Learning, Equality and E-quality

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Learning, Equality and E-quality

• A student-centred approach to reforming higher
  education

Daithí Mac Síthigh / University of Vienna /
24.11.06
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(No Transcript)
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ESIB - The National Unions of Students in Europe

• Based in Brussels
• 45 member organisations
• Consultative member of the Bologna Follow-Up
  Group (BFUG)
• Structures
• Board / Executive / Secretariat
• Bologna Process Committee
• Committee on Commodification of Education
• Gender Equality Committee

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Learning
Equality
Higher education reform
E-Quality
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Cycles and Credits?
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Learning Outcomes
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Qualifications Frameworks
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Framework(s)?

• National Frameworks
• Framework of Qualifications for the European
  Higher Education Area (Bologna framework)
• European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong
  Learning (EU framework)
• (Mutual recognition of professional
  qualifications)

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EQF-LLL
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NFQ - Ireland
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Doctoral Studies
P h D
EHEA
ERA
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Doctoral Programmes

• Structured programmes
• Career paths
• Financing
• Generic and transferrable skills
• Professional Doctorates

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Purpose of (Higher) Education

• Is the attention paid to HE
• a good thing for HE?

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Melvyn Bragg (2005)

• In some ways modern universities threaten to
  return to their origins in the Middle Ages. Then
  they were primarily engines for the furthering of
  the authority of the almost unimaginably powerful
  Roman Catholic Church. They were also the source
  of the law of the land - an equally utilitarian
  function

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• Now the purpose of universities, in the minds
  of many politicians and powerbrokers, is as the
  engine of economic growth, involved in all the
  material advancements of the hitherto
  unimaginably far-reaching consequences of
  successive technological revolutions
• Leaders the world over are being advised that in
  the accelerated Age of Information, the
  university is king

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Whither learning?

• Programmed learning
• Self-directed learning
• Problem-based learning
• Blended learning
• Student-Centred Learning

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Learning
Equality
Higher education reform
E-Quality
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Equality and Reform

• Nothing about us without us!
• Social Dimension of the Bologna Process
• Equity and Efficiency (European Commission)
• Higher education is
• Not the answer
• Part of the solution
• They keep changing the question!

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International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights
13(2)(c) Higher education shall be made equally
accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by
every appropriate means, and in particular by the
progressive introduction of free education
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Building the accessible university

• Universally accessible curriculum design
• Physical disabilities
• Support for less than full time study
• Technology - a solution and a problem

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its not (all) about money
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• Survey 1 2005
• Survey 2 2007
• All action lines
• All ESIB members
• Will be submitted to Ministers in London

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Learning
Equality
Higher education reform
E-Quality
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ACTIONS

• Access
• Costs
• Teaching and Learning
• Interactivity and User-Friendliness
• Organisational Issues
• Novelty
• Speed

Bates, Technology, E-learning and Distance
Learning (2nd edn.) 2005, p. 49.
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Daithís Seven Deadly Sins

• e-mimicking
• gee-whiz
• techno-utopianism
• vanishing QA
• universal accessibility
• investment
• disconnection

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• the
• medium
• is
• still
• the
• message

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e-learning

• e-learning 2.0!

web 2.0
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What is Web 2.0? (and what does it mean for
higher education?)

• Participation
• Collaboration
• Customisation
• Innovation
• Integration
• The triumph of the bazaar?

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How can we improve e-quality?
web 2.0
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(No Transcript)
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Share and share alike

• Legal
• Open
• Flexible
• International
• Suitable for education?

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Four paths?
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Code Law

• E-learning platform design
• Software choice / market
• Where does your content go?
• Academic values in e-learning
• Dont forget the deadly sins!

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The Trojan Horse?

• Whilst ICT may offer opportunities for the
  expansion of learning in the distance mode it has
  - beyond the confines of Europe - been
  instrumental in higher education losing its
  exclusive claim to being a public good and being
  increasingly regarded as simply another trade
  item to be negotiated under the GATS

Internationalising the Curriculum - symposium
at the 4th Networked Learning Conference,
Sheffield 2004
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students