The UK higher education sector is a highly complex sector that comprises higher education providers, both public and private, government bodies and agencies, as well as bodies representing the various stakeholders associated with the sector. In this article, I present a few key bodies that one needs to be familiar with if they are to understand and successfully negotiate their way through the sector.

The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS)

The BIS is a ministerial department whose key role is to promote and sustain economic growth in the UK. This includes overseeing the development of skills and education to support commerce, promoting trade and innovation, and supporting business set up and growth. Specifically for universities, the BIS oversees the implementation of government policy with respect to higher education. This includes the allocation of research and innovation funding, student tuition fees, and most recently the decision to improve the quality of learning and teaching through the introduction of the Teaching Excellency Framework.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)

HEFCE is responsible for funding and regulating universities and colleges in England.

HEFCE funding falls into two main categories – recurrent funding and non-recurrent funding. Recurrent funding includes the annual HEFCE teaching grant, which is currently distributed to regulated institutions on the basis of student numbers, the institutional research grant, which is distributed on the basis of performance in the Research Excellence Framework assessment, and, finally, knowledge exchange funding, whose aim is to enable universities to use their knowledge for the benefit of the economy and community. For example an institution can request knowledge exchange funding to establish a business to exploit its research. Non-recurrent funding includes capital funding, and funding for implementing government-mandated initiatives, for example widening participation activities.

HEFCE is responsible for registering higher education providers, maintaining the quality of higher education provision, and ensuring that higher education institutions comply with the UK charity regulations. A quality assessment framework is used to monitor teaching quality. HEFCE also gathers a wide range of student and institutional data, for example the institutional key information sets and the national student survey data. HEFCE also runs the Unistats website, which gives prospective students information and statistics on university courses.

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)

The QAA monitors and advises on standards ​and quality in UK higher education. The QAA’s remit applies to all institutions, whether in the UK, or in any location worldwide, which deliver courses leading to UK higher education qualifications. It carries out its work on behalf of the public bodies the fund UK higher education.

The QAA publishes and maintains the UK Quality Code for Higher Education. It also conducts quality reviews of higher education providers and reports its findings publicly. In addition, it also investigates concerns about academic quality and standards, as well as advising government on applications for degree awarding powers and the right to be called a university in the UK.

The Higher Education Academy (HEA)

The HEA is a public body, partly funded by government, and partly funded by UK higher education institutions, whose main objective is to champion and improve the status and quality of teaching in higher education. In this regard it has developed a set of professional standards and guidelines for learning and teaching in higher education known as the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF).  This framework is serving as a basis for assessing and granting formal recognition to individuals who are involved in teaching or supporting learning in higher education. The framework provides recognition for an individual’s efforts to improve the quality of learning and teaching, and includes recognition for wider responsibilities that may include research and/or management activities. For this reason, the UKPSF has become an ideal platform for continuous professional development in learning and teaching in higher education.

The HEA also serves as a national hub for recognised best practice in learning and teaching in higher education. It achieves this through the organisation of teaching and learning conferences and events, and funding and publishing research in learning and teaching.

The National Union of Students (NUS)

The NUS is the umbrella body for higher education and further education student unions in the UK. At present 95% of all higher education and further education student unions in the UK are affiliated to the NUS. The NUS is the key student voice within UK higher education. It achieves this through promoting and upholding the rights of students across UK higher and further education. Students have become important stakeholders in the running and administration of universities, and for this reason, whatever your role in higher education, the NUS is a critical ally to have alongside you, and a very formidable opponent to go against.

Universities UK (UUK)

This is a membership organisation for UK universities. Currently its membership stands at 133. Its primary role is to speak up and champion the views and interests of the UK university sector. It reviews and comments on government policy relating to UK higher education, and, where necessary, formulates and advocates for alternative policies that it sees as beneficial to the sector. In addition to government, it also maintains close links with key stakeholders in higher education, including the private sector, the professions, and other sector bodies.

The month of April is approaching, and if you are an academic in the UK, your head of department will soon be knocking on your door with your allocated teaching for the next academic year. Not so many years ago teaching allocation was just a tick box exercise for the well-established academic. More often than not, you would be re-allocated the same course modules as the previous academic year, and for the greater part, there would be no further planning required. Your lecture notes for the module will already be available, and all you needed to do was to remember where you last deposited them come the start of the academic year in September.

