Undergraduate non-completion in England: Some implications for the higher education system and its institutions

Conclusion Non-completion is of considerable significance to any government which is concerned to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of its national system of higher education. The study reported here shows that non-completion in England is costly. Non-completion has complex causes, some of which can be addressed by institutions and some on a supra-institutional basis: some causes are related to situations which are beyond the powers of institutions or systems to resolve. The difficulty of attributing causes of non-completion makes the non-completion rate problematic as a performance indicator. The incorporation of non-completion data into funding methodology would be likely to have pernicious side-effects, but scrutiny of institutional efforts to deal with non-completion may be a more effective approach to the reduction of non-completion.     

‘Student experience’ surveys: some methodological considerations and an empirical investigation

The outcomes of surveys of ‘the student experience’ that are sector‐wide, such as the National Student Survey in the UK and the Course Experience Questionnaire in Australia, are of considerable significance for intending students and institutions. Whilst they may satisfy psychometric criteria, some aspects of their design have been submitted to less attention than they warrant. The use – or non‐use – of negatively stated items in, and aspects of response style following the administration of, such instruments are reviewed. An empirical study follows up some of the issues that are discussed. The article as a whole evidences grounds for both comfort and discomfort on the part of those who construct and administer such surveys.     

Bernard Suits on capacities: games,perfectionism, and Utopia

An essential and yet often neglected motivation of Bernard Suits’ elevation of gameplay to the ideal of human existence is his account of capacities along perfectionist lines and the function of games in eliciting them. In his work Suits treats the expression of these capacities as implicitly good and the purest expression of the human telos. Although it is a possible interpretation to take Suits’ utopian vision to mean that gameplay in his future utopia must consist of the logically inevitable replaying of activities we conduct in the present for instrumental reasons (playing games-by-default), because gameplay for Suits is identical with the expression of sets of capacities specifically elicited by game rules, it is much more likely that he intends utopian gameplay to be an endless series of carefully crafted opportunities for the elicitation of special capacities (playing games-by-design), and thus embody his ideal of existence. This article therefore provides a new lens for understanding both Suits’ definitional work on gameplay and its connection to his utopian vision in the last chapter of The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia.¹1. Jon Pike, Alex Barber, Thi Nguyen, Paul Gaffney, and several anonymous reviewers have given helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, for which I am extremely grateful.View all notes     

Telling It as It Is? Massification,Performance Indicators andthe Press

The publication of a series of performance indicators for UK higher education late in 1999 drew attention again to the move towards a massified system that accelerated two decades ago. Elements of the press took the published data as an opportunity to attack the massification that has taken place, since non-completion was found to be higher in the (less prestigious) newer universities and the colleges of higher education. This article summarises the published performance indicators, analyses the indicator data, discusses the press reaction and reflects on some implications of the findings for the sector and institutions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Cloistered Virtue? Pedagogical Research and Policy in UK Higher Education

Educational research is under challenge in the UK. Although the current focus of the challenge is school education, pedagogical research in higher education is not immune from collateral effects. This article examines the relevance of the 'educational research debate' to pedagogical research in UK higher education; outlines the conflicting pressures on pedagogical research; argues a case for an increase in the value placed on pedagogical research; and indicates some policy options through which the status of pedagogical research in higher education could be raised.     

Performance indicators: Towards a synoptic framework

This paper sets out to sketch a synoptic framework within which performance indicators may be used within higher education.The evidence to date suggests that the use of performance indicators has not adequately taken into account a number of factors - the level within the higher education system at which they are being used, their practicability, and the inter-relationship between both quantitative and qualitative data. The effective use of performance indicators is discussed in terms of exercises in which judgments have to be made upon complex sets of data rather than upon a narrow range of parameters, with significant implications for what is managerially feasible.     

What is happening when we assess,and how can we use our understanding of this to improve assessment?

In an attempt to gain a fuller understanding of the basis of grading, ten assessors each assessed two portfolios drawn from the course archive which had been produced by participants on a course in teaching in higher education. Assessors gave a grade or judgement on each of a portfolio's 75 portfolio elements, reasons for each judgement they made, and recorded any alternative judgement they had considered. There were substantial differences between the judgements made during the study and those made when the portfolios were originally assessed. This article explores the differences between the original and experimental assessments, and then analyses reasons given by assessors for the judgements made. Beyond these particulars, the paper suggests some fundamental and problematic issues about the conduct and the reform of assessment, and offers a process which can be used to investigate and improve the quality, in particular the reliability, of any summative assessment.     

Some effects of the award algorithm on honours degree classifications in UK higher education

In earlier work the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group (SACWG) found that up to 15% of honours classifications in UK higher education might be different if the results had been fed through another institution's award algorithm. In this article a more sensitive analysis has been applied to two blocks of institutional results that have been treated to reflect two variations that can be found in the range of honours degree award algorithms in use in UK higher education: (a) the relative weighting of performances in the second and third (or final) year of full‐time study; and (b) the number of results that can be ‘dropped’ in determining the degree classification. The analyses indicate that a student's honours degree classification may be affected by the way in which a degree classification is computed. Dropping the ‘worst’ 30 credit points from the normal 240 of the final two years of study might raise one classification in six, and (separately) changing the weightings of Year 2:Year 3 results from 50:50 to 25:75 might change one in ten, the majority of changes being upwards.     

THE USE OF TELEVISION IN STAFF DEVELOPMENT

This paper takes closed‐circuit television as a particular example of media services support and argues that it can, and should, play a major role in staff development in further and higher education. Three main areas of use will be considered:

1. (1) an “active” role for television in the acquisition of teaching skills, e.g. in microteaching and other simulation exercises;

2. (2) a more passive role in terms of television as a recorder of events, e.g. in interaction analysis and self‐evaluation;

3. (3) collaborative ventures between media service units and other members of staff, e.g. in the production of programmes on learning packages