In a previous article, 'e' for efficiency? by Derek Morrison he made reference to a report by Carol Twigg on the nirvana of improving learning whilst at the same time reducing costs. Today, I'm going to provide an overview of, and a brief commentary on, this interesting work.
Derek quoted from the article:
“… redesign using technology-based approaches and learner-centred principles can offer a way out of higher education's historical trade-off between cost and quality … transfer the focus of activity from academic staff to students – from presentation of material by academic staff to problem-solving and interactive learning by students.”
Source: Twigg C (2002), Improving Quality & Reducing Costs: Designs for Effective Learning Using Information Technology p3, The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (subscription service but see www.center.rpi.edu/PewGrant.html.)
Carol Twigg has conducted an analysis of the projects supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Her report can be accessed from here Improving Learning and Reducing Costs: Lessons Learned from Round 1 of the Pew Grant Program in Course Redesign.
The original aim of the program was to redesign large enrolment introductory courses to 'achieve cost savings as well as quality enhancements.' In the original plan the projects aimed to reduce the costs by 37% on average and the resulting analysis showed the average saving on costs to be 33% with all of the projects reducing their costs.
Regarding the quality aim.
Five of the ten projects showed improved learning outcomes, four reported no significant difference and one was inconclusive. One important change was that all the projects changed their teaching approach to a more active and student-centred pedagogy.
So how was this successful result achieved and are there lessons for the wider educational community to learn especially as the dual aims of reducing costs and improving quality are extremely attractive to all in education?
Before any project was accepted an institution had to demonstrate its readiness to engage in a redesign of a course. A set of readiness criteria for the institution and the course was used to make this judgment. Demonstrating the readiness of the project showed to be very important in the success of the project. In addition to the readiness criteria applicants were also required to 'develop a plan for improved learning outcomes' and 'analyse the cost of traditional methods of instruction as well as new methods …'
A significant finding was the necessity to teach the redesign methodology. In our experience this is significant but not very surprising. Many of the early adopters of e-learning did consider that this would be the equivalent of putting course notes online. Consequently courses following this approach offered very little extra to traditional face-to-face courses, apart from a convenient repository for downloading course notes.
The Pew analysis, however, suggests that the redesign of existing courses for e-learning is not straightforward and appears to require support for academic staff to navigating their way through the process. Let's not forget that that many academics may not have any formal preparation for their teaching role and so the provision of help in re-engineeering courses should be anticipated.
When one looks at first year undergraduate courses there are often many examples where the same material is being taught across different subject areas. For example the same core mathematics is taught to physics chemistry, engineering etc etc. An opportunity exists to redesign this sort of course to save on this duplication of time and effort. This does mean that a spirit of collaboration and sharing is required. Also a willingness to use existing material, whether commercial or from another source, and not, as Twigg notes, 'be susceptible to the “not-invented-here syndrome”'. Redeveloping course materials is not and should not be considered a cheap option.
It's one thing to demonstrate the success of a funded project but this counts for very little if the project is not sustainable beyond the life of the funding.
Twigg's reports that all of the projects are committed to their redesigns and these projects are influencing the redesign of other courses within the institutions.
The Pew supported programme does seem to be achieving its goals and in many ways echoes those of the UK higher education community. Some of the lessons that have been already learned and the procedures and processes that have been implemented could well be useful to the UK HE. This is an ongoing exercise and further rounds of projects have been funded, developing on the experiences of round 1. It will be very interesting to see how these pan out when the analysis is next reported.