In those bygone days, university learning and teaching was lecturer-centric. All the lecturer needed to do was to show up in lecture sessions and “profess and expound” his (typically it was a he) knowledge of the subject matter to a largely dumbstruck class. Outside of lectures students would then try to study and master what the lecturer had attempted to pour out on them. Their most reliable study guides were the past exam papers which served to show them what to commit to memory and what to discard.  It was a matter of teaching to the exam, and learning to the exam. Anything that was not examinable was quickly discarded. For the student, learning amounted to little more than committing theoretical facts to memory and mastering the technique of regurgitating the material back to the lecturer in the end of module exams. Those were the days.

Now things have changed. Employers have finally become convinced that they don’t really need knowledge parrots in their workforces. They need productivity, and not eloquent parroting. Theoretical facts alone are no longer enough for graduates to justify their place on the company payroll. What is needed is theoretical mastery, and the ability to apply that knowledge to meet the company’s commercial and social objectives. From day one, the graduate needs to actively apply the knowledge gained at university to real-life working contexts. For engineering graduates this means that they have to competently integrate their knowledge with input from other engineers and other professionals to come up with technically viable systems that meet specified commercial and environmental targets. To do so, the competent engineering graduate has to demonstrate sufficient ability and flexibility in re-adapting, re-moulding and re-applying knowledge to ever shifting commercial and social contexts. So, today, the big question for engineering academics is no longer: Do I have my lecture notes ready for the coming year? It’s now: How can I impart knowledge and understanding to this incoming batch of students so that they are able to actively apply it to new contexts, and after doing so, to be able to re-assess their current knowledge base and adapt it accordingly? And that’s not an easy question. But whoever said true learning was easy?

In a lecturer-centric environment the teaching of an engineering module falls into three neat categories. These are the lecture, where theory is transmitted to the student; the tutorial, where students work through theoretical examples to prepare them for the exam; and, lastly, the laboratory session, where students do standard activity-based exercises to verify concepts learned in class. There is no problem solving, something which practising engineers need to do on a day to day basis in their workplaces. Again, there is no analysis, and neither is there any context-driven selection of theory, two techniques that underpin engineering design. And this is problematic, as the bulk of engineering practice is dominated by analysis and design. Is it any wonder therefore that one of the bitterest complaint about engineering graduates is that they are incapable of applying the knowledge they acquired in their studies to practical work situations?

How then do you make learning worthwhile for both your engineering students and their future employers? Conceptually, this is very simple. Integrate your teaching of theory, with practical activities specifically designed to make students think about what they are learning, and applying that knowledge to authentic work contexts. In practice, this can be quite difficult, especially if you still subscribe to the age-old lecturer-centric idea that students learn all they need to learn from your lectures alone. Given that the standard module typically has 30 to 40 contact hours during which all teaching has to be done, this is a near impossible feat to accomplish. It’s now time to adopt the learner-centric approach. Let students be masters of their own learning, and use your lectures to guide the learning process instead. Use your lectures to signpost and to pace your students through the material, and bring in authentic work-related activities to focus your students’ learning. Remember, in the specification of typical university modules, students are expected to engage in 150 to 180 hours in personal study in each module. Ask your students if they ever do so, and the answer is largely negative.

For discipline specific modules, this may be easy to implement. You could think of a fairly exhaustive group project which students have to do throughout the duration of the course. In electromagnetics this could be the design of a novel antenna. A series of short projects focussing on modelling of electromagnetic fields in various configurations can be used to build up the necessary theoretical competence for students to design a full- fledged antenna system. Of course one thing immediately becomes apparent: for the students to analyse and model the various antenna components they have to be familiar with the software typically used for such work. Hence by using this learning delivery method, it also becomes necessary for students to become familiar with the software and methodologies used by antenna designers. Students therefore learn to master and apply specialised engineering theoretical knowledge to authentic work situations.

