.

The conference will cover topics relevant to the promotion of quality student experience in higher education. This includes the following topics:

  • Driving the evolution of teaching at university;
  • Supporting the development of university-wide learning and teaching;
  • Defining scholarship and its role in the professional development of teaching focused staff;
  • Developing holistic assessment practice within departments, faculties, and within and across universities.

This year’s keynote speakers are Professor Dilly Fung, Director, UCL Centre for Advancing Learning and Teaching, and Professor Carol Evans, Professor in Higher Education, University of Southampton. Dilly will speak on “Scholarly leaders or second class citizens? Rewarding educators and education leaders in research-intensive universities,” and Carol will speak on “Developing and implementing holistic assessment practice.” Following Dilly’s keynote speech, Conference Founder and Co-Chair, Dr Sam Nolan, Assistant Director (Academic and Researcher Development) at the University of Durham, will lead a panel session on the education-focussed academic role in UK universities.

In addition, there will be a post-conference workshop to share ideas and insights into the National Teaching Fellow application process. Professor Carol Evans will convene this workshop. Carol is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), UK, and an Associate member of the HEA. She is also the international officer for the Committee of the Association of National Teaching Fellows (CANTF).

Additional Information Available on the Web

For more information on the conference, see the conference Web page at:

http://community.dur.ac.uk/teachingfocussed.academicconference/

For more information on the UCL Centre for Engineering Education, visit:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/centre-for-engineering-education

To share conference discussion via Twitter, use the hashtag: #ESLTIS16

London’s Elite Universities and the Global Social Elites

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research, Practice and Development , ,

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Trends in Non-UK domiciled Undergraduate Student Numbers

In the academic year 2014/15, there were 1 727 895 undergraduate students enrolled in UK higher education institutions. 13.4% of these students came from outside the UK, with 4.5% coming from other European Union countries and the remaining 8.9% coming from outside the European Union. This represents a slight increase of approximately 2% in the proportion of non-UK domiciled students over the five year period from 2009/10 when the proportion was 11.3%. However, the distribution of non-UK domiciled students is not uniform across all higher education institutions. Two factors appear to determine the proportion of non-UK domiciled students in an institution, namely the position of the institution on international higher education rankings, and the location of the institution.

The University of Exeter Intercultural Integration Project

In 2009/10 I led a Higher Education Academy funded project to promote intercultural integration amongst Engineering students at the University of Exeter. Apart from myself, the rest of the team comprised three undergraduate students, who, like myself, had lived in, or had significant exposure to, two or more national cultures in addition to the UK. The first student was in the 4th year of the  MEng Civil Engineering programme at the time of the project. He was born in Thailand, and during his childhood he lived with his parents in a number of Asian and African countries. The second one was born in the Philippines, and she had come to the UK with her parents at an early age. She had gone to school in the UK, and her personal networks comprise friends, colleagues and relatives in both the UK and the Philippines. At the time of the project, she was in the second year of the MEng Electrical Engineering  programme.  The third student was a UK-domiciled student, and at the time of the project she was in her second year of the MEng Civil Engineering  programme. She comes from a widely-travelled family, and she is passionate about other cultures, countries and places.

At the time of the project, home students and international students in the Department of Engineering fell into two distinct groups. In lectures, and other class activities, home students kept to home students, and international students kept to themselves. Putting the two student categories into teams was fraught with difficulties. International students felt uncomfortable mingling with the home students, and home students didn’t seem to know of any means to establish links with the international students. The language skills of most international students was at best rudimentary, and there was a perception amongst the students that the interests and goals of the two groups were essentially incompatible. To put it lightly, at the beginning of the project there existed a culture of fear, and mutual suspicion between the two student groups. The project proposed a number of steps that the department and the institution could take so as to foster a collaborative intercultural learning environment. Most of these proposals were adopted, and intercultural integration at Exeter has considerably improved.

Unique Trends in London Elite Universities

From the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data, as a general rule, the higher the position of the institution on the Times Higher Education World Rankings, the higher the proportion of non-UK domiciled students. In addition, institutions located in large metropolitan cities have a higher likelihood of high numbers of non-UK domiciled students compared to institutions located in smaller cities and towns. For example, an analysis of the top 10 UK universities on the Times Higher Education rankings for 2015/16 clearly shows that London based elite universities have significantly higher proportions of non-UK domiciled students compared to other institutions (Table1). For instance, at 46.54%, the proportion of non-UK domiciled students at the London School of Economics is almost equal to the proportion of UK-domiciled students. Imperial College and UCL are not far behind, with 41.38% and 37.70% of their students being of non-UK domicile.

Within the UK we habitually categorise our students as international students or home students to distinguish non-UK domiciled students from UK-domiciled students. Given the significantly high proportions of international students in London-based institutions, it is doubtful whether this categorisation still holds any academic merit.

