QAA holds Quality Insights autumn conference

On Thursday 2 October, QAA staged its Quality Insights autumn conference online.

This is the second of our Quality Insights conferences this calendar year, and our first to be held in autumn, following the success of our regular February event.

The conference was opened by QAA Chief Executive Vicki Stott, who observed that "the sector we work in is radically different from the sector we joined as fresh-faced young individuals" – and stressed that – despite the challenges and pressures we now face – we must work to ensure that our sector continues to be able to support and nurture future generations.

Vicki concluded her opening remarks by introducing the conference's keynote speaker, Brooke Storer-Church, Chief Executive of GuildHE.

Dr Storer-Church addressed the question of how we maintain quality in these challenging times. She started by looking back over the past decade as the sector's head winds have been "picking up speed".

"It has been a bit turbulent," she said. "And increasingly so… We have been under sustained political attacks. Those attacks have usually suggested the value of higher education is overrated."

She suggested that the first positive thing about the Labour government was that it came into power with some warm words about ending the negative rhetoric about universities and addressing the sector's financial crisis.

However, she pointed out that today "the sector is being asked to do more with less" – including its contributions to economic growth and community cohesion, and raising the bar on teaching standards – as we await further news on funding.

"We are expecting an interesting budget in the autumn, which could include a multi-year settlement for higher education," she said. "We're pushing for that."

Considering the impacts of such factors as volatile immigration policies, unpredictable geopolitical dynamics, challenging recruitment markets, questions about partnerships and grade inflation, and the prospect of increasing regulation, she emphasised that "while this is all going on, the storm is intensifying".

Quality, she said, has often been reduced to data points, rather than considering the nuances of student and staff behaviours.

"Is it okay to allow institutions to figure out their own path through this dark sea?" she asked, arguing against an unchecked homogenization of the sector. "Do we care if we have a wide range of institutional types? Without sectoral oversight… then the risks are growing… [putting] diversity and therefore student choice at risk."

This, she supposed, would undermine innovation, access and equity, lifelong learning opportunities and the sector's ability to meet local needs.

She said that in order to successfully navigate "these stormy waters", we must defend excellence and denounce poor practice, experiment with new approaches, build local advocacy, and recognise that "standing still is not an option" and that "this is an opportunity to evolve and grow".

"The sector can only ride this storm together," she said.

The conference also featured sessions on curriculum transformation, peer observation of teaching, inclusive assessment and inclusive student engagement.

These included a presentation by the University of Lincoln's Professor Nadia Gulko and Nicki Wood introducing the final report of their QAA-funded Collaboration Enhancement Project on the principles which underpin inclusive and engaging learning experiences in business education, which was published this week.

Meanwhile, Professor Julian Chaudhuri, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) at the University of Bath, spoke about "probably the biggest transformation project [his] university has seen in its history" – innovating courses to meet student and employer needs, through a future-ready, clear and adaptable Education Framework.

This project was focused upon articulating a course-wide approach to learning, embracing assessment for learning, supporting the needs of diverse learners, and embedding citizenship and sustainability.

"Curriculum transformation has now become the way we do education at Bath," he said, stressing that this kind of transformation has now become particularly timely as many institutions are currently going through similar processes to reinforce their own sustainability.

He offered his own personal reflections on this process, highlighting the dangers of scope creep and the importance of strong leadership, of planning ahead and always bearing in mind the fact that these transformation processes will always need to return to the state of "business as usual… at some point!"

The theme of curriculum transformation processes was also taken up by Professor Beverley Hawkins, Dean for Taught Students at the University of Exeter, whose presentation detailed the ongoing outcomes of a QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project developing ways to take a "whole community approach" to curriculum reform.

She emphasised the value of a strategic, institution-wide approach to change, enhancing, quality, efficiency and collaboration, and developing consistent principles of learning, teaching and assessment – because "a consistent approach to delivery benefits students" – and because an enhanced student experience boosts recruitment and retention, and therefore bolsters the resilience of institutions – and supports "education that is inclusive and prepares students for future challenges and opportunities".