What if you are tasked with teaching fundamental concepts like engineering mathematics, electrical circuit principles, or principles of mechanics? The same approach can be adopted, but in this case the emphasis should be on using simulation and modelling software to support the teaching of theoretical concepts. For example, students can gain critical insights into the behaviour of physical systems by modelling the basic equations and formulae that are introduced in subjects like engineering mathematics and mechanics. In addition, the essential features of more complex systems can be abstracted and modelled by the basic theories introduced in the various courses on engineering fundamentals. System modelling using such software as Matlab can be used to inform physical laboratory work, thereby greatly enriching the delivery.

To sum up, a learner-centric approach might appear to be daunting, especially when measured against the laissez faire lecturer-centric approach of yester year. But it is what students and employers now need, and it opens up more ways in which we can engage with our students. Most importantly, it is ultimately the most fulfilling way of approaching learning and teaching in higher education.

Last week the Higher Education Academy quietly published a 65-page report entitled “Rewarding educators and education leaders in research-intensive institutions” by Dilly Fung and Claire Gordon. It was duly covered in the Times Higher Education, and caused a few mandatory murmurs on Twitter, but so far as I can see, it was soon forgotten by most of us in higher education. Perhaps I may be wrong and this is not the case. It may be that people are still chewing on the report’s contents and trying to make sense of it, just as I am also trying to do. After all, shocking news has a numbing effect and takes some time to register. However, whatever it is, reading through the report left me with a strong suspicion that at this point in time, UK  higher education might be tipping into a new era where the balance between teaching (or education, as the report authors prefer) and research is going to be sharply redressed.

Briefly, the report publishes the findings from a study set up to identify the challenges that research-intensive institutions have in ensuring that educators and education-focused leaders are appropriately rewarded for their work. To get answers to this question, the authors interviewed the pro vice chancellors (or their equivalent) responsible for education in ten Russell Group universities. In addition they also conducted two focus groups with Heads of Education Development in Russell Group universities, and also had an interview with an executive search consultant with experience in facilitating senior academic appointments.

By and large the main findings of the study collaborate the small but growing literature on education-focussed academics. This includes the fact that research is so highly esteemed in higher education that to all intents and purposes, what counts for reward and progression in higher education is performance in research. In fact, the research culture within research intensive universities is so deeply ingrained that there still exists in many institutions a distinct imbalance in academic promotion criteria. For instance, in some institutions covered by this study, on the research side, calibrated sets of criteria have been developed, but with respect to teaching and learning, these tend only to be cursorily mentioned or are even omitted.

What is interesting, though, is that this study clearly  reveals that “times are changing”  and higher education institutions need to be more “explicitly orientated towards valuing education alongside research” if they are to survive. The reasons for this are very clear. Over the past twenty years the government has introduced a series of policy papers, and put in place a raft of measures, including funding formulae, aimed at refocusing attention on the quality of teaching and learning in universities. The first salvo was the Dearing Report in 1997 which explicitly signalled that government was serious about reforms in teaching and learning in universities. This was followed by a series of policy papers which culminated in the opening up of the higher education market, and the introduction of student fees.

Most recently, in its 2015 Green Paper, the government proposed linking the student fees that universities can charge to their performance in learning and teaching as assessed through a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) that is still to be clearly defined. Suddenly, funding streams for teaching and learning are no longer guaranteed, just as base research funding is no longer guaranteed following the introduction of the Research Excellence Framework (REF).As the authors point out, it is now “highly likely that the TEF will fundamentally affect the external incentive structure in which UK HE operates” and this will in turn “affect the internal dynamics of institutional employment and career structures.”

Moreover, students are becoming increasingly savvy, and national and international league tables have become important considerations in their choice of a university place. In short, it means that a university department, or even an entire university, can rise or fall on the basis of a university league table. Research performance does contribute to a university’s position on league tables and on its reputation, but as one pro vice chancellor pointed out: “Unless we make the education offer … consistent with our research standing and our global brand, we have a long term existential problem.”

In short, in my opinion, the most important finding from this study by Dilly Fung and Claire Gordon is that it is no longer business as usual in higher education. Learning and teaching now count, and universities have to do something about this if they are to guarantee their survival in this brave new world.

