Professional discourse, quality assurance and a practice integrated pre-service teacher education course: The Open University PGCE

The Open University (UK) Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme is a distance learning pre-service course in teacher education which integrates learning in the practice setting with university-based learning. This programme, which has flexible start and finish points and either training or assessment only routes, uses a web-based Needs Analysis process to reflect on prior experience and to determine individualized university and practice-based curriculum and assessment and is set in the context of an external regulatory framework which demands that teacher education courses in England fulfil certain national requirements and that student-teachers meet identified standards or competences. These requirements and standards are inspected by the Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED) and the outcomes of inspection lead to a 'Quality Grade' which determines government funding. This PGCE course, therefore, presents a radically flexible, practice integrated programme which faces both internal, University based quality assurance processes and procedures and 'high stakes' external inspection. This paper reflects on the tensions between quality compliance and quality assurance in practice integrated learning and suggests that quality assurance processes which open up a discourse of personal and professional development and which might support the exploration of dissonance between and within practices can improve, rather than merely maintain, programme quality

Quality Assurance Systems in Open and Distance Learning: A Search for Normative Judgement

This article seeks to explore the role and importance of quality assurancesystems in open and distance learning mode. The article begins with theintroduction of quality assurance and proceeds with the definition and meaning of quality which is very complex to define. The author further proceeds to trace the history and development of quality assurance from medieval Europe in the late 13th Century up to 19th Century during the industrial age to the present information age. The article has articulated as to why providers, consumers and accreditation agencies are at all levels interested in quality assurance. For the case of Tanzania the article clearly pointed out that quality assurance became important for ODL during the 1980s and 1990s as a result of its growing use by the public sector providers and also as a result of the growing emphasis on accountability ineducation generally. The article has proceeded by tracing the history and development of open and distance learning mode of delivery in Tanzania up to and including the present moment. The main gist of this part among others is to reveal how open and distance learning mode of delivery was perceived in the beginning as being inferior and of no good quality.The author points out some discourse and social dynamics of quality assurance in open and distance leaning by pointing out that open and distance leaning is an instrument of social and economic transformation. It is the most important source of transformation of educational delivery system all over the world. The article further explores the establishment of the quality assurance system in Tanzania and the role played by both the Tanzania Commission for Universities as well as the Inter-University Council for East Africa in strengthening the quality assurance systems at OUT. This article has revealed that only a tiny proportion of those who are eligible to join tertiary education participate in higher education. For instance the gross enrolment rate for 2000-1 was 0.7 per cent, with a very large gender imbalance - for males the rate was 1.2 per cent, for females 0.2 per cent. Private higher education came into 2 being during the 1990s with the liberalization of the economy. By December, 2012, there were 43 public and private universities and university colleges but yet the enrolment level is very low compared to other countries even within East Africa. The above situation indicates that open and distance learning stands a betterchance to increasing the enrolment rate at tertiary level. In the same vein quality education for open and distance education has to remain top in the agenda so as to balance both quantity and quality. Lastly the article highlights several challenges facing open and distance learning such as lack of National ODL policy, lack of home grown quality assurance framework, lack of proper and reliable ICT infrastructure to support the open and distance learning system and absence of adequate experts in open and distance learning.Key words: quality assurance, search for normative judgmen

Role of the African Council for Distance Education in Fostering Quality Assurance in Open and Distance Learning in Africa

The African Council for Distance Education (ACDE) was established to promote research, policy and quality in open and distance learning (ODL), so as to increase access to education and training in Africa. This paper discusses the role of the council in fostering establishment of a quality assurance and accreditation agency (QAAA) aimed at addressing concerns for quality in ODL on the continent, so that the society can have confidence in it. The paper discusses the context within which establishment of the council and development of the QAAA were necessitated as well as the policy framework within which the QAAA is being developed. The challenges being experienced in implementing the project are examined and recommendations towards their resolution, and ensuring the success and sustainability of the agency, are made.Keywords: Quality assurance; Open and distance learning; Accreditation; ACD

Establishing and Sustaining National Partnerships in Professional Development and the Recognition of Open Courses in Teaching and Learning Through Digital Badges.

