My post a few weeks ago about teaching and learning prompted a number of responses that, together, take these issues forwards in important ways.

Firstly, is a student a customer? 

Eamon agreed with me on this one, albeit from a different angle: 

“There is not yet a market in Higher Education, as the government through HEFCE pays tuition fees to each university through a block grant and in such a case it is incorrect to speak of the student as a customer. There is a market analogue with the majority of undergraduate students paying a percentage of the cost of teaching which they must repay subsequent to entry into employment. This matters both practically and philosophically as those who wish to see the student /teacher relation as similar to one of customer/service relation need to acknowledge this far from perfect market relationship that is not based on price.”

Gary also implicitly rejected the customer analogy in equating universities like ours with profit seeking, capitalist enterprises.

Others, though, took issue with me on this point, and suggested that the customer analogy is indeed appropriate.  Carole wrote that:

“Most of my students tell me quite openly that they feel like consumers. I think we have to accept this and work with it. What they are consuming is an education which is different to a latte but this perspective is the single biggest change I have witnessed since I began teaching at Salford in 1993.” 

Geoff sees:

“The customer is one of the highest life-forms in the business world. Their needs are paramount and the successful organisation will identify, anticipate, manage & minister to those needs, and hopefully get paid for doing so.”

My point in arguing that students are not customers was that a good education is not a product that can be picked from a shelf, but is rather a mutual interaction between teacher and learner.  This was well expressed by Jessica in her posted response:

“I enjoy being able to ask questions of my tutors knowing I will get an answer based not just on what they have read in the books on the reading list or been taught themselves within their past education, but on what they have personally experienced in the world of “work”. I have more trust in these teachers and some have even helped me gain work experience through sharing their knowledge and contacts with me.”

Damien expresses a similar sentiment in writing that a Teaching and Learning Charter:

“has to empower students, it has to inform teaching staff of what is expected of them and it has to provide some means for the two groups to communicate needs and delivery constraints effectively. Too many students feel that higher education is a ‘hand out’ of knowledge, and any good academic will rightly point out that the impetus for learning always has to come from the pupil … The Charter would have to allow those with a real zeal and enthusiasm for teaching to not feel that they were being constrained by bureaucratic machinations, but at the same time it would have to introduce sufficient degrees of responsibility to shake the uninterested minority out of their apathy.”

But back to Geoff and the empowered customer:

“It seems to me that the requirement for students to commit to learning is the same commitment that any customer brings to a transaction. For example, when you buy a book you get no value from it until you sit down and read; you get no value from a new coat until you wear it and a sandwich sat on a shelf for a month certainly has no value – you should have eaten it! Until you take an active step to make use of what you buy then you gain no value from it. The student buys the opportunity to learn and must commit to taking that opportunity before they will obtain any value.” 

Secondly, how should great teaching be recognised? 

I had supported awards for committed, innovative teaching, but Gary dismisses this idea:

“The idea of ‘Distinguished Teachers Awards’ reeks a little of ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ for want of a better analogy. This approach to delivering education, would appear to many staff at the ‘coalface’ to be quite ridiculous, especially when staff and student want better timetabling, smaller lecture groups and seminars, and more time for one-to-one contact (better pastoral care).”

For Gary, “decent education … can be boiled down to two things: time and group sizes”.

For his part, Dave suggests peer review, which is extensively used in Further Education, asking:

“What is the Universities stance on continued professional development for staff that have contact with students? During my time at the University as a student I was in receipt of over 500 hours of contact time. On no occasion was a teaching session observed by a peer or line manager. Is this is the case throughout the University? If so, without feedback, how can lecturers improve?” 

Jaye widens the scope of the issue:

“How do we turn the ‘ideal’ into the ‘real’ in teaching-learning? How will we ‘measure’ this importance? What are the symbols and markers of ‘good teaching-learning’? How can academics, for example, make a decent career in teaching-learning? If they can, what prestige will that career trajectory hold? How do we enable progression to a range of meaningful career levels (including professoriate) all the while enabling and valuing teaching-learning activities, development and research?”

Steve adds an international dimension to this:

“The other issue which has been raised by some of the students is that in some programmes there is a lack of international ‘transferability’ of what is learned. As the world becomes more interdependent on trade between countries, can Salford say it is doing enough to the curriculum we teach, both to UK and international students, meets those needs? In some cases, I am sure the case is yes – but I am sure there is room for improvement and innovation in many courses to include more international case studies and comparative frameworks to benefits students in their future careers.”

One way of following these lines of enquiry is through research into teaching and learning, as Eamon points out, and as Eve illustrates through the example of open resources.  With this in mind, we’ve recently adopted Chris’s proposal (made along with a number of others) that we support and enhance the Education in a Changing Environment Conference that has now been held at Salford a number of times, and strengthen it with a series of focused colloquia on key issues in teaching and learning.  This will help us address the sorts of issues raised by Carole:

“Our teaching styles and timetabling still treats students in a very old-fashioned and traditional manner. There is little encouragement to adopt teaching patterns and styles that accommodate how students live today. I would like to see this changing. Fundamentally, the engaged and eager faces of my students are what get me out of bed in the morning – league tables mean little to them but their very twenty-first century needs must be addressed more rigorously and meaningfully by us all.”

Absolutely:  we need to recognise that personalised enthusiasm for teaching and learning that makes a good university what it is.

And a last word on this particular topic from Jo: 

“Higher education is more popular than ever; universities are crammed to the rafters as they struggle to achieve the aim of 50 per cent of young people getting a university education. The increased popularity of vocational degrees has changed the culture of academia. But students now have to balance the increasing cost of getting a degree with uncertain job prospects when they graduate. So there’s no better time to ask the question, ‘what are universities for and who are they for?’

Tags: comments, learning, Students, teaching

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