The National Students Survey, or the NSS in short, is now into the tenth year, and it remains as controversial as ever. In 2005, institutions and departments who did not subscribe to it simply ignored it, or if pushed, would regally declare that it was simply a point-scoring instrument of little academic consequence. Fast forward to 2015, and the NSS has become a real monster in our midst. You can only ignore it at your peril, even if you do not subscribe to its academic efficacy. Up and down the country, university leaders are falling over each other trying to ensure that their institutions at least get favourable NSS scores. And woe betide the academic department which chooses to regard the NSS as inconsequential.

The NSS is an instrument for measuring student satisfaction. It achieves this by requesting near-graduates to report on their experiences in their undergraduate programmes (Robinson & Sykes, (2014). Now any reasonable person would think that is a good idea. After all, as academics we all depend on student feedback to improve our own teaching. The downside is that this is all very public, with all the NSS results being published on a public league table. If your institution, and your department score very highly, that is good enough.  Your vice chancellor will be happy, and will proudly announce the quality of your institution’s teaching on the public-facing institutional web-site, and, for good measure, you might even receive a bonus. If, however, you are far down the NSS league table, then all hell breaks loose. Yorke, Orr and Blair (2013) put it much better – having low NSS scores is like being hit by the perfect storm. Everything goes up into the air. Your teaching suddenly falls under public scrutiny. The vice chancellor will immediately place your departmental teaching under a magnifying glass, and, as so often happens, in no time, officious academic services staff will be scrutinising your departmental teaching activities, and making recommendations which you dare not disagree with.

Why all this concern, you might ask. Because it matters for student recruitment, and for institutional credibility.  The NSS league table serves to inform the prospective student of how good your department is in comparison to your competitors. Not only that, the NSS scores will find their way into the government-mandated key information sets (KIS). These are the summary statements about the quality of your undergraduate programmes that now appear as a matter of legal requirement alongside your advertisement for the undergraduate programmes offered by your department. Whilst home students may be somewhat immune from NSS scores, this is not so with international students upon whom we now depend for a significant proportion of university income. As Gordon Slaven, head of higher education at the British Council, which promotes UK education, says “How current students present their life on campus online now plays a vital role in how prospective students will view and make a decision on where they should study.” And, for potential students in distant lands, the NSS is the definitive window into our institutional and departmental teaching.

But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom at all. Paul Ramsden (2007), the author of the NSS survey has this to say: The NSS is a “window into how our design for learning are experienced by students and the survey should lead to practical changes to improve quality.” He goes on to suggest that the most important determinants of the student experience are teachers’  “clarity of explanations” and their “ability and willingness to understand student difficulties.” Indeed some departments at the receiving end of the NSS storm have taken aboard his advice with remarkable success. For instance, Robinson and Sykes (2014) report how they successfully enlisted the help of current students to interpret the data from the students’ emic perspective and to suggest ideas for improving the curriculum based on their analysis of the results. Hence, in this case, the NSS has helped to bring together students and academic staff into a working partnership aimed at improving learning and teaching within their departments. Indeed, as Ramsden (2007) points out, students are stakeholders in the delivery of learning, and they should contribute to the improvement of departmental learning environments.

Canning (2015) suggests that as academics, it is mandatory that we improve the learning environment for our students. For instance, in the 2014 NSS, 86% of the surveyed students responded positively to Question 22 of the NSS survey: ‘Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course.’ Canning counters that this leaves over 50,000 students graduating from our universities after 3 or 4 years with unsatisfactory student experiences.

A lot of studies have been conducted on how the student experience can be improved. However, as Gibbs (2010) concludes in his studies on quality dimensions in higher education teaching, all these studies boil down to one thing – the effectiveness of institutions in delivering quality teaching depends primarily on the development and sustenance of an institutional ethos devoted to student success.  And this is not necessarily expensive, as simply upholding teaching values and showing students that we care can bring about immense improvements in the quality of teaching (Gibbs, Knapper & Picinnin, 2009).  As commercial organisations have learnt to accept all along: quality is in the eye of the beholder – and for us in higher education the primary beholder is our current student.

References

Canning, J. (2015). Half a million unsatisfied graduates? Increasing scrutiny of National Student Survey’s ‘overall’ question. Educational Developments, 16(3)

Gibbs, G. (2010). Dimensions of quality. York: Higher Education Academy.

