Monthly Archives: September 2012

Unistats and the information cult.

Having been going on to anybody who would listen (and those who wouldn’t) about the Key Information Sets for the past year or so, I actually managed to forget today was the launch of the new unistats website. Once there was talk of the ‘information age’, but now we have an ‘information cult’. In the information cult, if there is enough information about things we can made good and right choices. Back in the 1980s there was an advert for a bank, which parodied their rivals—each time a customer asked a question the bank employee would reply, “Here is a leaflet about it”. The point about their bank was that they actually answered your questions in person.Image of Key Information Set

With the internet we have a gigantic worldwide “leaflet about it”, whatever “it” is. With the right information we can apparently make choices about which school to send our children to, what hospital to have our operation at, what car insurance to buy and which company is the cheapest for electricity this week. The launch of the new unistats has been receiving a lot of coverage, mostly negative on the Times Higher Website. The KIS contains information on salary, % of assessment which is coursework and scores from the National Student Survey, among other things.

As Roger Brown pointed out some months back, this is actually a moral issue. The idea that this information empowers potential students to make reasoned choices is very troubling. And like anything which is measured, universities (and any other organisations), as Adam Child is quoted as saying in the article, will focus on the what is measured rather than making improvements  which really matter. And where there are numbers there are league tables.

Some have suggested that choosing a university is becoming like buying car insurance a la Compare the Market. This is nonsense. You can change your car insurance company, you can move house, you can change your spouse and you can even your bank (allegedly we are more statistically more likely to change our spouse than our bank).  The time and money expense of university means a wrong choice can be disastrous.  Like a pawn move in chess it is made forever.  In one of his books, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comics talks about the confusopoly, an economic system sustained on the collective ability of service providers to confuse consumers with complex pricing structures, tariffs and performance measures. Perhaps that is what we are coming to here with universities.

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Severe grading at GCSE and A-level MFL: Consequences for Higher Education

Issue 1: Severe grading

Research into grading at GCSE and A-level has revealed that Modern Languages are graded more severely than most other subjects. A pupil who takes a GCSE or A-level in a language is, on average, likely to get half a grade lower in their language than they will in their other subjects. For example a pupil who gets a mid to low C in English is likely to get a D in their language GCSE.

Issue 2: Preparedness for university-level study.

When the severe grading issue was discussed at the recent LLAS workshop for Heads of Department, it prompted discussion about another entirely separate issue—the extent to which students are prepared for language studies in higher education. Students are getting good grades at GCSE and A-level, but are not as well prepared as university lecturers would like.

Issue 3: the proportions of students getting higher grades in language GCSE.

Over 70% of students got a GCSE grade C or above in French, German and Spanish in 2012 compared to 58% in mathematics. This would suggest that it is easier to get a higher grade in languages than mathematics. This is fairly straightforward explanation here: the students who take languages GCSE are generally speaking of high academic ability than the cohort as a whole (nearly everyone takes mathematics, irrespective of academic ability). The GCSE data alone does not tell us this, but when we examine all of an individual student’s grades we can see that those who take GCSE languages will, on average, do worse than they will in other subjects.

Consequences for higher education

Some in higher education welcome severe grading—it could be argued that those who succeed at school, despite severe grading are those who will do best in higher education. The reverse argument is that those seeking to recruit school pupils to study languages at university are essentially trying to convince students to study their worst subject (assuming that pupils consider there to be a link between grades and how good they are at the subject). Work by Felix Maringe on university course choice found that employability was an important factor in the choice or subject, but only alongside performance. If potential students believe that they are not as good at subject A as they are at subject B they are less likely to choose it.

Conclusions

The argument about severe grading is entirely based on averages, and, as the statistics joke goes it’s normal to be deviant; some students do consider languages to be their best subject and their grades will support this belief.  Others will be getting more than half a grade lower on languages compared to their other subjects. Grading adjustment could benefit universities enormously in terms of recruitment—if students did as well (or better) in languages than in their other subjects more would consider languages to be their best subjects and choose them in higher education.

Questions about the actual curriculum and standards are actually separate questions entirely. Severe grading is about relative performance, ensuring the highest performing students in languages get the same grades as the highest performing students in other subjects.

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Glossary, Websites and Further Reading: Student information and surveys

NSS: National Student Survey. UK survey of final year undergraduate survey undergraduates conducted annually since 2005. Results are published at institutional and disciplinary level within institutions is minimum threshold of 23 students and 50% response rate is met. http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/

PTES: (Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey) and PRES: (Postgraduate Research Experience Survey). Annual surveys of finishing taught and research postgraduate students run by the Higher Education Academy, though not every institution participates every year. Findings are confidential to the individual institutions though overall reports are published.  http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys

Key Information Set http://www.keyinformationsets.com/

“Key Information Sets (KIS) are comparable sets of information about full or part time undergraduate courses and are designed to meet the information needs of prospective students. From September 2012 all KIS information will be published on the Unistats web-site and will also be accessed via a small advert, or ‘widget’, on the course web pages of universities and colleges. Prospective students will be able to compare all the KIS data for each course with data for other courses on the Unistats web-site.” Source: HEFCE http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/lt/publicinfo/kis/

Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys

Further reading

Canning, J. et al. (2011) Understanding the National Student Survey: Investigations in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Southampton: Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Available from: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/197699/

Child, A. (2011) The perception of academic staff in traditional universities towards the National Student Survey: views on its role as a tool for enhancement. MA Dissertation, Department of Education, University of York. Available from: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2424/1/Final_Thesis_Version.pdf

*Maringe, F. (2006). ‘University and Course Choice: Implications for Positioning, Recruitment and Marketing’. International Journal of Educational Management 20, 466–479.

