Theme 6: University Support

In the proposed four-pillar model, the university is the pillar which has the most important and active role in delivering quality WBL programmes to students. The design, development, delivery and support of WBL programmes are carried out by the university and if any of these activities fails to perform to the expected standards, the whole process can be negatively affected. The comments of the stakeholders reflect the importance of university support and highlight where it is inadequate and the main areas where improvements are needed.

Academics

Academics did comment on university support to students as well as how the university management should consider supporting academics to deliver better WBL.

“Administration service has been improved but we don’t have a counter support like in the face-to-face setup so it is difficult to develop a strong personal relationship between students and the university. Academic calendar does not fully recognise distance WBL which happens all year round. Admissions and enrolment processes need to be streamlined. U/g clearing takes priority over the summer when many of our applications arrive. It worked better when admission was located in the faculties rather than centrally...Notification of new students from Admissions was at the same time as that for face-to-face students. This gave insufficient lead time for a DL programme considering the time to post materials. Many drop out or suspend than face-to-face students. Finance which changes their procedures every year has been a nightmare for students without

giving them correct information.” Most of the comments related to issues of finance and admin procedures are not difficult to solve if the university pays appropriate attention.

“I’ve increased the duration of the programme to ease the course fee burden for

students from 2 ½ to 3 years. We have problems of lack of staff, resources, and staff time.” The areas where university support is required can be seen in this comment by a PL.

“It is needed to make flexible rules and guidelines for submission; flexible payment terms; study breaks when they are in trouble, and better admin and technical support.

Main problem is university’s core business is face-to-face so it lacks the co-relationship for DL which needs to be fine-tuned” The main problem for less support for DL has been

pointed out as university’s core business being face-to-face teaching.

The following comments indicate the pivotal role PLs and online tutors from individual faculties play with minimum support from the university management for the smooth operation of WBL programmes. “Not officially but PLs work hard to sustain this and the faculties are concerned about the retention of students but I’m not sure about the university as a whole which is reactive, not proactive.”

A tutor comment “Distance WBL programmes are not obvious like classroom packed with students in face-to-face situation yet 100s of students sending emails online. MSc ILM is big in terms of student numbers as similar to any other p/g programmes in the university but the research capabilities of students, value of them, and work-load of tutors of the same are comparatively under-valued”.

“I had to convert work-book materials into web-based materials for the eLP for a module which is being tutored by a new member of staff“. This was a comment by a PL

coordinating the entire programme with students and tutors, tutoring his own module/s, liaising with the university management/support services, employers and PBs but also

attending to other module tutors’ content preparation matters under his programme.

As mentioned under ‘quality of content’ above, academics view it as essential that

the time and effort it takes them to prepare and support online activities for distance WBL is fully recognised by the university. “This is more challenging and additional work for

tutors in terms of time and resources apart from their face-to-face teaching with little

incentive.” This shows there is a perceived issue with the university workload distribution model among academics that needs to be addressed.

“I was not aware that the LTech is in existence still….” One issue is the ignorance of the particular tutor in this case. On the other hand it shows that the university/LTech is not creating enough awareness about this important central service.

“I communicate with students on email during the week (I work 12-14 hours on a week day) and try not to do academic work during the weekend.” This is a fair statement

from the point of view of tutors but then how about the distance WBL students who can mainly afford to spend time on studies during the weekend? This is where the university should have online tutors and face-to-face tutors separately so that different working times could be allocated depending on their teaching requirements.

In the study conducted at Swinburne University of Technology (Swinburne_University_of_Technology, 2011) on ‘The sta keholder approach of expectations of industry based learning’, employers, students and academic mentors had

been interviewed to explore their expectations and their perceptions of the other

stakeholders’ expectations. Results had revealed interesting agreements and disparities. Three distinctly different comparisons between the stakeholders’ expectations and

perceptions of expectations had been made that had identified four gaps: a gap of

expectations between employers and students, a gap in students’ perceptions of the other stakeholders’ motivations, a service expectations gap of the university, and a gap in recognition of the university’s role in the partnership. Overall the academic mentors had

the best understanding of the expectations of both the students and employers due to their extensive experience with the programme. However, the gap in expectations of the

university’s role in the partnership required urgent attention. Students

“When we post the assignments at the deadlines, they wouldn’t reach the particular

tutor on time because mail is being sorted out at a central sorting office which takes few more days! I had to fa ce difficulties for not complying with deadlines which made ta king

day off from work and personally bring it to the university!” This statement appears strange and potentially indicates a serious management lapse by the university as to why the central post could not put a date stamp which would indicate that the deadline has been met. “Getting reading materials also take a little longer especially books. Postage time sometimes takes longer” was one of the comments from a student from the African

continent. Most of the student views on university support areas were discussed under other themes.

