Annex
Funding expansion
35. Global demand for higher education is
high and can only increase, but it will not pay any price, and
there will be many competitors willing to offer a lower price.
The UK HE system will not be able to compete on price, but will
be able to compete on quality and value for money. Competing on
value for money requires that we can afford to offer it at a reasonable
price. That means our unit costs must decrease as volumes expand.
That in turn means shifting to a different teaching resource model.
36. How could this be achieved without undermining
quality? Mainstreaming use of e-learning, properly managed, offers
alternative use of the human resource needed for teaching UK HE
courses, improves the quality of the learning experience, and
supports greater efficiency, and hence lower unit costs. Examples
of the ways in which technology can reduce costs while maintaining
quality are:
— flexible delivery to students' place
of work or home, requiring less physical infrastructure
— independent learning, requiring less
labour intensive teaching
— online communication and collaboration,
to provide peer group interaction
— FAQ toolkits, to enable online tutors
to help larger student groups efficiently
— reusable learning designs, to enable
proven good practice to be shared easily
— reusable digital resources to support
teaching development and innovation
— online access to e-science materials
and digital libraries to support teaching
— interactive formative assessment,
to automate personalised feedback
— online marking tools, to make tutor
feedback more efficient
— online enrolment and administration
of students, to increase administrative efficiency
— personalised information and guidance,
to supplement personal tutors
— online diagnostic tools, to guide
students' course choices
— online evaluation tools, to provide
market research and feedback to academics
— online credit transfer mechanisms,
to make institutional collaboration easier
— online access to professional updating
to increase HE role in workforce development.
37. There are many other examples. Exploitation
of these features of e-learning would yield, long-term, a lower
unit cost for a student in higher education. Investment in the
transition to this state would have to cover development costs
for the software tools and platforms required, and staff time
for change management (including staff development).
38. Modelling the effects on distribution
of staff time would define the conditions under which a lower
unit cost could be achieved through a shift from traditional teaching
to e-learning (Laurillard, 2006a). The Open University provides
the UK with a unique test-bed for understanding an alternative
distribution of teaching resources, human, physical, and virtual.
Its maturity and stability mean that it is in a good position
to form alliances with campus universities to complement their
offerings with a much wider range of study options for learners.
But this requires strategic leadership from HEFCE.
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November 2006
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