The typical London-based elite university is essentially a multinational institution, with a global footprint that reaches to all the corners of the earth. Students come from all over the world. You are just as likely to meet a student from Malaysia, or  Indonesia, just as you are likely to meet a student from India or Pakistan, or from Russia or the Ukraine. You are just as likely to hear Cantonese and Mandarin being spoken as you are likely to hear London Cockney. In fact English dialects like Geordie, Scouse and Northern are considerably rare compared to international English dialects like Indian and Nigerian English. Who then is a home student, and who then is an international student at the typical London global university?

Table 1: Percentage of non-UK domicile undergraduate students for the Top Ten UK Universities in the Times Higher Education World Rankings (2015-16)

UniversityWorld RankingEU and non-EU International Students  as a Percentage of Undergraduate Student Population
Oxford213.00%
Cambridge419.67%
Imperial College London841.38%
University College London1437.70%
London School of Economics2346.54%
Edinburgh2427.61%
King’s College London2723.54%
Manchester5624.57%
Bristol6915.00%
Durham7017.02%

Comparison of Students at Exeter and the London Elite Universities

In 2009/10 when we ran the intercultural integration project at Exeter, the students had somehow unconsciously organised themselves into some kind of unhealthy hierarchy, with home students at the top, and non- European Union students at the bottom. European Union students, and students from Canada, Australia and the USA tended to be on par with home students. It was clear that non-European Union students didn’t feel at home in the institution. They were few in number, and culturally isolated. In this regard, the work by the three students Guy, Katrina and Alice cannot be underestimated. They set out to break down socio-cultural barriers within the student body that, by and large, hearkened back to the colonial era, and that had aspects of social class segregation as well.

At UCL, one of the London elite universities, it is self-evident that students do not fall neatly into the home student/ international student divide. Culturally and academically they are the same. They are all high performing, and they are comfortable speaking in English, and friendships flourish just as well across student nationalities as they do within individual nationalities.  In any case, “international” students are just as likely to speak in English as they are likely to speak in their home languages. Both home and international students appear to share a common background. Most have been to elite schools in Europe and within the UK, and they largely share the same recreational activities.

An international student is just as likely as a home student to talk about skiing, rugby, cricket and polo. Not only that, both home and international students are equally at home in the institution. For most students, regardless of their nationality, UCL is an institution that just happens to be located in London. Period.  In short, students at UCL are already culturally integrated, and for the time they are at UCL at least, nationality counts for nothing.

London Elite Universities and the Global Social Elites

There is compelling evidence that London elite universities are recruiting elite students worldwide. Entry requirements for both home and international students are equally demanding. In fact entry requirements are so demanding that just being offered a place to study at an elite university in London is a mark of honour worthy of celebration for prospective students, whether home or international. In addition, London is expensive, and the globally elite London universities charge significantly high international student fees (Table 2). In fact, such is the pressure for entry into these institutions that it is quite likely that if these institutions were to charge home students the same astronomical fees that they charge to international students, they would still be oversubscribed.Needless to say, London elite universities are now in the business of educating the next generation of the global elites.

Luthra and Platt have recently published a paper on Pakistani international students studying in London universities. The data for their research is drawn from the international survey project on Socio-cultural Integration Processes among New immigrants in Europe (SCIP). In summary, their study concludes that international students are not homogeneous, but that they comprise an elite student class and a middling student class. According to Luthra and Platt, the elite student class is made up of students from the upper levels of society, and these elite students come to London to accumulate the necessary human, social and cultural capital they need to enhance their competitive advantage over other social classes.

It is my contention that whether by design or by accident, London elite universities have transformed into finishing schools for the global elite. In these finishing schools, children of the global elite meet together and build the international networks that will enable them to maintain their status in the whole world. In such a scenario, national boundaries count for little. The world is one, and the soon-to-be global elites are one diverse social class with shared interests and objectives.

Table 2: Annual Tuition Fees for Selected London-based Universities (Taken from institutional websites)

London-based UniversityWorld Ranking

 

(Times Higher Education)

Annual tuition fee  for 2016-17 (GBP)
Imperial College London826 750
University College London1422 380
King’s College London2721 750
Brunel401-50017 200
Kingston601-80013 000
Greenwich601-80011 200

The Abiding Hold of the Exam on University Education

Prof Abel Nyamapfene For the Student, Practice and Development

The exam season is nearly over, the exam results have been released to the students, and I am taking a much needed rest before the conference season starts in earnest at the beginning of July. Walking up and down the campus this week, one is greeted by an unusual silence in the academic corridors. The undergraduate students are all gone. The only people working, it seems, are the masters’ students getting started on their dissertations, the PhD students and the postdoctoral researchers. And the academics need the rest, especially after the tortuous exam marking, and the perennial wrangling that come along with the examination board meetings.

Coming to think of it, there is no disputing that the end of year exam has a particular hold on the university system. A long a time ago, the only method of assessing a student’s progress was through the exam. Now coursework has crept in, and for good reasons, but the exam still holds sway. It largely determines the curriculum, the yearly academic cycle of activities, and the future of the majority of students. This statement might appear sacrilegious, particularly after so much research and effort to provide inclusive and more meaningful assessment of academic progression, but it still remains a fact.