“One of the issues is there is no government support in terms of financing the

learners! In my case, I had to take a personal loan for my studies.” This brings up another issue of not having many funding opportunities for WBL which has to be addressed by the universities/employers by making it as a case to the government.

Support Staff

Support staff are responsible for facilitating all non academic support to WBL students and for academics to deliver their programmes swiftly whilst coordinating with employers and PBs too. The WRLS has a role to initiate, convince, design, and provide support for new WBL programmes for faculties. “We normally support fa culties to get the programmes up-and-running only but we need to make an effort to follow them up as

well.” WRLS admitted it needs to follow up the progress of the entire delivery of WBL programmes but they did have their own limitations with staff capacity: “All what we do

is support and advice them on best practices and procedures as we can. We go out to all faculties having distributed our work between three of us. In that way, we develop close relationships with faculties and we have leaders/champions from each faculty that would closely liaise with us and take the concept on behalf of us across the faculty.” This would

help propagate the message across the faculty by using someone within the faculty. However, their main concern is “There is an issue of explaining this concept to the

faculties and convincing them.”

There is a good example of the university’s positive consideration of WBL which is not limited to delivering to other employers/employees but as an employer itself encouraging and supporting its own staff. “The university is encouraging admin staff to do NVQ and they pay for it centrally so this is a wonderful environment for WBL for our

admin staff.”

University administration plays a fairly large part in delivering WBL. The top management, faculty level administrators and support services are involved in various

parts of the exercise. “No fix time for student enrolments” which is a huge administrative

following quite negative comment “Academics sometimes tell our Admins that they cannot understand why students cannot see their courses on eLP. The Admins get the blame due to this whereas it should be an academics’problem and they should attend to it.”

Employers

According to the literature review, it was observed that the current WBL model lacks sufficient intervention from the employer who could enrich the employees in their learning as well as the process. Although willing to be an active contributor their main concern is the university’s ‘closed policy’ with employers. Employers would have liked to contribute in many ways by establishing close formal/informal communications with the university so that their inputs could be offered in a regular framework. The comments below, however, indicate that irrespective of the sponsorships for students there is no such formal reporting mechanism being formed.

“No contact with us, only in as much as feedback passed on informally within the

organization as to the progress of our candidates. Not closely involved with the Northumbria eLP either...Some direct contact with the university would have been useful. The interventions are delivered to the learner and appear to be self managed by the individual concerned, I feel that other providers are more proactive with their levels of interaction with the company. For example I currently have individuals studying with other Universities and colleges and I have been involved with the content of work based projects to the extent that the tutor has met with myself and the learner involved to discuss the proposals for the project and on one course (Foundation degree in electrical engineering) 25% of the mark for the work based project was awarded by the company giving us a direct influence over both the content and quality of the work submitted.” This statement

covers everything about the level of involvement employers would expect from the university.

Another employer negatively commented “We had a previous bad experience with Northumbria university’s business faculty for a CIMA qualification where having paid for one year we had to withdraw the candidate for not performing and part of the blame should go to university as well for not reporting to us so we lost one year. What I need from the university is to report to us if our candidates are not performing, not attending or whatever. Our graduates are always communicating with me if and when they have

problems so I’m aware and can correct them with the university. Now I’m directly

Professional Bodies

As already mentioned, the literature does not provide much evidence regarding active involvement of the PBs in WBL delivery except for some anecdotal evidence. The

PB’s views on university support are as follows:

“Universities have a good relationship with the ARA through the work of the

Accreditation Team. We are in regular contact where a member of the group of Programme Directors sits on the External Qualifications Sub-committee, which deals with accreditation. Also, as Head of the Team, I am invited to attend meetings of Programme Directors in the university as and when necessary” Accordingly, it seems working for

archives association but the engineering council’s view was different.

“If the university requests us to assess their online WBL programmes we would do

it. As of yet, no university has approached us.”