With most of the recent news dominated by the passing of the Duke of Edinburgh and the continuing squabbling between state and federal over vaccination timeframes, it would have been easy to overlook two really interesting pieces of news on the Australian higher education scene.
On the 15th of April, University World News (UWN) reported[1] the pilot project getting underway in Vietnam in September 2021 to allow 5 Australian universities to offer online and blended degree courses in partnership with Vietnamese universities to Vietnamese students at home. UWN goes on to say, “Vietnam is one of the first countries in Asia to officially allow online delivery of foreign degrees to students within the country, also known as transnational education or TNE...”. The pilot program follows an agreement between Vietnam and the Australian government last year on cross-border online education. More on this in a moment.
The second piece of interesting news reported in The Australian on the 19th of April was that despite predictions of lower numbers due to ongoing border closures and recent Chinese government sentiment the University of Queensland has achieved a record number of international student enrolments to-date in 2021. The article reported that UQ introduced a discount of 12.5% for students undertaking online learning for the remainder of this year, and Chinese student enrolments specifically were up almost 50% compared with 2020, and up around 40% on 2019 numbers.
These are but 2 examples of alternate models that our university sector is exploring as they look to position themselves in a post-COVID world. HolonIQ[2] recently provided insights on a range of alternative approaches universities throughout the world are exploring, and they make for some really interesting reading.
Transnational education (TNE), as referred to earlier with the Vietnam/Australia pilot program, is one of the more interesting and controversial. A combination of the regulatory environment and fear of impacting the number of international students coming on shore to study has seen many universities keep these strategies quite separate, but as the world has changed over the past 18 months and institutions look to new models to address revenue shortages, I believe we will start to see many more of these kinds of pilots and more extensive partnerships emerge over the coming months. The word “partnership” here is even more crucial than it has ever been to the way in which these models will work, as learning design, infrastructure, faculty reductions, budgetary constraints, and local and global regulatory changes all playing a role in institutional strategic thinking.
As universities move out of the “emergency remote teaching” phase into what some might call the “redefining the new normal phase”, we are starting to see some early adopters/innovators release their view of what education might look like going forward. Some institutions or parts of institutions are leaving the traditional world of F2F teaching altogether and focusing predominantly on online delivery, while many are implementing HyFlex and blended models of delivery where the on-campus experience will be quite different from the pre-COVID times. Given the speed at which many higher education institutions innovate, specifically from a teaching and learning perspective, I expect that HyFlex, and variances of that model will be the less risky and easier implementable approach for many institutions. For those wanting a little more on the topic of the HyFlex course model, I thoroughly recommend reading 2 documents from Educause’s Learning Initiative series on 7 Things You Should Know on the topic “7 Things You Should Know About the HyFlex Course Model”[3] . There is actually 2 documents on this topic – one published in 2020, and one published in 2010[4]. Interesting to see what has changed in 10 years and with COVID in mind.
Some of the other big challenges many of our institutions are facing is the entry of non-traditional education providers, at a time when the sector is ripe for disruption. With government policy, and associated future funding, very much focused on employment as the outcome of any future learning experience, players such as Google, with their new Career Certificates program[5], offering less expensive, shorter term / fast track (6 month) options is proving extremely attractive to those who can see the end to high cost, multi-year degrees, at least in their current form. Another model gaining some traction to due to similarities in the way we partake in non-educational services is the subscription-based model. If you follow the narrative that we human beings are lifelong learners and will drop in and out of formal learning experiences when the need arises, then a model that allows me to subscribe to an institution and use its services over the duration of one’s lifetime does seem attractive, as long as those institutions continue to innovate and evolve. Inside Higher Ed had a great piece on this last year[6].
And then there is the noise around micro-credentials and the role they will play in a post-COVID world. I will devote the whole of my next post to this as there is much to write about, but there is a lot of debate around the definition of a micro-credential, cross sector approaches, accredited vs non-accredited, stackable vs standalone, frameworks etc etc etc. ACODE, the Australian Council for Open and Distance Education recently published a whitepaper on micro-credentialing practices in Australasian universities[7], and as of July 2020, around 50% of universities interviewed indicated having a micro-credential policy. In the nearly 12 months since this report, I expect that that number has probably jumped to 80% plus, with a myriad of frameworks driving strategy amongst those institutions.
My own institution, OpenLearning, released a micro-credentials framework in July 2020 which we call OpenCreds[8], the only framework in existence which takes a cross-sector approach in the planning and design of micro-credentials across all 3 key sectors of vocational education, higher education, and professional learning, thus encompassing the complete lifelong learning spectrum. I’ll speak more to this in my next post.
[1] Yojana Sharma, Online degrees piloted with Australian universities 2021, University World News.
[2] Holon IQ, International Higher Education. Emerging Digital Models. 2021.
[3] Natalie Milman, Valerie Irvine, Kevin Kelly, Jack Miller, Kem Saichaie, 7 Things You Should Know About the HyFlex Course Model 2020, EduCause.
[4] EduCause, 7 Things You Should Know About the HyFlex Course Model pdf 2020.
[5] Grow Google, Guide Business Strategy 2021.
[6] Inside Highered, Subscription Rather Than Tuition 2020.
[7] ICDE, ACODE publishes whitepaper on micro-credentialing practices in Australasian universities 2020.
[8] OpenLearning, OpenCreds: The micro-credential framework designed to meet the needs of the education sector, industry, and most importantly its lifelong learners 2021.
Topics: Micro-credentials