The exam is normally a 2-hour or 3-hour academic exercise carried out at the end of the year, usually in the month of May. In fact, the UK academic calendar is made up of three terms. The first term runs from September/October up to the onset of the Christmas holidays in December. The second term runs from the beginning of January up to the beginning of April. Usually the end of the second term coincides with the beginning of the Easter holidays. The third term starts at the beginning of May, and runs until the end of June. Teaching takes place in the first two terms, and the third term is reserved primarily for revision and for writing exams.

Twenty or so years ago, the exam was the only assessment in most course modules. However, nowadays, most course modules have some coursework in addition to the end of year exam. Some modules nowadays are even entirely assessed through coursework. The reasons for introducing coursework are many, but the primary reason is that it enables the academic to assess various aspects of academic mastery. With coursework, it is feasible to assess critical academic skills such as data gathering and research, critical thinking and academic discourse skills, as well as academic presentation skills. One can assess essay writing skills, argumentation and academic presentations using a variety of media, including the ubiquitous PowerPoint slides, video and even social media. In short, an astute academic can tailor coursework to assess the transformation of an academic into a professional through assessing the enactment of various aspects of academic practice. For example, within engineering, one can assess a student’s leadership and team-working skills, in addition to academic competence in the subject in question. All this can be directly linked with current modes of active learning, to the extent that learning, assessment and feedback become one whole, rather than separate, tenuously related entities. It is therefore arguable that the future is likely to go in favour of more coursework and less and less end of year exams.

But what does the exam assess? Previously, it was widely held that the exam was the only vehicle for assessing mastery of academic knowledge. Students would be questioned on the theoretical concepts covered in course modules, and they would all have to provide answers within a set amount of time, under observation from eagle-eyed invigilators and examiners.  The strength of the exam was, and still is, that a student could demonstrate mastery of academic concepts without any outside assistance, unless, of course, they brought into the exam some forbidden external help.  The exam was also seen to be fair, since all students attempted the exam at the same time, and under the same environmental conditions.

But the exam’s strengths is also its weakness. First, it is best suited to assessing mastery of theoretical concepts, and not mastery of professional practice. An exam result cannot shed light on whether a student is going to be a good engineer or not. All it says is that the student has mastered a certain amount of theoretical knowledge. On the other hand, a well-designed piece of coursework can provide irrefutable evidence of the student’s progression towards professional competence. With properly designed coursework, what you see is what you get. It enables a more rounded assessment of the individual student compared to the exam.

Because the exam is primarily theoretically oriented, the focus of a course module can easily be on examinable theoretical concepts. This means that although the stated module syllabus might cover various aspects of study, an exam will constrain students and academics alike to focus only on a very narrow segment of the syllabus. In fact, the end of year exam has given rise to notions of the hidden curriculum, whereby the actual syllabus followed by students is not the one laid down in the course handbook, but the one gleaned from past exam papers.

Then why does the exam still hold such a high prominence in university education? One reason, in my opinion. The exam is well established; it is part of our university culture, and everyone expects it. Professional bodies such as the engineering institutions expect it, parents expect it, students expect it, and external examiners expect it. In fact, within most exam boards, the exam holds pride of place, even in those courses where coursework forms the bulk of the assessment. And when you have to redesign the undergraduate curriculum, the decision to remove the end of year exam is usually the greatest source of conflict.

And another reason for the continuous hold of the exam on university education is this. It is not easy to design effective coursework. Effective coursework is one that assesses all aspects of course mastery, and one that actively discourages students from copying each other, colluding, or farming out the coursework to professional coursework writers. Effective coursework requires the active involvement of both the teaching team and students throughout the coursework period. Effective coursework requires time, thought and tenacity to put together, and even within universities, these three attributes are not always available. And so the easiest escape route is to go down the end of year exam route.

So what does the future holds then? Simply this, more coursework will creep into the university curriculum, but the end of year exam will continue to hold pride of place, at least for the foreseeable future.

Our Students – They are of all types and they need us

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development , ,

We are now well into the examination season. Students have gone into binge-study mode, and log-ins to Moodle course pages are at an all-time high. And so are the requests for assistance, and requests for clarification on Moodle forums, and via emails. In fact my email box is clogged with student emails asking for all kinds of help, including assistance with understanding some of the equations that I covered in the first two weeks of the year, eight months ago at the beginning of the academic year in October. And some of the names I barely know. And from some of the questions they ask, I am left with little doubt that they have been completely disengaged from my course module until now when they have to prepare for the exam. This has left me wondering on the various categories of students one is likely to meet at university. Here is my attempt at student categorisation.

The Exam Binge-study Student

Of course, since we are going through the exam period, the first group of students that come to my mind are the ones whom I would categorise as exam binge-study students. In a culture where the exam is venerated above all other forms of assessment, these students are the real masters of the modern-day academic game. They play with only one objective in mind – to pass the exam. For them, mastering the nuances of your course is beside the point. They study to the exam, and once the exam is done with, they wait for the next set of exams. Walking along the academic corridors with my ears open, I frequently get confirmations and affirmations that the proper academic year is at most two months, one month to study and prepare for the all-in-all exams, and one month to sit the exams.

