The Auricle

by Derek Morrison, 28 January 2011

Six recommendations have emerged from the 18 months of deliberations by the OLTF in its final report Collaborate to compete: Seizing the opportunity of online learning for UK higher education (HEFCE, January 2011). You are obviously encouraged to read the full report and the supporting case studies but as a stimulus to the time poor to do so these recommendations are:

1. Technology needs to enhance student choice and meet or exceed learners’ expectations
2. Investment is needed to facilitate the development and building of consortia to achieve scale and brand in online learning
3. More and better market intelligence about international demand and competition is required
4. Institutions need to take a strategic approach to realign structures and processes in order to embed online learning
5. Training and development should be realigned to enable the academic community to play a leading role in online learning
6. Investment is needed for the development and exploitation of open educational resources to enhance efficiency and quality

In twitter speak: OLTF 2011 > investment; consortia; collaboration; processes; training; intelligence; information; reuse; repurposing.

The message embedded in the report’s title, i.e. “Collaborate to Compete” is challenging stuff in the context of austerity Britain and the considerable adaptative challenges already facing the UK HE sector. One side of the argument will surely assert we can’t afford it. The other side of the argument will surely assert that we cannot not afford it. But apart from the difficult “investment” word (a total of GBP 125 million over five years is proposed – see the report’s narrative for recommendations 2 and 6 for more information) the report indicates that it as much about attitudes and processes as it is money. Similar to introducing problem based learning into a curriculum, however, scalable quality online and – or – distance learning is something that needs to become part of institutional DNA; and that means being accepted as conferring evolutionary benefits rather than over-stimulating the organisational immune system. It will be interesting to see where we are in a year’s time with this – if anywhere.