Quality, nudges and the need for IRL experiences

Warning, this post might not make much sense – no change there I hear you mutter, dear reader. Anyway there is something that has been niggling at the back of my mind for quite a while. It’s edging closer to the front, but I can’t quite articulate it yet. But I think I’m getting closer.

Like many, I have been equally dismayed/saddened/shouting at the radio/paper/tv irately, at at some of the wider narratives around universities during lockdown and now in this not quite post pandemic, not quite “new normal” phase we are in just now.

Last week Simon Horrocks posed this valid question in response to a tweet from an MP questioning why all universities weren’t providing “quality education”

Genuine question: what evidence is there that they aren’t? If there isn’t any evidence, this is just uninformed and helpful scaremongering. https://t.co/NtqVtB6ICy

— Simon Horrocks (@horrocks_simon) September 20, 2021

There seems to be a very common misconception that “quality education ” equates with face to face teaching, large lectures and of course end of year exams. Of course this isn’t always the case.

I have had huge sympathy with students over the past 18 months. They have had to cope with so much. There is no doubt that their educational and wider life experience has been disrupted. I also have huge sympathy with lecturers, researchers and all university support staff for much the same reasons.

There is no doubt that everyone wants to get back on campus. That is now happening to some extent in most unis. In the work I have been involved in over the summer with staff and students in the UK and Ireland, there has been a clear desire to be together again. We have all missed each other. It’s also been clear that the actual teaching and learning experience over the past 18 months, has actually been ok. It’s not been perfect – but then again was it ever? The main issues for students have been around the wider student experience, the impacts of lockdown on wider society, digital poverty and mental health issues. It was hard not having anywhere to go and not being able to meet and mix with people.

On the other hand having recorded lectures and open book exams appear to have been overwhelming popular with students providing greater flexibility and accessibility, and in many cases a reduction of stress. However, students have undoubtedly missed the collective experience of being at uni IRL. They’ve missed the spaces that campuses provide for formal and informal learning. They’ve missed the reassurance of being, as one student said to me, “confused together”, informal sharing and working things out and just being together.

Staff have missed students too. They’ve missed that human connection, they missed not being able to see their students, they’ve missed not being able to “feel”the atmosphere, understanding and confusion in online teaching spaces. They want to be with their students and colleagues again IRL.

And this is where my niggle starts niggling. As well as the overwhelming political and societal pressures to get “back to normal” and that have a quite outdated vision of smiling students in huge lecture theatres, there is now even louder pressure from the ed tech sector around data, datafication and increased personalisation of learning. The personalised experience seems to have greater urgency and weight as, of course, only through “data insights” can online learning provide the personalised experience that will improve . . . well everything and save the world, blah, blah – you know the marketing speak.

The recent merger/acquisition of Blackboard is a case in point. Ben Williamson has written an excellent post on the wider data, and ethical implications of this and the power of “nudging”. Is “nudging” going to be accepted as valid pedagogical approach? Or doesn’t that matter if it provides desired “achievement” levels? And will those levels automagically equate with a “quality” learning experience?

Anyway my niggle isn’t well formed enough to answer that. But it does seem to me that there is a growing contradiction between the drive for technology being focused on personalised learning when what we all (staff and students) want and actually need, are safe, meaningful, collective in person and online learning experiences. Ideally combined with more flexible, authentic assessments that are designed to ensure knowledge and understanding are at the fore, and so don’t need invasive surveillance.

We do need to have more nuanced conversations around quality in education (not just HE), but to do that we also need ensure that there is far greater understanding in wider society about just what a contemporary university learning experience is, and can be. It doesn’t need to be about “solutions” based on data, nudges and “personalisation”. It can must be one that understands and values the power of collective learning, of communities of practice, of trust and care, and developing learners who question and critique and don’t respond to homogenised nudges in the way that algorithms expect.