The exam binge-study student is a very different creature from all the student profiles that they teach you in the academic staff development centres. They are primarily not interested in the course for its own sake. They are there to get good grades, and they know how to go about it. They collect all the past exam papers they can lay their hands on, and study these to the exclusion of all. As an insurance they demand assurances from you that the exam will be no different from the previous ones. They ask you about the depth of exam coverage, and they come to you and say: “Topic so and so has not been covered for the past so and so years. Is it going to come in the exam?”

If you have recently introduced your course module, they will demand a mock exam. And when they see it, they will want to know to what extent the actual exam will differ from the mock exam. Typical academic responses like “revise all the lecture materials, and work through all the tutorial examples” are not sufficient for this group of students.  They are on a mission to excel, and to excel with the minimum amount of effort, after all there are other more important things to do than spending an entire year on academic studies. In our exam-oriented culture, these students get through, and somehow, I strongly suspect that most of these will go on to excel in industry and wherever they seek employment after graduating. After all, they are masters at concentrating only on the goals that matter at any given point in time.

The Visibly Engaged Students

Then there is the set of students whom I term the visibly engaged students. These are the students that I get to know very well throughout the year. They consistently attend all my lectures and workshops, and even in a lecture theatre of 100 or more, I can easily pick out their faces from the sea of strange faces staring at me. They are normally the ones who ask questions in lectures, and who generally engage with the lecturer. And in group-oriented tutorial workshops, these are the students who are most likely to come prepared, and who contribute the most to group work.

They are the star students, and they are the ones who make teaching such a fulfilling career. Outside of classes, these are the students who follow up on your lecture notes, and ask for clarifications, and sometimes for additional work throughout the entire course. In fact, they are the ones who are most likely to come and knock on your door.

Within the university, these are the students who are visible in all aspects of student academic life. They are to be found on student committees, and on all academic endeavours involving students and academics. And in all likelihood, these are the students who ultimately end up in the leadership of the National Union of Students (NUS). For all practical purposes, they are the student voice, and, though, they are in the minority, it goes without saying that it is ultimately the voice of this group of students that ultimately reaches the top echelons of the university system.

The Intrinsically Engaged Student

Then there are the very few students who make teaching a worthwhile, challenging academic endeavour. These are the students who occasionally post academically challenging queries on the Moodle forums, and who occasionally send you that one email that makes you sit up and send you rushing to the library, or send you scurrying for assistance from fellow colleagues.  I refer to these students as the intrinsically engaged students.

They never ask frivolous questions, but when they do, you can be certain that their question is worth a million student questions. The issues they raise can be so indepth and so fundamental that you are left in no doubt that they are engaged with the subject matter of your course to a far greater detail than all the other students put together. In fact, their questions can be so far-reaching as to cast doubt on the very epistemological and ontological foundations of your course.  In any case, it is these students who can leave you questioning the oft taken for granted “us and them” divide between students and academics.

This group of students is not flustered by academic titles. When they engage you in a conversation, they easily cut through all the weight of academic insignia to reach through to your mortal self. These are the students who engage with you on a person-to-person basis. They are on top of their study matter, and in some instances they are ahead of you in understanding the nitty gritty issues of the course’s subject matter. They can see through assignment questions, and they can challenge your solutions and propose better ones. A classic example for this is the well-known barometer problem first posed by Alexander Calandra, an American Professor of Chemistry. Calandra discussed this problem in a short story entitled “Angels on a Pin: A Modern Parable” that first appeared in the Saturday Review, on 21st December 1968.  In this story, a Physics colleague of Calandra had set the following examination question:

“Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.”

Since it was a Physics exam, the Professor had been expecting a nice, neat Physics answer along these lines:

“Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = ½at², calculate the height of the building.”

Most of the students presumably went along with the professor and gave “nice, theory-based” Physics-like answers, as expected. But as it so often happens at university, one student came up with a very unlikely, and very un-physics-like answer:

“Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.”

Of course, the student’s answer was correct, and as most people would say, this was a more realistic answer than the expected physics-like responses. But, from the academic’s point of view, this question demonstrated no understanding of physics at all, and marking it correct would imply that the student had understood the taught concepts sufficiently enough to apply them to practical contexts.  Nevertheless, the long and short of it is that the student got the marks.

The Dutiful University Student

For lack of a better classification label, I shall call this next group of students the dutiful university student group. These are the students who dutifully attend university and carry out their academic studies. They mostly attend all lectures and all tutorial workshops. They submit their coursework on time, and their academic performance ranges from the “passably fine” to “adequate”. During end of year examination boards, these are the students one hardly looks at. They satisfy all requirements, and dutifully go through university, and go on to be dutifully employed in the world at large.

If you are one of the cynical academics who live only to do discipline-based research, and to chase the Research Excellence Framework (REF), you can wish for no other student category than this group. They rarely ask questions, rarely participate in the various academic surveys, and if pressed to complete some important survey, like the much feared National Student Survey, they dutifully give non-committal answers that do not rock the boat. However, for those academics who believe in the transformative power of the university system, these students are the ultimate challenge. Can this group be challenged enough to raise their game beyond their current level? Can you put enough fire into the bellies of these students and turn them into agents of change, both within the university system and beyond in everyday life?  These are difficult questions, and I suspect that currently no viable solution exists.