Gibbs, G., Knapper, C., & Picinnin, S. (2009). Departmental Leadership of Teaching in Research-Intensive Environments – Final Report. Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. Available: http://goo.gl/8u0fpc [Retrieved 28 Oct, 2015.]

Ramsden, P. (2007). „Inspiring tomorrow‟ s students‟. Address to the Higher Education Academy Annual Conference, July 2. Harrogate.

Robinson, L., & Sykes, A. (2014). Listening to Students’ Views on NSS Data for Quality Enhancement. Health and Social Care Education, 3(1), 35-40.

Yorke, M., Orr, S., & Blair, B. (2014). Hit by a perfect storm? Art & Design in the National Student Survey. Studies in Higher Education, 39(10), 1788-1810.

Background:

The idea of mathematics support for undergraduate students took off in the UK in the early 1990’s, and today it is now firmly established in most universities (Lawson, 2012). The main reason leading to the provision of mathematical support was the perception that students entering university from the school system lacked the necessary depth of mathematics necessary for them to undertake numerate programmes like mathematics, engineering and the physical sciences.

Today, mathematical support has progressed from being just a remedial tool. Instead, the main objective of mathematical support is now being seen as assisting students to achieve their full potential. This means that in addition to supporting students who would otherwise fail to gain sufficient mathematics skills to pass and progress in their degree programmes, mathematical support programmes also seek to enable students with adequate mathematical skills to excel in their studies.  Whilst the exact form of support offered varies from student to student, the main objective is the same, namely building students’ confidence in mathematics so as to enable them to be more successful in the study of their primary discipline (Lawson, 2012).

Mode of Operation, Location and Branding

The main form of support is typically in the form of a drop-in service, usually located in an easily accessible student study space. This may be typically in a library, or campus-based cafeterias where students are likely to meet informally in between formal lectures to study, eat and drink, or to chill out. Wherever a drop-in service is provided, it is necessary to ensure that it is located in a physically attractive, welcoming environment. It should also be clearly sign-posted, possibly with a large clear banner, so that it clearly stands out. It is also essential that any signage or advertising associated with the service should be about improvement for all, as opposed to being a remedial service for failing students (Lawson, 2012). This is to prevent the potential to embarrass and turn off potential attendees.

Tutor Preparations for a Drop-in Session

Like everything else, the key to a successful drop-in session is adequate preparation. This includes gaining familiarity with the nature of potential queries that students are likely to bring, as well as gaining an understanding of the nature and background of potential attendees.

Know the Material

Within engineering, the main source of queries may stem from their engineering mathematics studies. It is therefore necessary to have some grasp of the material they are covering. Engineering departments often give their mathematics support tutors access to the student course materials. In forward-looking departments, mathematics support tutors are an integral part of the department’s mathematics provision and they routinely collaborate with lecturers in reviewing the course material, discussing potential problem areas for students, and redrafting course notes and coursework in the light of student feedback. In fact, drop-in sessions can serve as an important just-in-time feedback channel for an engineering mathematics programme.

Know the Range of Tutor Expertise Available

It is not possible to be familiar with all the aspects of mathematics that students may seek help on. This is because you may have done a similar mathematics course several years before, and your research may be in an area quite distant from undergraduate mathematics topics. Hence, you should have some familiarity with the individual expertise of the other tutors working with you in the drop-in sessions. For instance, someone doing a PhD in an area of fluid dynamics may have expertise in partial differential equations, whilst someone from electrical engineering may have day-to-day familiarity with vector calculus. Others may have expertise in mathematical modelling software such as Matlab or Excel. Awareness of who has what sort of skills may be important when you get stuck on some problem and need to refer the student.

Forewarned is forearmed

It will be helpful if you come to the drop-in session with some idea of the likely queries students will bring. Someone who has spent some time as a mathematics support tutors will have a clear idea of the types of questions students bring on each topic. If you have recently taken up the role, it is important that you speak with more experienced colleagues to find out the main issues students typically bring to the drop-in sessions. As the saying goes – forewarned is forearmed.

