Page 25 - Layout 1

since this revolution in education began, learning bringing space management together with
has been moving away from lecturers and away developments in thinking about teaching, learning
from direct communication. Now lecturers will and the student experience is essential – there
be able to see what students are actually doing must be on-going debate.
on their screens, to see what the librarians have
On behalf of the academics in the audience, I’d
exclusively been seeing whilst teaching students
also like to respond to Andrew’s comments about
about learning in a virtual world (which, arguably,
the National Student Survey. If you drill down into
is not necessarily the right way round).
the survey, you can find some very interesting
Interest in the university estates and learning outcomes. Looking at architecture courses, for
paradigms is not limited to students or staff; there example, almost every course in the country was
are a number of third party interests in a university rated by students as providing poor levels of
that need to be thought about in the context of feedback. Architects in higher education are
change – for example the banks and financial beside themselves as a result, saying ‘we give
institutions that have invested, indirectly, so them crits all the time – that’s feedback’. But the
heavily in universities over the last few years, students are saying, ‘oh, is a crit feedback? We
in particular in student residences. Banks and didn’t know’. Whereas the Open University not
financial institutions now have vested interests only provides feedback but also refers to it as
in much of the bespoke student housing built such, which has helped get them ticks in boxes.
by, or for, universities. If we move too far towards
But perhaps most importantly the Open University
a virtual university environment, those vested
students know what they’re buying; they know
interests will become concerned.
what to expect when they enrol, they don’t
In building a completely new university, which expect the full university experience. Full-time
is what we’ve been involved in at Lincoln over students do expect the full experience, without
the last five years, we’ve not only been building necessarily knowing quite what that is.
places for teaching we’re also providing the
At the time of that survey, the University of
capacity for research in order to be able to
Lincoln was in the final stages of its geographical
contribute to the development of the disciplines
repositioning and had just two programmes left
we teach. Alongside teaching and learning
at its Hull campus, in art and design and social
buildings, we’re creating opportunities for
work. We had the lowest ratings in the survey for
knowledge transfer – not only business start-up
art and design, basically because the university
units but also environments that are much more
was moving out of Hull and setting up in Lincoln
open-ended and commercial than the traditional
(it pulled our average right down – at the Lincoln
university space, very much like DEGW’s BOX
campus we achieved some of the highest subject
space for LSE.
scores in the country). We looked at these results
The issues that Andrew has raised about change and realised that, of course, what the 18-year old
in higher education are very important and ought art and design students were expecting was the
to be debated. Unfortunately, the tendency is for full university experience so we transferred the art
universities to discuss them separately in different and design school into Hull College alongside
arenas; in estates offices, amongst vice other disciplines in their field to create a classic
chancellors and amongst pro vice chancellors FE-with-HE art and design school. The students
and academics. Bringing this discourse together, now have a website saying how happy they are.
23 Performing in a blend of real and virtual worlds