And these should be disturbing questions to everyone, industry leaders and the ordinary person in the street included. This is because by and large, it is anticipated that economies of the future will depend on the nature of the skills and attributes possessed by graduates entering the workforce. As far back as 2005, Radcliffe wrote that “innovation and its impact on national wealth creation within a globalized economy are currently high on the political agenda in many countries.” Indeed, entrepreneurship and innovation skills are now some of the most highly sought after graduate attributes and skills, and it is questionable if the dutiful student category, which is by far the largest student category, are innovative, entrepreneurial and adaptive enough to thrive in the competitive and fast-paced dynamic workplaces of the future.

The Disconnected Student

I have opted to call my last student category the disconnected student group. These students typically end up falling out of the university system. This category comprises those students whose class attendance is at best erratic. They submit coursework as and when they wish, and mostly they don’t. If they choose to come to exams, they often get ridiculously low marks, to the consternation and shock of most academics. Compared to other student categories, they are often very few in number, possibly one or two in an average-sized class of fifty.  However, at the end of the year, they often end up taking more than half the deliberation time in the examination boards. They often have quite high entry grades when they come into university, but their academic performance bears no relation to this at all. They are disconnected from academic work, disconnected from the university system, and largely disconnected from the rest of the student body.

These are the students that we, as the university community, are failing. They spend one or two precious years of their lives at university, and ultimately end up with nothing to show for it. Not only that, these students seem to be on a downward spiral to oblivion, and unless they meet with some corrective intervention at some point in their lives, these students are to all intents and purposes lost to society, and lost to their families. As demonstrated by their entry level grades, these students have the potential to excel, but for some reason, possibly non-academic, they lose control of their academic lives. And as a parent, or sibling, one of the most harrowing experiences one can encounter is to witness your child, sister or brother spiralling out of control and into oblivion. And this pain lasts for an entire lifetime, and no cost can be ascribed to it.

Because they are so few, and because they can easily blight a university’s track-record, it makes economic sense to drive these students out of the university system as early as possible. However, as the adage goes, a society is judged by how it treats the least among them. And ultimately we in the university stand to be judged by how we treat these failing students. Of course, this requires professional staff to handle the myriads of problems afflicting this category. But this is not helped by the current economic environment whereby professional services staff are often the first to be laid off whenever cost-cutting measures are mooted. Perhaps the solution could be to share key professional services staff between two or more universities – a pooling together of resources for the mutual benefit of all.

Recognising Teachers in the Life Sciences: A Review

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Policy and Advocacy, Practice and Development

How to cite the reviewed work:

Harris, J. 2015. Recognising Teachers in the Life Sciences. The Physiological Society. London. Available at: http://www.physoc.org/sites/default/files/page/Recognising%20Teachers%20FINAL.pdf [Accessed: 24 April 2016].

Introduction

Within the UK it has been the traditional norm that academics carry out research and teaching as part of their role. However, with the emergence of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 1986 and its subsequent evolution to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), discipline research is increasingly restricted to academics whose research meets the requirements of the REF/RAE. A direct consequence of this is that an ever-increasing number of academics are now employed solely to focus on teaching, and on education management. However, the literature on teaching-focussed academics in the UK is still limited, hence the growing interest in this publication from the Physiological Society.

Why This Booklet is an Important Contribution

The Physiological Society has made an attempt to further our understanding of teaching-focussed careers through the publication of this booklet entitled “Recognising Teachers in the Life Sciences.” This booklet features 32 academics in the biological and medical sciences who have been promoted at one or more stages in their career on the basis of their contributions to teaching and/or education management. These academics are drawn from three categories:

  • Group 1: Academics whose first permanent appointment was focused on education
  • Group 2: Academics whose career focus switched from discipline-based research or a clinical role to education
  • Group 3: Academics who combine discipline-based research or a clinical role with significant educational activity

The Physiological Society hopes that by publishing this booklet, teaching-focussed academics will have role models to emulate, and universities will have practical examples to help them to develop teaching-oriented promotion criteria for their own academics.

The booklet also provides important advice to those of us seeking to gain recognition and promotion on the basis of teaching and education management. This is because promotion on the basis of teaching is a relatively recent phenomenon. Hence, few or no people on academic promotion committees have any personal experience of the teaching-focussed academic role.  Also, departmental senior academics tasked with appointing and overseeing teaching-focussed academics have little or no guidance on developing roles that have scope for academic progression. Consequently, academic departments often lack the necessary resources to provided adequate mentorship and leadership to teaching-focussed academics.

Areas for Further Research

For the reasons discussed above, the booklet is a very timely addition to the literature on teaching-focussed academics. However, an analysis of the 32 academic careers showcased in the booklet also raises some serious concerns with the teaching-focussed academic role. I will now turn my attention to these concerns.

