Alternative archetypes of formal education provision

Alternative models of (formal)
education delivery – update
– the “final five” (?) models
codified after the workshop at EIF 2012 Granada

Paul Bacsich
Matic Media Ltd
Sero Consulting Ltd
Canterbury Visiting Fellow 2012

Work leading to a
Policy Brief for IITE

by Paul Bacsich

What is IITE?
• UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies
in Education
• Based in Moscow, Russia
• “contribute to the design and implementation
of the programmes of the Organization in
regard to application of information and
communication technologies in education”

EFQUEL Innovation Forum 3

Requirement from IITE
• “Alternative models of education delivery for
the formal education system”
– Primary, secondary, tertiary (HE and non-HE)

4 EFQUEL Innovation Forum

Paul requires Models to be…
• Compelling IT-enabled archetypes
• Generalisable
• Scalable
• Sustainable
• Deployable in a variety of socio-economic
situations in the more developed countries and
regions (of countries)
• Deliverable within current operational technology


Sectoral coverage (ISCED)
5A - university
5
5B – poly
4
3
4 - college
3 – upper secondary 1

2 – lower secondary

1 – primary
2


Helicopter summary


Virtual schools
• Plentiful in North America
• Significant in Australasia, Asia and Latin America; less so
in Africa and island regions
• Surprisingly many in Europe despite restrictions
• Effective and seemingly cost-effective
• “Universities and researchers should consider why virtual
schools in EU have been set up easily and cheaply in
techno-pedagogic terms, yet EU universities mostly
struggle to deliver substantial distance learning and insist
on doing large numbers of pilots and studies before
making choices” (Bacsich, EDEN 2012)


Virtual universities
• Prevalent in all continents
• Many US universities also have virtual provision –
likewise in Australia – yet this ubiquity is not
replicated in Europe (Bacsich et al, Re.ViCa passim)
• And single-mode VUs remain minority and isolated
players in most host countries; balanced dual-mode
players seem unstable in the longer term, whether
for internal, regulatory (“quality”, “effektivity”
*sic+, “throughput”) or technological reasons
• And cost savings seem elusive


Theoretical issues

Quality, cost and time

Quality
• Dangerous in an EFQUEL forum to make broad
statements, but…
– Hard to judge
– Students, governments and universities seduced by false
proxies (e.g. price, research ranking)
– Overtones of politics and the established social consensus –
the new and strange are feared – for-profits, universities of
applied sciences, out-of-country providers etc
– Partly codifiable (even in the non-e world) provided one is
not obsessive about it
– Increasingly has multinational overtones
– Good teaching can be recognised (to some extent)


Cost
• Surprisingly little advance in costing
methodologies in the educational system –
even in the non-e world
• In the e-world it may even be going backward
since the work of the late 1990s
• Surprisingly little recognition that the costs of
education are (a) too high and (b) can be
reduced (also Bates, at EFQUEL 2012)


Time
• “strangely under-examined in the literature of
e-learning” (Goodyear, 2006)
• Obsession with study hours not only with
teaching hours
• Very slow moves towards competency models
despite over 10 years of WGU
• The Bane of Bologna (banes,actually) and
their friends living in schools
• Very little theoretical research re learning

Relevant models

Now it’s your turn

The archetypes must be:
• Compelling
• Generalisable
• Scalable
• Sustainable
• Deployable
• Deliverable


And not politically infeasible
• So consider for each potential archetype its
• Advantages
• Disadvantages
• Implications for how current policies would
have to be changed


Samples

To discuss or shoot down!

1. Virtual supplementary school
• Focus on uniform high-quality provision of university-
entrance subjects across the nation
– E.g. Maths, Physics, Computer Science, Latin
• State-funded
• Each pupil has host physical school
• Existence proof: US, Scotland, virtual schools for expats
• Advantages?
• Disadvantages?
• Policy shift: need per-course not per- pupil school
funding - feasible


2. Handheld Primary
• Each pupil gets a handheld with age-related capabilities
• Teaching is focussed round it – still with teachers – but not
teaching the same way
• Low-cost fee-paying school providing excellent quality
provision in middle-income economies
• Socialises children into appropriate use of IT
• Existence proof: many low-cost private schools but with no
IT
• Advantages?
• Disadvantages?
• Policy shift: real acceptance that private education has a
role; move to public/private school system


3. OER C (=college)
• Massive use of OER (if relevant) and automated and peer
assessment to deliver “trade” qualifications at low cost but with
international or vendor certification
• Finesses the HE quality issue but still targets those skills demanded
by employers
• Regime to ensure acceptance by regular correlation of approach
with test results
• Existence proof: A number of start-ups targeting the “lucrative” HE
market but making it hard for themselves by challenging or ignoring
the quality police (both strategies unwise)
• Advantages?
• Disadvantages?
• Policy shift: really just needs governments to admit that non-HE
post-secondary exists as a viable sector – and to “care for it”


4. Multeversity (Bacsich, 2011)
• Broad-spectrum yet full university range of work/features
• Multi-mode according to student demand: pure DL, hybrid
e/f2f, traditional f2f+e (if really justified); multi-site if need be
• Highly cost-aware yet transparent to clients
• Covers polytechnic (university of applied science, university
college) and post-secondary college areas synergistic (Cisco
Academy, fashion design)
• Bridges into and from upper secondary school, so as to minimise
drop-out and “lock on” to schools-level knowledge
• Generates “liberal arts” thinkers who are "(e-)business-ready"
• Links with international partners to lobby governments & set up
transnational quality regimes to finesse ranking & price snobbery
• Joins with other universities and employer groups to oversee
school-leaving exams in an international perspective on
qualifications after school (IBac) and university (HE Olympiads?)
• Scholarship compulsory, research optional (and not subsidised)

4. Multeversity discussion
• Advantages?
• Disadvantages?
• Policy shift: governments need to:
– get away from research as a proxy for
teaching quality
– get real about what the impending open access
regime means for nationally bound university-
industry links
– governments without a national final-exam
system for schools may struggle to implement it

5. eOxbridge
• Related themes:
– Freshmen researchers
– Problem-based learning
– Accelerated learning for gifted and talented
– All-through Masters (3 years in England, 4 elsewhere?)
• Focus on the campus as the core but not the only
locus of discourse – “near-distance learning”
• Specialised institutions “research colleges” with
common support operation – “shared service” to
reduce costs without impacting differentiation


References
• Time and e-learning -
http://www.scribd.com/doc/96397285/Time-
Bacsich-Final-Final-PDF)
• The VISCED Colloquium for Virtual Schools -
http://www.virtualschoolsandcolleges.info/visced
-colloquium-for-virtual-schools
• Growing the OER u -
http://toucansproject.wordpress.com/2012/04/1
6/growing-the-oeru-a-pre-conference-workshop-
at-cambridge-2012/

Thank you for listening/reading

Paul Bacsich

Alternative archetypes of formal education provision

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