Bill Shorten is working on transforming offerings at the University of Canberra, but the campus union is not having one big change.
The National Tertiary Education Union has shut down discussion on the university adopting the block teaching model.
“Now is not the time to embark on further disruptive change, especially those that would require a substantial investment of resources for uncertain outcomes” a union petition states.
Block teaching is a teaching method particularly well suited to students new to academic study, using small classes covering one subject at a time taught over four to six weeks. Victoria University introduced it in 2018, with Southern Cross U adapting the model in 2021.
Vice-Chancellor Shorten told FC in September that nothing was decided, that academic reviews of the block model are mixed and that there was a feasibility study. However, he is in the market to diversify the UoC’s products. In August, the university released a manifesto, “Reconnected:” which announced, “we will meet students where they are, by broadening access to education through online, blended, and intensive models that accommodate the realities of study, work, and life commitments.”
Since then, he has raised options that the block model can deliver, “stackable credentials and accredited units, that lead to subject credits, that lead to sub-degree qualifications, that lead to degrees.”
“It is time to open the dialogue on whether our current higher education structure is fit for purpose and to ask whether we continue to put difficult questions in the too hard basket for fear of disrupting the status quo,” he said in a September speech.
However, the union presents 13 objections to the block model, including “academic workloads are already at breaking point (it) has the potential to make a significant problem worse” and “UC has a very recent history of financial issues stemming from throwing millions at a shiny new education initiative – this is a concerning path to go down again.” Union supporters present warnings here.
They follow the union at VU in 2021, which warned the block model risked teaching staff ‘burnout’ and that “VU has perhaps the most intensive teaching model of any university in Australia.”
However, a report that year for VU by curriculum experts Denise Chalmers, Elizabeth Deane and Alfred Lizzio found the university “was not flourishing, with low levels of student retention and satisfaction” before the model connected the university to the learning needs of first in family HE students in Melbourne’s west. “There is much to be celebrated in the success of the university in achieving in such a short timeframe a whole-of-university change to almost every aspect of the way in which teaching and learning is offered, “ they wrote.