1: Gender Bias: As Table 1 shows, the 32 academics featured in this booklet are roughly balanced in terms of gender, with 17 being male, and 15 female. In addition, two of the academic categories have significantly more males than females. These two groups comprise academics who switched to teaching-focussed roles from discipline-based research or a clinical role to education, and academics who have maintained these roles in addition to a focus on teaching. In contrast, Group 1 which comprises academics who were appointed directly into teaching-only roles, has only one male and 7 females. Whilst the sample size is too small for these differences to be statistically significant, it is pertinent to establish whether or not the teaching-only academic route, as typified by Group 1, is becoming an academic role to which women are shunted into.

Table 1: Gender Distribution

Group Actual Numbers   Percentage Ratio  
  Male Female Male Female
All 17 15 53.1% 46.9%
1 1 7 12.5% 87.5%
2 11 6 64.7% 35.3%
3 5 2 71.4% 28.6%

2: Parity of Esteem between the Teaching-only Role and the Research and Teaching Role: Table 2 gives the distribution of professors in each of the three groups. Only 25% of teaching-only academics, as indicated by Group 1, have attained professorships. This is in contrast to academics in Groups 2 and 3 where professors make up 64.7% and 71.4% of the groups respectively. Again, whilst the figures in this booklet are too small for these proportions to be statistically significant, one is left wondering if teaching –only academics, as indicated by Group 1, have significantly more difficult chances of securing professorships than academics in the other two groups. One might assume that perhaps this may be due to differences in lengths of services of the academics in the three groups. However, the average length of service for the three groups is 20.5, 26.0 and 25.14 for groups 1, 2 and 3 respectively. These lengths of service appear to be sufficiently close to each other to rule out disparities in length of service as a contributing factor.

In practice, research-focussed academics typically attain professorships within 10 to 15 years on average. Given the relatively high number of non-professors in all three groups, and the average length of services that in excess of 20 years, this may suggest that a focus on teaching is detrimental to academic progression in the current higher education environment.

Table 2: Distribution of Professors by Grouping

Group Total No. of Academics No. of Professors Ratio of Professors to academics (%)
All 32 18 56.25%
1 8 2 25%
2 17 11 64.7%
3 7 5 71.4%
  1. Impact of University Type on Progression of Teaching-focussed Academics: The 32 academics presented in this booklet comprise 23 academics from research intensive institutions and 9 academics from post 1992 non-research intensive institutions. Of the 9 academics from post 1992 institutions, 8 are full professors compared to only 10 of the 23 academics from research intensive institutions. Again, whilst these figures are not statistically significant, it strongly suggests that one is more likely to progress to full professorship in a non-research intensive university than in a research intensive university. Of course it may be argued that the academics covered in this booklet are based on opportunistic sampling and are not representative of all biosciences and medical academics within the UK. However, given the objectives of this booklet, it is reasonable to assume that the editors went out of their way to identify and include those academics with the strongest promotion records.

Table 3: Distribution of Professors and Other Academic Staff Categories by University Type

 University Type No. of Professors Total No. of Other Academics Proportion of Academics who are Professors (%)
All 18 14 56.25%
Non Research Intensive 8 1 88.9%
Research Intensive 10 13 43.5%

Concluding Remarks

The booklet is an important contribution to our understanding of teaching-only academic roles, and I would recommend it to all teaching-focussed academics, senior academics with management responsibilities, and academics serving on promotion committees. For the higher education researcher, the booklet also gives a snapshot of  some of the emergent mutations of the academic role, and also raises important questions regarding parity of esteem and sustainability of teaching-focussed roles vis a vis the established research and teaching role.

Systematic Integration of MATLAB into Undergraduate Mathematics Teaching: Summary of Paper Presented at EDUCON 2016

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research, Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

How to cite this study:

Nyamapfene A & Lynch S, Systematic integration of MATLAB into undergraduate mathematics teaching: Preliminary lessons from two UK institutions, IEEE EDUCON, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2016).

Introduction

Computer algebra systems (CAS) are software systems designed for the symbolic manipulation of mathematical objects such as polynomials, integrals and equations [1]. This includes software systems like MATLAB, Mathematica and Maple.  CASs are now routinely integrated into modules in mathematics in most universities [2][3]. Several reasons have been suggested for this high level of CAS use in university level mathematics. This includes perceptions that [2][4]:

  • CASs help to develop mathematical thinking, concepts and skills
  • CASs offer a flexible environment for students to easily explore and experiment with mathematical concepts
  • CASs enable students to visualize mathematical concepts through such features as graph plotting and animation of mathematical functions
  • Pedagogically, CASs help to promote greater conceptual understanding of mathematics by taking away the burden of tedious calculations.

Research Issues

However, despite the relatively high penetration of CASs into university-level education, and their perceived value, it appears that there is significant underutilisation of these technologies [5]. This means that most of the expected benefits of these CASs are not being realised. Therefore, if any benefits are to be realised from investments in CASs in higher education, it is necessary to find out how best to implement CAS use into university level education.

