Pedagogy

 What is pedagogy?

Pedagogy describes how institutions deliver education, how students learn and are assessed, and how quality is assured.  It differentiates between institutions now and will determine which universities flourish or fail, since students and staff are mobile but business models are unforgiving.

Large scale integrated pedagogy is in its infancy but the cost of education should halve in time and quality rise sharply, if service and manufacturing are a guide. In those domains, the past 50 years saw high attrition amongst organisations who watched each other, while those who innovated effectively now dominate the landscape.

Pressures on universities

Universities are squeezed for more quality at lower cost as students, employers and society seek value-for-money.  Staff, too, are squeezed as governance standards erode their judgement, while paperwork and workloads keep rising.

At the heart of both squeezes is pedagogy.

The government continues to establish new bodies to guarantee quality, the Office for Students being the latest, but little has been done to rationalise the guidance these bodies offer, or the control they exert.

There is thus rising pressure to improve the teaching and learning experience, while reducing cost and meeting the requirements of a growing number of bodies.

Pinch points: where pressure is greatest

To address these pressures, let’s ask 4 questions.  Each is harder to address than the one before. :

1. What action could improve standards, preserve academic judgement and offer students a more distinctive experience?

2. What actions could improve workloads while reducing cost (without unwanted side effects)?

3. What actions could reduce workloads while enhancing quality and distinctiveness?

4. What actions could reduce cost while enhancing standards and endorsing academic judgement?

Taking action to alleviate the pinch points

Here are four action areas, one for each Pinch-point.  That work on their own or in combination.

• Action Area 1: Assessment consumes ever more staff time. A range of approaches is on offer, starting with outcomes-based thresholds and progressive grading.

• Action Area 2: The cost of variation and competing deadlines is both hidden and high. There are ways to help staff as individuals, teams and departments.

• Action Area 3: New delivery modes are needed but face governance and implementation hurdles. Steps exist to re-blend and develop from what exists now.

• Action Area 4: Aligning infrastructure to process is axiomatic for any knowledge industry. Datchet Consulting supports bottom-up alignment as well as campus-wide specification and procurement.

What interventions does Datchet Consulting offer?

Datchet Consulting is flexible and can work with individuals or groups at different levels of the institution. These include:

• Informing workshops, designed to present thinking with practical examples related to a chosen action area.

• Planning seminars: interactive events to blend the experiences of, and evidence provided by, delegates into a new service or delivery. An event might typically take existing module material and recast it in line with the seminar’s goals.

• Coaching individual staff or teams, for instance, plan a department’s entire assessment portfolio, or support a new mode of delivery

• Studies to produce discussion documents or data reports to feed into planning sessions, from departments to the entire institution.

• Senior Management enagement: bespoke strategy or management events.