This article discusses a national partnership in Irish higher education between the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and the sector. The partnership initiative focussed on the scalable design and development of a suite of open-access professional development (PD) courses in teaching and learning. The empirical work explored the role and value of digital badges as professional recognition for open courses, and in particular the transformative experience of the collaborative course design teams from teachers into teachers-as-designers. Each course has been mapped to Ireland’s national PD framework for all staff who teach. This initiative aimed to provide multiple nationally developed access points to PD opportunities and recognise engagement through digital badges. The partnership with course designers from institutions across Ireland was multifaceted, and their transformation from novice creators of digital content is explored here. Lessons learnt relate to developing consensus on national criteria and associated evidence forscalable open courses, ensuring quality assurance and supporting teams working in partnership. A framework of triple-loop learning was used for conceptualising the different phases of development of the collaborating teams and the sectoral learning around partnerships and nationally recognised collaborative course design

Quality Frameworks for MOOCs

The hype surrounding MOOCs has been tempered by scepticism about the quality of MOOCs. The possible flaws of MOOCs include the quality of the pedagogies employed, low completion rates and a failure to deliver on the promise of inclusive and equitable quality education for all. On the other hand, MOOCs that have given a boost to open and online education have become a symbol of a larger modernisation agenda for universities, and are perceived as tools for universities to improve the quality of blended and online education—both in degree education and Continuous Professional Development. MOOC provision is also much more open to external scrutiny as part of a stronger globalising higher education market. This has important consequences for quality frameworks and quality processes that go beyond the individual MOOC. In this context, different quality approaches are discussed including possible measures at different levels and the tension between product and process models. Two case studies are described: one at the institutional level (The Open University) and one at a MOOC platform level (FutureLearn) and how they intertwine is discussed. The importance of a national or international quality framework which carries with it a certification or label is illustrated with the OpenupEd Quality label. Both the label itself and its practical use are described in detail. The examples will illustrate that MOOCs require quality assurance processes tailored to e-learning and open education, embedded in institutional frameworks. The increasing unbundling of educational services may require additional quality processes

Ergo, SMIRK is Safe: A Safety Case for a Machine Learning Component in a Pedestrian Automatic Emergency Brake System

Integration of Machine Learning (ML) components in critical applications introduces novel challenges for software certification and verification. New safety standards and technical guidelines are under development to support the safety of ML-based systems, e.g., ISO 21448 SOTIF for the automotive domain and the Assurance of Machine Learning for use in Autonomous Systems (AMLAS) framework. SOTIF and AMLAS provide high-level guidance but the details must be chiseled out for each specific case. We report results from an industry-academia collaboration on safety assurance of SMIRK, an ML-based pedestrian automatic emergency braking demonstrator running in an industry-grade simulator. We present the outcome of applying AMLAS on SMIRK for a minimalistic operational design domain, i.e., a complete safety case for its integrated ML-based component. Finally, we report lessons learned and provide both SMIRK and the safety case under an open-source licence for the research community to reuse.Comment: Under revie

“Why bother?” Learner perceptions of digital literacy skills development - learning design implications

Digital literacy skills are essential for today’s citizens. These skills are expected for everyday personal use, learning and effective performance at work. The UK’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (HE) and employers therefore require graduates to be able to demonstrate these skills. However, the cost of UK university education is rising substantially and cash- and time-poor learners must decide what to prioritise. In this context they may favour subject-specific learning rather than skills development. How therefore can we engage learners in developing their digital literacy? The UK’s Open University is a distance learning institution. Its Faculty of Health & Social Care (FH&SC) has evolved different approaches for digital literacy skills development using technology-enhanced learning, based on skills resources that are either generic (usable by any FH&SC module) or are context-dependent and module-specific. Our Evaluating Approaches to Developing Digital Literacy Skills (EADDLS) project is exploring learner experiences of digital literacy skills development to identify their needs and preferences, to inform how we can optimise learning designs to better engage and support learners. Furthermore, since skills activities are widely required across different programmes, there is keen interest in the pedagogical and resourcing implications of using generic activities, as opposed to module-specific activities that are more challenging to share and maintain. We therefore also explore the influence of design features such as generic or module-specific contexts. We gathered data from online questionnaires (n=298) and interviews (n=18) involving learners from three modules. Focusing on the qualitative interview data, we explore what learners value and why, including links between attitude, motivation, and preferred learning designs. We identify reasons for certain findings from our quantitative data, e.g. a preference for integrated, module-specific activities over separate, generic activities and suggest a framework for managing activity complexity based on familiarity with the skill and the context

Supervised machine learning algorithms can classify open-text feedback of doctor performance with human-level accuracy