One suggestion has been that most institutions don’t pay proper attention to curriculum design when adopting CASs. Tonkes et al. [6] suggest that  the main reason for this underutilization is that CASs are often added into the existing teaching without proper curriculum design. So a critical question to ask may be: What curriculum design considerations should you make if your CAS implementation is to be successful. We decided to look at two institutions that have integrated MATLAB into their Maths teaching with some measure of success. These two institutions are Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and University College London (UCL).   At MMU, MATLAB has been routinely taught as an integral part of their Mathematics undergraduate programmes, and at UCL, the teaching of MATLAB alongside Mathematics has been implemented in to the undergraduate Engineering curriculum.

Our study was guided by these research questions:

  • What are the stated objectives for CAS integration in each of the two institutions?
  • What is the context around the CAS implementation in each institution?
  • What was each institution’s approach to curriculum design during the CAS implementation?
  • What lessons, if any, did the institutions learn from the implementation?

Findings

At UCL the motivation for incorporating MATLAB into Engineering Mathematics was driven by the perception that students often fail to apply the mathematics that they have learnt to the analysis and design of engineering systems. It was hoped that MATLAB would enable students to directly model and solve engineering–related problems within the mathematics course, thereby enabling them to appreciate the role played by mathematics in the study of their disciplines. At Manchester Metropolitan, the main motivation was to improve the employability skills of their Mathematics graduates. It was felt that equipping Mathematics students with MATLAB skills would enable them to understand and appreciate the use of Mathematics in industry. This has turned out to be true, as the employment of their students within 6 months of graduating is now higher than the UK average.

At the time of MATLAB integration at both institutions, there were strong feelings that the then curriculum needed to change. This feeling was shared by both academics and academic leaders. Consequently, in both institutions, MATLAB integration was implemented as part of a wider programme redesign. Teams of academics contributed to the redesign of the entire programmes, and academics collaborated together to design individual lectures, workshop sessions and even the development of course material and assessment questions.

At both institutions, senior management were committed to the programme changes, and resources were made available to support both academics and students. For instance, at UCL a team of postgraduate students was assembled to provide students with out of class support in Mathematics and Matlab. Within the departments, additional staff were deployed to assist lecturers with leading workshop sessions, and with coursework marking.

Recommendations

Based on this study of MATLAB integration at Manchester Metropolitan and UCL, it appears that the following steps can help to improve the chances of a successful MATLAB integration:

  1. Implement MATLAB integration as part of a programme-wide redesign
  2. Ensure students see the benefits of MATLAB
  3. Ensure academics see the need to teach MATLAB
  4. Embed MATLAB into the institutional Maths culture
  5. Provide adequate institutional support for both academics and students

References

  1. Thomson, A. Santaella, and M. Boulat, “Maple and other CAS (Computer Algebra Systems) applied to teaching and assessing mathematics,” School of Doctoral Studies (European Union) Journal, vol. 1, pp. 136-170, 2009.
  2. Buteau, N. Marshall, D. Jarvis, and Z. Lavicza, “Integrating computer algebra systems in post-secondary mathematics education: Preliminary results of a literature review,” International Journal for Technology in Mathematics Education, vol. 17, pp. 57-68, 2010.
  3. Lavicza, “Factors influencing the integration of Computer Algebra Systems into university-level mathematics education,” International Journal for Technology in Mathematics Education, vol. 14, p. 121, 2007.
  4. A. Majid, Z. Huneiti, W. Balachandran, and Y. Balarabe, “MATLAB as a teaching and learning tool for mathematics: a literature review,” International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 6, p. 23, 2013.
  5. Lawrenz, A. Gravely, and A. Ooms, “Perceived helpfulness and amount of use of technology in science and mathematics classes at different grade levels,” School Science and Mathematics, vol. 106, pp. 133-139, 2006.
  6. Tonkes, B. I. Loch, and A. Stace, “An innovative learning model for computation in first year mathematics,” International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, vol. 36, pp. 751-759, 2005.
  7. M. Kadijevich, “Neglected critical issues of effective CAS utilization,” Journal of Symbolic Computation, vol. 61, pp. 85-99, 2014.
  8. Bains, J. E. Mitchell, A. Nyamapfene, and E. Tilley, “Work in progress: Multi-displinary curriculum review of engineering education. UCL’s integrated engineering programme,” in Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2015 IEEE, 2015, pp. 844-846.
  9. S. Lynch and J. Wilber, MathWorks User Story http://uk.mathworks.com/company/user_stories/manchester-metropolitan-university-students-vote-math-best-overall-course-following-adoption-of-matlab.html    accessed (08/02/16).
  10. S. Lynch, Dynamical Systems with Applications using MATLAB 2nd Ed., Springer International  Publishing, Switzerland, 2014.
  11. Periasamy, “Students’ motivations and actions when they learn mathematics using CAS: a study using an activity theory approach,” PhD. Thesis, Wits School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011.
  12. N. G. Lederman and M. L. Niess, “Technology for Technology’s Sake or for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning?,” School Science and Mathematics, vol. 100, pp. 345-348, 2000.