Ramsden, P. et al. (2010) Enhancing and Developing the National Student Survey. London: Institute of Education. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2010/rd1210/rd12_10a.pdf

Renfrew, K, et al. (2010) Understanding the Information Needs of Users of Public Information About Higher Education. Manchester: Oakleigh. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2010/rd1210/rd12_10b.pdf

*Richardson, J .T. E. et al. (2007) The National Student Survey: development, findings and implications. Studies in Higher Education 32, 557-580.

*Richardson, J.T.E. (2005). Instruments for obtaining student feedback: a review of the literature. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 30, 387-415

Surridge, P. (2009) The National Student Survey three years on: What have we learned? York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/research/surveys/nss/NSS_three_years_on_surridge_02.06.09.pdf

Williams, J. et al. (2008) Exploring the National Student Survey: Assessment and Feedback Issues. York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/nss/NSS_assessment_and_feedback_issues.pdf

*Subscriptions may be required. Other items are open access

I have made a word version of this list available in humbox.

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12 actions language lecturers are taking to engage with the National Student Survey.

I have just been looking back at the NSS project I was involved with LLAS last year. The report concluded with 12 actions colleagues from nine institutions were planning to take. Not everyone will agree with all of them, I though I would post them here for interest.

1. Using the NSS questions on first and second year questionnaires.
2. Encouraging students to make more use of timetabled advice and guidance sessions.
3. Providing a more comprehensive introduction to the library resources. One colleague plans to recommend making library sessions obligatory.
4. Informing Level 2 students about previous actions taken in response to the NSS.
5. Discussing ways in which the NSS can feed into broader staff development, including courses for early career teaching staff.
6. Promoting more staff use of discussion boards in the institution‘s VLE as a means of providing feedback.
7. Encouraging tutors on skills modules to put more emphasis on transferable skills.
8. Developing a better understanding between staff and students of staff availability.
9. Communicating assessment criteria more clearly in order to relieve pressure on office hours.
10. Harmonising teaching and assessment for different languages. Where there are exceptions a case should be made to the students.
11. Fostering a 'personal tutoring' culture in the department.
12. Promoting awareness to students of the importance of the NSS.

John Canning, et al (2011) Understanding the National Student Survey: investigations in languages, linguistics and area studies. Southampton , GB, LLAS (Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies), 13pp. Available from: LLAS website

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London Met: What message are we sending to the world and why is the Government doing it?

The news last week that London Metropolitan University has lost its highly trusted status from the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) is not that troubling in itself. After all if there are irregularities in the way London Met has conducted its affairs then it ought to be investigated by the appropriate authorities.

What makes me most angry about the situation is that the ruling affects existing students. These students (or their sponsors) have paid tens of thousands of pounds and spent one, two, three four years of their lives studying for a course that they are not allowed to finish. They have not broken any law in the UK, yet they stand to be deported or refused entry to the UK unless they can find another university to take them in the next three months. As anyone who works in higher education knows transfers between universities are academically and logistically difficult at the best of times. Few courses in UK higher education are ‘like for like’ meaning that even the most well-motivated transferees are likely to face some academic disadvantage.

The decision to apply the ruling to existing students is not only unjust for the individuals affected, but is totally irrational. Here are a few reasons:

  1. It damages the reputation of UK higher education as a whole. This is the message which is being sent: “Come to our university! We’ll let you in but can’t promise you will be allowed to finish”. We don’t know if the London Met situation is an isolated case or the first of many. Either way it damages the reputation of the whole sector.
  2. This will not just affect individual student decisions, but those of sponsoring businesses or governments overseas. If a company or other organisation is paying for an employee to acquire specific skills in the UK, they don’t want the UKBA deporting their employee for something which is entirely outside their control.
  3. The reputational damage has spread quickly. London City University has been implicated in a Chinese newspaper due to a linguistic misunderstanding or translation error (City and Metropolitan having very similar meanings).
  4. It sends the message more generally that the UK is not open for business.
  5. It sends the message that law-abiding individuals who spend their money in the UK and contribute socially and culturally are at risk of deportation at any time.
  6. It sends the wider message that individuals can be punished en masse for the actions of others.

I have spent the last couple of days trying to work out why the Government is behaving the way it is: Here are a few suggestions:

  1. The Government wants to show its power over universities. It shows that the universities only operate with the consent of the Government.
  2. The Government wants to show that is “tough on immigration” and cracking down on universities, where thousands of non-EU people are in one place are a “quick win”.
  3. The Government has a specific vendetta against London Met.  London Met has been in the news a lot in recent years for not very positive reasons. This may be a good way to get it closed down.

Just a few thoughts from me. The students at London Met don’t deserve this and neither does the sector as a whole.

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