Don't forget to listen to the learners

Professor David Young

Part of the 'Leitch agenda' for higher education sees the traditional approach, where providers determine the curriculum - the so-called supplyside model - as being replaced by employer demand which identifies the skills gaps to be filled in order to achieve world class skills. A neat trick if you could manage it!

However, I distrust deficit models in which gaps are filled by the delivery of parcels of discrete curriculum content, as if learning were a straightforward process of knowledge transmission. For me, the term 'delivery' when applied to work-based higher education is conceptually inappropriate. Learning is not a commodity to be parcelled up by providers and presented to learners, but rather a process of change and transformation as learners become involved. Learners are the heart of the process.

I don't disagree with the notion of a shift away from a supply side approach to higher learning in the workplace. It's just that I think that to try to replace 'provider-led' with 'employer demand' is a potentially dangerous over-simplification which simply assumes the willing participation of the learners on whose learning the achievement of world class skills depends.

Many HE tutors feel similarly. For example, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) Expert Practitioner Group for Workforce Development is keen to stress the centrality of the work-based learner and the importance of facilitative academic frameworks. There is also some recognition in fora where policy is discussed. For example, a recent (May 2007) report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) identifies the importance of 'responsiveness to students' in pursuing a world class skills agenda.


Learning Through Work (LTW) in Higher Education: One Approach to world class skills

Since 2001 I have led LTW at the University of Derby. Offered in partnership with learndirect, LTW is designed for people who are in work and wish to study part-time for a full HE award or credit towards one. learndirect provides access to an on-line learning environment designed to support work-based learning. The university offers opportunities for learners to engage in individual and group programmes of HE study leading to credit and awards.

LTW is a negotiated programme where socially situated individuals relate the familiar contexts of their work environments to the requirements of an academic award. Individual programmes are aligned with Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) level descriptors for awards at various HE levels. Within these parameters, LTW combines learner-managed tasks and learner-managed processes, an appropriate model for work-based learning.

The things learners say

LTW has an in-built dialogue facility through which learners can freely communicate with their personal tutors. The exchanges mirror those of effective face-to-face learning encounters with the significant difference that, in this tutorial situation, the majority of discourses are initiated by the learners, indicating their increased ownership of and involvement in the learning process.

Here, some learners reflect on their experiences of LTW:

• ...you can do it (the programme) as quickly or as slowly as you want to ... So it really is in tune with, you know, coping with other things in your life.
• ...you can actually tailor it to exactly what you want, and that's what I enjoyed.
• The top three benefits ... I think individuality, I think the fact that it is work based and it's flexible to the individual's needs outside the work environment.
• When I've approached the university, if I've needed to change my schedule slightly, due to priorities here (at work) or personal reasons, they've been very flexible in helping with that as well.
• Once I'd got into that process (of negotiating the programme), it became much clearer... ***** (tutor's name) knew what he was doing.
• You can develop a programme around your needs and I've even changed part of the programme because my job's changed.

How Tutors can help

The tutor's role within LTW is to provide on-going support to help learners design, develop and demonstrate their learning in order to secure formal recognition for the achievement of that learning. LTW tutors are effective when they have:

• Knowledge of credit systems and academic regulations;
• Confidence to support the generic skills of academic writing, referencing, research and personal development planning;
• Willingness to work outside subject comfort zones;
• Capacity to help learners maintain momentum and motivation.

The overall aim of LTW is to give work-based learners the personal confidence and understanding to accept responsibility and to navigate their way through the perhaps unfamiliar waters of higher education towards the demonstration of world class skills.