University Curriculum Change & Renewal: Avoiding Extinction

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Policy and Advocacy, Practice and Development

In a BBC article discussing the future of banking, Matthew Wall poses the question: “Is old tech putting banks under threat of extinction?”  Traditional banking systems typically run on mainframe computers. These computers are reliable and can handle huge volumes of transactions, but they are slow. The advent of mobile and online technology has changed the dynamics of banking. Clients now expect transactions to take place anytime, anywhere, and in real time. This calls for fast, agile and flexible computer processing. And the old mainframe technology cannot cope.

Banks have tried to solve this problem by building new layers of modern software technology around the legacy mainframe systems. But the results have been far from satisfactory. The old cannot work with the new, and the results are the computer glitches and inexplicable system breakdowns that are now routine in the banking industry. Naturally, non-traditional competitors have seen an opportunity to make a quick buck, and the large traditional banks are now facing stiff competition from start-ups who are now offering mobile and online banking services running on nimble technology which is free of the legacy mainframe systems.

The old banks are now feeling the heat from competition brought about by a new technological era. And some are likely to go down, to become extinct, like the old dinosaurs. And this has left me wondering about our current university system. So far we have managed to keep the competition at bay. We have managed to incorporate modern technologies into our systems, but in most cases, only as far as augmenting the same teacher-centred educational approach we so much love. Our degree programmes have remained largely the same, and changes have largely been cosmetic –   at most a few changes in teaching approaches in a few modules, but with the core remaining largely untouched. In the few cases where wholesale change has been proposed, this has been quickly snuffed out.

But how long will this status quo last, and if nimble, determined, well-funded, politically connected competitors appear on the horizon, will the old university system cope?  Like the traditional banks, we can choose to wait. After all, universities, like banks, are essentially conservative organisations. However, such a strategy may well spell the end of the university as we know it. An alternative is to do the unthinkable – anticipate the new requirements for university education in the modern day, and implement and take control of change. To my knowledge, only one university has been bold enough, or foolish enough, to anticipate change and take it by the horns, so to speak. This is the University of Melbourne, in Australia, with their now famous, or infamous curriculum, the Melbourne Model. The question I want to address is: If the unthinkable becomes the only alternative, what does it take? Richard James and Peter McPhee (2012) have shared their experiences in implementing a whole-institution curriculum change at the University of Melbourne, and in this blog I will share their insights with you.

In 2007 the University of Melbourne replaced all the 96 undergraduate programmes it had with a new structure comprising six generalist three year undergraduate degrees followed by professional graduate courses. These six undergraduate courses are arts, biomedicine, commerce, environment, music and science. The model was informed by the American undergraduate liberal education system, and by the European Bologna Process. The Melbourne Model seeks to produce graduates with both depth and breadth in knowledge. Breadth is achieved by ensuring that undergraduate students undertake at least 20-25% of their studies in an area outside their core discipline. Depth is achieved primarily through disciplinary specialisation at the graduate level.

Needless to say, this was a highly contentious change process that fundamentally changed the university’s education system, and substantially impacted the entire Australian public university system. Richard James and Peter McPhee suggest that the following actions by the university helped to ensure that the curriculum change process was a success:

  1. The University of Melbourne implemented its curriculum change from a position of strength. It is a highly ranked prestigious university that is highly regarded in both research and teaching.
  2. The process was led by a highly motivated and effective leadership team who advocated publicly and privately for the adoption of the new curriculum.
  3. The university had substantial financial resources which it used to ensure that research activities would not be affected by the curriculum changes.
  4. External stakeholders, including the government, government agencies, and professional associations were engaged throughout the whole process. For instance, government had to be persuaded to support the curriculum change with an appropriate student fee funding structure. Similarly, the university also worked closely with professional bodies in Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry, Law and Architecture to ensure that the new curriculum met with their professional requirements.
  5. Within the university, efforts were made to ensure that the curriculum change process was underpinned by a shared ethos of educational values and beliefs. Time and resources were invested into building consensus on a shared set of educational beliefs across all disciplines.
  6. The university also took into account the values and expectations of students and their families. This also included the views of international students, who made up 25% of the university student body, and who contributed significantly towards student fee income.
  7. The university also considered the implications of the changes on the income flows and business models of the various schools and faculties and made appropriate compromises.
  8. The university also paid attention to the external political implications of the curriculum changes at the university, and took appropriate mitigation steps when necessary.
  9. Careful attention was paid to the logistics associated with the change. Staff, space and time issues were all carefully addressed to ensure that these would not negatively impact the curriculum change process.

Now the dust is settling down. The term “Melbourne Model” has found its way into the higher education lexicon, and the University of Melbourne brand now stands out very distinctly in the Australian higher education landscape and beyond. And this is all because a dedicated, far-sighted  and bold university leadership chose to throw caution to the wind and implement change according to its own belief systems without the constraints brought about by external pressure.

References

James, R., & McPhee, P. (2012). The whole-of-institution curriculum renewal undertaken by the University of Melbourne, 2005–201l. Strategic curriculum change: Global trends in universities, 145-159.

Wall, M. (2016, March 26). Is old tech putting banks under threat of extinction? BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35880429.