By Tom Lowe
Traditionally higher education has taken place in person, with the lecturer and learner in the room, with a set time and place for their education with staff take place (which of course excludes the learning taking place out of the classroom, but I’ll return to this later). In more recent times, thanks to technology, learning can now take place online, where prior to the pandemic, only a minority of full-time students took advantage of such pathways, and the majority of us only experienced such online learning opportunities in the workplace, as part of those mandatory HR ‘all staff trainings’. As highlighted in my blog back in November, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, where an entire generation of learners and society of workers experienced the abilities of learning, working and (hopefully) succeeding at distance. The curtain has now certainly fallen on learning online, where compressed by a cost-of-living crisis and digitisation of wider life, the predominant in-person university model is more at threat than it ever has been before. Across nations, lecturers are complaining of lower student attendance at in-person timetabled classes, and university committees puzzle over the attendance and timetabling questions – do we book rooms for capacity? What does a large almost-empty lecture theatre do for learning, or should we switch pedagogical approach altogether? This blog will discuss the dominant steps being taken by universities to retain student engagement in this changing context.
Stream it! Offering online learning opportunities to keep students on track
During the pandemic, learning continued through the abilities of online streaming software, to teach live and record classes and materials to continue the curriculum. Post-pandemic these practices have continued at most UK universities, with institutions continuing to record classes for students to catch up who cannot or choose not to attend. The ability to watch back, repeat and remain engaged in degrees is seen by many students as a critical to continue study particular in supporting learning for neurodiverse students, and students who are in financial difficulties. Beyond recording, other institutions have chosen instead to upload ‘catch up content’ that are perhaps summaries of the classes, in shorter, bite sized resource videos or worksheets. Finally, some are streaming live for students can have the choice of watching from home or travelling to campus. Each has its pros and cons, where usefully, digital analytics as discussed in my December blog offer us the opportunity to assess engagement of students not in the room.
Flip it! Rethinking contact time for applied learning as opposed to content delivery
Contact time in universities has been dominated by the lecture, where an academic stands at the front and ‘delivers’ information to an often large group of students. This knowledge exchange approach can sometimes lack interaction and therefore, relies upon innovative or varied teaching to engage learners (this is not to dismiss lectures entirely - I’m aware there are some great lecturing practices out there!). Where lectures are not interactive, this content / knowledge delivery in teaching could be argued to be replicated by video, online in a streaming fashion, to instead prioritise the on campus contact time for activities that support active learning, application of the material and further meaning making connections. This practice of content engagement prior to scheduled class time is known in the sector as ‘Flipped Learning’, which has been argued to support student engagement in scheduled contact time and build student staff- relationships. It can work well with highly engaged students and when applied consistently across every class - but there can be a worry of a banking education generation, as discussed in my last blog, that students perceive the learning to be done online, and the seminars themselves could receive lower attendance as the ‘knowledge transfer’ has already taken place. This view can be mitigated by expressing clearly the purpose and value of the following scheduled in-person contact time. We need to be clear why students should invest in coming to class if they perceive education to be about depositing information into their piggybanks. Furthermore, there can also be a risk of an impression with students if they have not done the pre-work, that they cannot attend the contact time, or, the opposite tension that it disrupts the learning of others if the students haven’t done the preparation material and expect to be caught up and receive the information in the contact time.
Block it! Put the contact time together in a different package
Working at undergraduate Open Days in the early 2010s, I used to say to students “you should be prepared to be here anytime 9-5 Monday to Friday”. However, as the cost of being a student has increased as alongside the numbers of students choosing to commute, increasingly students would ask the question, “how many days a week do I need to come to campus?” To support student engagement with learning, many universities have now adapted to this student need and desire, with timetabling pledges such as “three days a week on campus maximum” and even a move towards the so-called ‘block teaching’ model. Block teaching is a trend in higher education, which often includes compounding modules into less weeks and increasing contact time on set days, as opposed to spread out over several months at two-four hours a week. This often includes teaching a module intensively across a far less number of weeks, then assessing, for example, teaching a module 9-5 Monday-Wednesday for three weeks, then assessing in Week 4, then onto the next module. This ‘block’ approach differs from university to university, but fundamentally moves away from traditional semester-long learning models with multiple modules operating alongside. There is not one set ‘block’ blueprint to follow, where my initial search has found ‘block’ used as a label for the above described model, as well as the ‘two days on site’ a week timetabling approach.
Communicate it! Managing students’ expectations
No matter your approach to adapt to the challenges of student engagement in now the late 2020s (sorry if that description is a daunting prospect!), it is critical that students’ expectations are managed from the open day and first click on the website. For undergraduate education, we are taking students through three-four years of learning, who apply for such courses as much as we are engaging them nine to twelve months prior to arrival. Communicating and committing to our ‘deal’ of student engagement is crucial so students can make an informed choice of their educational model, and we should work to be consistent across our providers. Frustratingly, these new delivery approaches cannot be simply switched on and off. Change and enhancement has a long lead in, long implementation, and even longer evaluation. We may not know the benefits or weaknesses of certain approaches until several years down the line, and we may have to experiment (but not mess around!) each student cohort we bring into our providers.
Tom Lowe has researched and innovated in student engagement across diverse settings for over ten years, in areas such as student voice, retention, employability and student-staff partnership. Tom works at the University of Westminster as Assistant Head of School (Student Experience) in Finance and Accounting where he leads on student experience, outcomes and belonging. Tom is also the Chair of RAISE, a network for all stakeholders in higher education for researching, innovating and sharing best practice in student engagement. Prior to Westminster, Tom was a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth, and previously held leadership positions for engagement and employability at the University of Winchester. Tom has published two books on student engagement with Routledge; ‘A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice’ in 2020 and ‘Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge’ in 2023, and has supported over 40 institutions in consultancy and advisory roles internationally
Reading
Anthony, B., Kamaludin, A., Romli, A., Raffei, A.F.M., Phon, D.N.A.E., Abdullah, A. and Ming, G.L., 2022. Blended learning adoption and implementation in higher education: A theoretical and systematic review. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, pp.1-48.
Dunbar-Morris, H. (2023). Want students back in the classroom? Don’t give everything away online. Times Higher Education. 30th March 2023. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/want-students-back-classroom-dont-give-everything-away-online
González-Zamar, M.D. and Abad-Segura, E., 2022. Global evidence on flipped learning in higher education. Education Sciences, 12(8), p.515.
Nordmann, E., Hutchison, J. and MacKay, J. R. (2022). Lecture rapture: The place and case for lectures in the new normal. Teaching in Higher Education, 27(5), pp.709-716.
Wilkinson, M. and Merry, K. L. (2024). How Can Block Teaching Adopt Universal Design for Learning to Meet the Needs of Disabled Students?. Gateway Papers: A Journal of Education and Pedagogic Research, 5(1).
