United Kingdom

University of Lincolnshire and Humberside

Prepared by:

David Lippiatt

Brief description of the programme

The University of Lincolnshire and Humberside has some 13,000 students attending full-time and part-time courses on-campus but, since 1993, the university has been franchising some courses off-campus. In order to promote assurance of quality in these courses, the university supplies comprehensive sets of materials to support lecturers in other institutions. Building on this experience in materials provision, in 1994 the university began to develop distance education materials for ‘top-up’ courses that would enable students with a diploma level qualification to study for an honours degree.

Following the well-researched identification of a potential market, academic design of the course was quickly followed by design of the form that such distance education provision would take. Now in 1997 the course is up and running with some 800 students using the materials through a network of approved centres both in the United Kingdom and overseas.

Problems encountered

Planning and managing distance education

•       Although there is now widespread experience of matters relating to the planning and management of distance education, in fact, given the organisational structures within which we originally undertook this development, with advisors in one department and producers in another, the early stages of the project were fraught with difficulties. Part of the difficulty resided in the fact that directions were being given at an awkward distance; serious progress only began when ‘management by leadership’ was introduced and a managing editor was given direct responsibility for ‘producing the goods’.

Implementing quality assurance

•       In line with commonly understood standards and procedures, a quality assurance system had been created but to some extent this was theoretical, and experience showed the importance of drawing up such procedures in the light of local capabilities and particular market requirements. There is no point in designing idealised quality systems which in practical fact do not fit with customer requirements nor institutional capabilities.

Using and integrating media in distance education

•       Given the academic design of the course in business and management, some ready-made materials were available in a variety of media, but their principal weakness was that they could only have been adapted to meet the requirements of the course at uneconomical expense. There was the requirement that ‘distant students’ should be receiving university brand materials not substitute materials however good they might be. Print-based technology was adopted because it was manageable by both the supplier and consumer with the expectation that use of further media would be adopted at a later point as the need arose and as economic returns justified its use.

Instructional design and production for distance education

•       Materials were developed for each unit of the course in the form of study guides centred on published core texts. This model permitted lecturers to depend on the texts for conveying content with motivating and explanatory text of their own in the study guides. Local arrangements with a book retailer who in turn made arrangements with publishers spread the cost of assuring access to large supplies of textbooks and ensured sufficient ‘buffer’ to guarantee at least six months’ life ahead for any one unit. The book retailer got the business and the university had assurance of a safe life for its units.

Learner support systems

•       The best of materials do not support themselves so that local tutorial arrangements with approved centres were, and are, vital to the success of this distance education provision. Following the development of staff in centres, the maintenance and cultivation by the university of good relations with centre staff is as important a part of the process as the direct relation they have with the student.

The most important issue: Developing learning materials

The most important issue is difficult to isolate, but time and time again the difficulties encountered in the development of materials are purely the result of rushing things at the planning stages. It is not that the problems are overlooked or unforeseen at the outset but that pressures to start delivering the goods force the course developer to keep on using up safety spaces built into the project plan. This is not so much the result of not knowing how long it is likely to take to carry out a particular task nor of making a mistake in allowing for its duration. In fact, it is ironically the case that since the originally scheduled project is working, other commitments come to be made which, in effect, overlay the first plan. Success might breed success but it also breeds the pressure to succeed even more.

From one management point of view, this is understandable because few of us are working within fixed project time scales. We are frequently working within very fluid markets where flexible responses are required — reallocating resources on an almost daily basis so that project management is about redefining projects every day. The difficulty is to keep on managing things in such a way as to maintain confidence by fulfilling commitments made at one point while constantly readjusting dates to accommodate new projects.

But there are limits beyond which quality is in danger of being compromised and so, from another management point of view, one of the most important issues is to recognise those limits and refuse to cross them.

Napier University

Prepared by:

Sally Anderson

Brief description of the programme

Napier is one of the largest universities in Scotland, with more than 11,000 students. The university is organised into five faculties: Arts and Social Science, Engineering, Health Studies, Science, and the Napier Business School. The university takes its name from John Napier, inventor of logarithms, who was born in the Tower of Merchiston in 1550. The Tower is now an integral part of the Merchiston campus.

From its early days as the Napier College of Science and Technology, which opened in 1964, Napier has grown steadily, in 1974 merging with another institution to become the Napier College of Commerce and Technology and later becoming a polytechnic. In 1992, in recognition of its achievements, the polytechnic was given consent to adopt the title Napier University.

Delivery in Mauritius

Napier University is offering a number of courses in Mauritius in areas such as Economics, Computer Studies, and Management. These courses cover a range of levels, including the higher national certificate, a full Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Economics, and a post-graduate diploma in computer studies.

It is an important feature of all Napier’s flexible learning projects that the courses are owned and delivered by the relevant academic department, rather than by a central unit. There is, however, a central support team who work with the academic department by providing advice, editorial and production assistance, project management expertise and staff development and training where required. Quality assurance procedures for distant courses follow the same route within the university as does any conventionally delivered course. The media used for delivering flexible learning in the university are varied, and are chosen with careful investigation of what is available to students. In the case of Mauritius, print-based delivery was the most accessible, with some limited computer and software usage.

For students at such a distance, with cultural and language differences from the delivery institution, support was of some concern, and a comprehensive strategy was developed.

•       To establish a local base, we work with the Ministry of Education and related organisations (such as the National Computing and Information Technology Resource Centre) and for each course a local administrator acts as a liaison with Napier.

•       Local tutors are recruited in accordance with requirements laid down by Napier, and they provide frequent and regular tutorials throughout the year. E-mail and fax allow local tutors and the local administrator relatively easy contact with Napier staff in Scotland.

•       Napier staff travel to Mauritius at least twice per academic year. Not only do they work with students there, more importantly, they provide training and assistance to local tutors.

•       All study materials are scrutinised by the project consultant, who is both a member of Napier staff and a Mauritian national, to ensure their applicability culturally and with regard to language level.

So, the course runs as follows: students attend a summer school at which they meet local tutors and Napier staff. This is an opportunity for students to explore exactly how they will study and develop some study skills appropriate for flexible learning, as well as to cover some initial content. They then study by means of flexible learning study materials prepared and supplied by Napier, with regular tutorials and opportunities to use computer facilities. A winter school with Napier staff and local tutors allows examination revision and clarification of problems. Formative assessment is done by local tutors with Napier moderating a random selection of written assignments, and final assessment is set and marked by Napier staff.

This model has proved very effective and a number of cohorts have graduated successfully.