I have three items: (1) notes on a recent example of the interaction of universities and private educational companies and the increasing commercialisation of higher education; (2) one tweet on effective online teaching and learning design; and (3) one link to JISC’s collection of future scenarios for higher education.
Commercialising higher education
Coventry University is continuing to advance its collaborative work with the announcement of working with Pearson on developing a proposition for an integrated BTEC Higher National Degree. This will allow Pearson’s global centres to offer Coventry degrees. This offers opportunities for market expansion for Coventry and a new product for Pearson. Also, such moves decouple teaching from a final qualification and provide opportunities for the expansion of commercial players into the core of higher education provision. Coventry already has established partnership working in the provision of online degrees with and through FutureLearn. These collaborations do expand the scope of strategic options for Coventry through access to infrastructure, resources and capabilities that it may not possess or would be expensive, time-consuming and risky to obtain.
To be speculative, is the designation of a National degree potentially the start of a process towards some form of national degree curricula (at least at undergraduate levels)?
One tweet
“research into online learning almost univocally agrees that…well-designed courses with interactive content..continuous educator involvement..timely, and formative feedback are the most promising approaches to fostering learning in online environments” https://t.co/JfHeTd1BsT— Neil Mosley (@neilmosley5) August 9, 2020
One link
JISC are building a collection of future scenarios for higher education available here. Some are inspiring, some fanciful, some dystopian and many, I think, featuring a bit of a self-advancing techno-determination. But still worth a read.