Background: Machine learning techniques may be an effective and efficient way to classify open-text reports on doctor’s activity for the purposes of quality assurance, safety, and continuing professional development. Objective: The objective of the study was to evaluate the accuracy of machine learning algorithms trained to classify open-text reports of doctor performance and to assess the potential for classifications to identify significant differences in doctors’ professional performance in the United Kingdom. Methods: We used 1636 open-text comments (34,283 words) relating to the performance of 548 doctors collected from a survey of clinicians’ colleagues using the General Medical Council Colleague Questionnaire (GMC-CQ). We coded 77.75% (1272/1636) of the comments into 5 global themes (innovation, interpersonal skills, popularity, professionalism, and respect) using a qualitative framework. We trained 8 machine learning algorithms to classify comments and assessed their performance using several training samples. We evaluated doctor performance using the GMC-CQ and compared scores between doctors with different classifications using t tests. Results: Individual algorithm performance was high (range F score=.68 to .83). Interrater agreement between the algorithms and the human coder was highest for codes relating to “popular” (recall=.97), “innovator” (recall=.98), and “respected” (recall=.87) codes and was lower for the “interpersonal” (recall=.80) and “professional” (recall=.82) codes. A 10-fold cross-validation demonstrated similar performance in each analysis. When combined together into an ensemble of multiple algorithms, mean human-computer interrater agreement was .88. Comments that were classified as “respected,” “professional,” and “interpersonal” related to higher doctor scores on the GMC-CQ compared with comments that were not classified (P.05). Conclusions: Machine learning algorithms can classify open-text feedback of doctor performance into multiple themes derived by human raters with high performance. Colleague open-text comments that signal respect, professionalism, and being interpersonal may be key indicators of doctor’s performance

Regulating Artificial Intelligence and machine learning-enabled medical devices in Europe and the United Kingdom

Recent achievements in respect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) open up opportunities for new tools to assist medical diagnosis and care delivery. However, the typical process for the development of AI is through repeated cycles of learning and implementation, something that poses challenges to our existing system of regulating medical devices. Product developers face tensions between the benefits of continuous improvement/deployment of algorithms and keeping products unchanged. The latter more easily facilitates collecting evidence for safety assurance processes but sacrifices optimisation of performance and adaptation to user needs gained through learning-implementation cycles. The challenge is how to balance potential benefits with the need to assure their safety. Governance and assurance processes are needed that can accommodate real-time or near-real-time machine learning. Such an approach is of great importance in healthcare and other fields of application. AI has stimulated an intense process of learning as this new technology embeds in application contexts. The process is not only about the application of AI in the real world but also about the institutional arrangements for its safe and dependable deployment, including regulatory experimentation involving new market pathways, monitoring and surveillance, and sandbox schemes. We review the key themes, challenges and potential solutions raised at two stakeholder workshops and highlight recent attempts to adapt the laws for AI-enabled medical devices (AIeMD) with a special focus on the regulatory proposals in the UK and internationally. The UK regulatory trajectory shows signs of alignment with the US thinking, and yet the European Union model is still the most closely aligned framework.</p

Shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training: A call for a revised agenda

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the attention of distance education issues to the fore in a way not seen before. All forms of educational provision and sectors were affected by the pandemic. The aim of this conceptual leading article is to highlight three pertinent issues that need to be taken into account in Open, Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) to ensure the relevance of the Post School Education and Training (PSET) sector in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and beyond. Based on a review of the literature, the article highlights three pillars of successful use of technology to enhance quality in PSET, especially in the wake of the worldwide transition to remote teaching and learning. The revised agenda comprises the questioning of previously held beliefs about learning and teaching; the responsiveness of curricula and ensuring the quality of ODeL offerings. It argues that unless traditional beliefs about teaching and learning are questioned and curricula are streamlined to align with the demands of the knowledge society, the value of PSET may be trivialised in a context that is so rapidly changing. It also argues that sound quality assurance mechanisms should be put in place to ensure sufficient depth in student learning experiences, rigour in assessment processes and confidence in graduates by employers and society at large. Using the theory of Connectivism as a lens, the authors provide a framework with some recommendations for sound ODeL teaching and learning practices that are relevant for the demands of the 4IR and beyond. The framework focuses on five pillars, which are foregrounding a student-centred approach; embracing appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning; strengthening the capacity to support success; ensuring appropriate assessment processes and regular curriculum revision and renewal