QILT is a shroud wrapping university performance metrics in obsolete measures, according to Hamish Coates and Angel Calderon.
They suggest the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching data collection is, “dated, error-riddled, hardly spurs a policy murmur, and fails to ignite education or social change.” And it is based on measures of “student experience” created in and for an age of elite institutions rather than now, when students are embedded in their communities.
And so they propose nine new performance measures to, “advance ‘education value’, and help universities and people engage in broader ways.”
- match provision to “much larger and more diverse learner markets”
- digital partnerships, including hybrid learning spaces and digital infrastructure, “education experience happens online,” they write
- report resources used to make the above happen
- create information, analytics and diagnostics that make possible identifying when a learner needs support and then helping
- less top down prescribed curricula and more “situated resources.” “The reality is that learners build up knowledge using a tapestry of supplied and found objects.”
- information on teacher performance. “Institutions need to get better at capturing and making use of the variety of experiences and achievements of their staff and using them to learners’ benefits.
- embedding in the community. “What matters most is whether the institution is reaching beyond its walls into the lives of a broader, potentially global, population.”
- return on education” this means much more than stats on jobs and pay. The question to answer is what value does HE create and how to extend it
- extending the above, measure “academic value” as an “ecology of success.”
Calderon and Coates argues that using the same indicators system-wide, “promotes a beige sameness,” and that “innovation is essential to rejuvenation and progress.” They suggest that “lots of data” is “lying in wait” and that their proposed measures could be ready within five years.
“Credible information on education and learning will play a major role in building knowledge, transforming skills and designing the shape of things to come.”
Watch: Expert Opinion – Angel Calderon and Hamish Coates talk about QILT to Stephen Matchett