This emphasis on the importance of collaborative processes of enhancement was echoed in the session on peer observation of teaching – an approach which Tim Dickinson from Arts University Plymouth described as "the engine that drives quality rather than a way to measure it" – and which Birmingham City University's Professor Matt O'Leary said was all about collegiality.

One of the most eagerly anticipated highlights of the conference came when colleagues from the Department for Education led a session on the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, offering perspectives of the processes for the approval of LLE provision.

Laura Barclay, who heads up the DfE's LLE market simulation team, explained how lifelong learning was crucial both for personal development and economic growth – to build a highly skilled workforce fit for the challenges of today and tomorrow – to make it easier for "people to upskill and reskill throughout their working lives" – "to underpin greater access to flexible study" – by ensuring that the student finance system in England "supports rapid skills development".

She went on to say that ongoing work includes engagement on learner mobility and the recognition of prior learning, clarification of the interaction between the LLE and the Growth & Skills Levy, the confirmation of tuition fee limits, and longer-term planning for the review and expansion of the LLE offering.

Chris Kemplen, one of the DfE's policy leads on LLE, whose work focuses on modular funding, talked through the expressions-of-interest process – the approvals process for OfS-registered providers looking to develop and deliver LLE modules – "to ensure that the modular offer at launch is of the highest quality" and will provide "opportunities and choice for learners".

He explained that the areas of LLE provision should support priority skills identified by Skills England to underpin the government's industrial strategy, and detailed the application routes, the related assurance check processes, the subject areas in scope for funding, and the timelines involved.

He added that, if prospective LLE module providers are unable to meet this year's deadline, they'll have the opportunity to come forward for consideration again next year.

The day drew towards a close with QAA's Director of Public Affairs Eve Alcock chairing a panel session on AI and assessment – a topic on which she remarked that "it fees like the goalposts keep moving".

The panel featured Professor Michael Draper (Swansea University's institutional lead for academic integrity), Professor Shushma Patel (Pro-Vice Chancellor for Artificial Intelligence at De Montfort University), Dr Hany Wells (Academic Dean at Coventry University London) and Professor Philip Hanna (Dean of Education at Queen's University Belfast).

Professor Draper said that the sector's relationship with artificial intelligence has been through the various stages of psychological response more often associated with the processes of mourning, and that we are now at the point of acceptance. He supposed that academic integrity is only one of the areas of impact of Generation AI on higher education, and that institutions need to have clear frameworks as to where this technology sits, and addressing the ethical issues involved.

Professor Patel agreed about the importance of the ethical and responsible uses of this technology, and spoke of her university brings colleagues together into a campus collective to discuss and debate appropriate practice in relation to AI.

Dr Wells noted that "AI is here and it's definitely changing the landscape of education" – and that the "speed of change has been quite challenging". She stressed the importance of supporting students' "understanding of the integrity of knowledge" in the age of AI – as it would not be appropriate to ignore its potential risks of AI in terms of academic integrity.

She added that "in designing assessment we're moving away from report-writing to more practical assessment wherever possible" – and are "redesigning assessment with greater emphasis on assessing the process not the outcome".

Professor Hanna added that, at Queen's, "we've seen the same issues around integrity that everyone has seen but we're not rushing to fix that in isolation."

He spoke about assessment not only of learning but also being used for learning, and how AI use brings into acute focus some of the risks emerging around this latter purpose.

"The students may use these tools to get any easy answer, and they're robbing themselves of the ability to learn," he said.

He added: "The journey we're on is not an easy one. We're all on this journey, and I suspect we'll be on this journey for a long time."

The conference was closed by Rob Stroud, QAA's Executive Director of Quality Assurance and Enhancement.

Rob summed up some of the key points of learning and insight – the "diverse and interesting range of perspectives" – gleaned from the conference and reminded participants that they could catch up on (or rewatch) the recordings of any of the sessions they'd missed (or had particularly enjoyed).

"You can watch all of them back with your family at the weekend," he pointed out. "We're the Netflix of quality assurance and enhancement."

Thanking everyone who took part in the event, he stressed the crucial value of the work we had discussed and the value of talking and working together: "Your role is more important than ever – and QAA are your partners in quality."