Conducting Yourself during the Drop-in Session

Be welcoming

Most students find it quite challenging to gather the courage to come to the drop-in session for help. Your demeanour is therefore important in encouraging students to come.  Welcome students when they come up to you, and make them feel valued. Small things like introducing yourself, and offering the student a seat go a long way towards building rapport between yourself and the student, which is a key ingredient for the success of a drop-in session.

Listen to the student first before proposing an appropriate solution

In most respects, a drop-in session is similar to a visit to the doctor. Patients come in to the doctor’s surgery exhibiting various symptoms. The doctor then performs a diagnostic procedure, which generally includes obtaining further information about the patient’s symptoms, previous state of health, living conditions, and so forth.  Similarly, when a student brings a problem, it may be pointing to a particular area that the student is struggling with. For instance a student may say to you, “I can’t solve this ordinary differential problem, can you help me.”  In this case it is quite tempting to rush in and provide a solution for the problem in question. But this doesn’t help the student much. Rather, you need to establish why the student is having that problem.  Is it because there is some underlying background material that the student needs to master first, is it because the student has failed to understand the theory surrounding the problem, or is it simply that the student is finding only this particular problem problematic.

For each of the scenarios presented by the student you need to adopt an appropriate approach. This may be to refer the student to a particular section in previous lectures, or it may be asking the student to attempt a similar, but more approachable problem. In each case, focus on understanding the underlying reasons why the student is having the problems and helping the student to fix those areas. Hence, a single visit to the drop-in session may end up revealing to the student key areas of underlying mathematics that should be mastered first.

Be prepared to spend time with the student

According to Lawson (2012) students value the opportunity for one-to-one interaction with a tutor who is prepared to spend time with them. In a drop-in session always be prepared to go back as far as is necessary to enable students to build on from what they know already. This helps to connect the topic they are having difficulties with to previous work, which, in turn, helps to grow their confidence and understanding.

Be patient and considerate

According to findings from the UK Mathematics Learning Support Centre, most students who come for support in mathematics need basic tuition. You need to explain to them clearly and slowly, and to reassure them at all times that they are not dumb. Endeavour not to demean the students in any way. For instance, refrain from making statements like, “You should have covered this in school!” In addition refrain from humour as this may be taken badly and only end up demotivating the student (Croft et al, 2011).

Don’t just give answers: Engage in a dialogue with the student

Your role as a tutor is to guide the student to master the techniques to solve mathematics problems on their own. Hence, avoid giving the answer to the student as much as possible. Instead, through appropriate questions and hints, guide the students to solve the problems themselves.  This may even involve getting the student to refer to their lecture notes to find explanations about a particular method (Croft et al, 2011). This is a form of one-on-one tutoring, and it is instructive to adopt techniques that have been found to be effective in student tutoring. See, for example, my blog on organising effective tutorial workshops for Engineering Mathematics.

Help students to develop a long-term strategy

Some students may come with one-off problems and they go away satisfied. However, for most students you need to impress upon them the need to develop a long term strategy to overcome their problems (Croft et al, 2011). You can help them to identify areas that they need to work on, and to assist them in drawing up a schedule of work. Wherever possible, encourage them to start some work during the drop-in session, and invite them back after a few days to tell you how they are getting on.

When you get stuck on a problem

As I said before, it is impossible to know everything that the students may bring to the drop-in session. In these instances, be upfront with the students and let them know. If there are other colleagues around, refer them to the student. Where this is not possible, make a note of the problem and ask the student to come back some other day after you have found out.

Record keeping

The effectiveness of a drop-in session can be improved through record-keeping. For instance, keeping track of attendance will ensure appropriate allocation of tutors in subsequent years as attendance is not uniform throughout the year, but is dependent on the particular areas that the students are studying at any given point in time. In addition, a record of the queries brought by students will help to improve lectures and tutorial workshops so as to alleviate these problems.

Acknowledgement

This material is based on the work by the National HE STEM Programme sigma   that produced a series of practice guides providing information for staff involved in providing mathematics support.

References

Lawson, Duncan. (2012) Setting up a Math Support Centre. Published by The National HE STEM Programme, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK. Available:  http://www.sigma-network.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Setting-up-a-Maths-Support-Centre.pdf (Accessed 22 Oct 2015).

Croft, A. C., Gillard, J. W., Grove, M. J., Kyle, J., Owen, A., Samuels, P. C., & Wilson, R. H. (2011). Tutoring in a Mathematics Support Centre, a Guide for Postgraduate Students. Published by The National HE STEM Programme, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham UK. Available http://www.sigma-network.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/46836-Tutoring-in-MSC-Web.pdf. (Accessed 22 Oct 2015).

The LTSN Maths TEAM Project. (2003) Maths support for students. The UK Mathematics Learning Support Centre. Available: http://www.sigma-network.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/student_support.pdf (Accessed 22 Oct 2015).

Imagine that you have applied to study engineering at one of the top UK universities. You turn up at the beginning of Freshers Week, ready to embark on your journey towards becoming an engineer. As in all Freshers Week preparations, the university has sent you a detailed itinerary for the week, and your first meeting is with your Learning Advisor. This is someone like the present day personal tutor, but unlike today’s personal tutor, this Learning Advisor will partner with you throughout your academic journey at this top university.

You show up promptly at the Learning Advisor’s office at 9:00 in the morning. After exchanging pleasantries, and with a hot cup of coffee in your hands, you are soon engrossed in discussing your study plans. It’s not like today’s asymmetrical teacher-student communication. This is a discussion of equals, focussing on the same objective, namely to create the best possible learning environment for you. It’s a discussion and meeting together of mature and interested minds.

Your Learning Advisor enquires about your specific passions in your desire to study engineering, your previous experiences in industry, if any, and your specific competences in areas like Physics and Mathematics. She sits down with you in front of a large computer touchscreen on which there are the various course modules that you will engage with in your forthcoming academic career. Pretty soon, by moving modules around, you create your own personalised study programme. Not only that, you both sit down to watch comments and discussions by students already on the programme, as well as recently graduated students who are already in industry. This helps to guide your choices, and soon you are working on how exactly you are going to be spending your time in the next few weeks of term.

Together with your Learning Advisor, you complete a quick questionnaire to identify your particular learning style, and based on this, the computer system produces a draft Personalised Learning Plan for you. This comprises the specific lectures that you will attend, the tutorial workshops that are relevant to you, as well as the additional support you need, like postgraduate tutoring support, as well as specific seminars and workshops in which you will work in small groups with other students to cover areas that are of specific concern to you. Soon, you have a detailed week-by-week timetable that optimises your access to university learning resources. This includes optimising your personal life with lecture and workshop attendance, as well as a schedule for self-directed online learning, peer-to-peer student activities, as well as the all-important academic staff contact points.

Soon you turn to discussing your assessment schedule. You are pleasantly surprised that you will not be constrained to sit exams at the end of the year in some large scary hall, alongside hundreds of other students. Rather, there is a bouquet of assessments available for you, and some are optional. Throughout your studies you can take formative assessments available online, in the form of quizzes, or you can take paper-based assessments that require submission to a named academic staff member. For the summative assessments, you can choose to sit them as and when you are ready, and, as in all assessments, these are promptly marked, and an academic sits down with you to give you one-on-one feedback on your performance, and on your future progress.

You enquire when you will be able to complete your degree programme. Your Learning Advisor replies that this is down to you, and the progress that you make. You can choose to work alongside your studies, and you can take time off to spend time in industry pursuing specific projects that are of interest to you. In fact, your time and effort in industry is also assessed and contributes to your progression. If you wish, you can also embark on research in one of the many research groups within the university. In fact, you could embark on doctoral and master level research studies simultaneously with your undergraduate programme. Far-fetched? No, after all, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame was already taking graduate level courses in computing prior to enrolling for undergraduate studies at Harvard.

How does this vision for tomorrow compare to the current undergraduate scenario? Vastly futuristic, you would think, until it dawns on you that present-day enrollment and study procedures have remained remarkably unchanged despite advances in technology. In fact, if a 1950’s student turned up to a typical university campus, he or she would not be too lost, apart from the fact that where before there was loads of paperwork to read and complete, nowadays most university work is mediated via computer technology. Just as in the in the 1950’s , students entering an undergraduate programme today typically sign up for the same introductory courses, attend the same lectures and tutorial workshop sessions, do the same coursework, submit it by the same deadline, sit the same exams at the same time, and wait to progress to the next stage at the same time.

Which leaves you wondering: are our undergraduate learning and teaching procedures still fit for purpose? Surely, given the advent of Internet technologies, and advances in learning technologies, there must be a better way to personalise our learning experiences.

If you are an Engineering academic, most of your undergraduate students tend to be students proceeding directly from high school, with only a minuscule number coming into university from work. However, at master level this is the complete opposite. A sizeable proportion of your students are likely to hold first degrees and they usually have a considerable number of years of industrial experience.  In addition, your class may comprise a sizeable number of students coming from educational and career backgrounds outside your subject area.  These are typically prospective career changers who need to use the master level education and knowledge as a platform to launch themselves into a different career pathway.  It is also not uncommon to see mid-level managers amongst your students who are taking the master level programme to broaden their view of the technological field within which they are working.  In my own career I can count several instances where my classes have included senior-level managers with company-wide responsibilities for technical operations and research and development.

Master Level Students – A Different Breed from Undergraduate Students

Master level students are quite different from the typical undergraduate students, and they also have a different epistemological view of knowledge from the typical academic. For instance, in academia we tend to value propositional knowledge, i.e. theoretical knowledge, for its own sake. In contrast, students from industry are used to learning and applying knowledge to their own work situations. Unlike us, academics, they tend to place more value on procedural knowledge, i.e. that kind of knowledge which imparts skills to do something. In addition, such people often learn and enact their knowledge through team-work. This contrasts sharply with the stereotypical view of academic practice as an individual pursuit.

At undergraduate level, students have a tendency to regard your lecture notes as the divine truth in your subject area.  This is not so at masters level. Given the diverse experience and expertise amongst your master level students, you should expect your students to challenge and debate your teaching content, even if you are drawing from the latest research on the topic. In my own teaching I can easily remember the instances when someone has pointed out in class: “We tried that, it doesn’t work.” Or, worse still, “I know the textbooks say so, but in industry things are not like that.” If you have not anticipated this, you can freeze in confusion, and the whole lecture, and your own credibility as well as the credibility of the programme can go downhill from that point. It is therefore not uncommon to witness master level programmes that start off with a high number of students, and then fizzling out within a few years as word goes round amongst prospective students. How then can you make your lectures worthwhile?

The Course Module as a Platform for Collaborative Analysis and Debate

The most important thing you can do is to recognise that at master level, a course module is not just a vehicle for imparting facts and figures to the class. Instead, view your course module as a platform for enabling the class to share and debate a specific portion of technical knowledge in a supportive environment. Make it a place where students with an industrial background can reflect and share their practice in the light of the propositional knowledge emanating from academia.

Consider using your module as a platform to question research-based academic knowledge in the light of your students’ practical experiences. To spice up things, endeavour to bring in industrial expertise to contribute to debates on specific topics.  Bring in experts from both established enterprises and start-ups, and mix these into your class. Your job then, as a lecturer, is to spark a conversation, possibly through an appropriate industry-focussed problem question, and to coordinate and conduct the class discussions in such a way that everyone benefits.

The Course Module as a Vehicle for Engaging with Industry

At Master level your role as lecturer seizes to be that of an “imparter of knowledge”, and becomes one of organising and coordinating appropriate learning environments to enable students to actively engage in their own learning in a collaborative manner.  Going by today’s terminology, such learning is a form of “active learning” whereby students are encouraged to learn by using their initial knowledge to analyse and synthesise authentic solutions, and then contributing to the existing knowledge base through reflecting and evaluating on their solutions.

In some universities, master level programmes are seen as vehicles for engaging with industry.  Practitioners come in and share their knowledge with academics and students, and in turn, practitioners go away with a more illuminated view of their practice. This inevitably leads to closer collaboration between universities and industry, and it is not a coincidence that universities with strong master level programmes in engineering often have very strong linkages with industry. And this relationship is symbiotic, and, is one of the key reason why universities often serve as catalysts and incubators for technological developments within their localities.