Better outcomes, cheaper subjects

AN American-style redesign of potential "bottleneck" subjects in two Australian universities? undergraduate courses could improve student outcomes while cutting delivery costs by up to 77 per cent, experts say.

The three-year pilot will overhaul two subjects each at James Cook University and the Australian Catholic University, replacing lectures with small groups and ramping up the use of instructional software and other web-based learning resources.

It will stress active learning and "mastery learning" principles, eliminate duplicated preparation efforts and replace senior academics with junior staff, where appropriate.

The project is based on a US pilot which reduced subject instruction costs by between 9 and 77 per cent at the 30 participating institutions, according to the Australian project partner, the LH Martin Institute.

It said the pilot had improved learning outcomes at 25 of the participating institutions, with no change at the other five, while 18 of the 24 institutions which measured retention had registered improvements.

"This is not pie in the sky. It is the result of real life projects," said LH Martin deputy director Leo Goedegebuure.

"We’re going to see whether the approach developed in the US works to the [same] extent in Australia."

Dr Goedegebuure said this was an open question because Australia had "moved on" in teaching and learning innovation. "There’s a lot of good work being done [on] more active learning, better learning spaces and getting away from large lecture halls into laboratories and group work.

"But I’m not sure whether we measure the outcomes. That’s what is relatively unique about this project."

He said the methodology featured an activity-based costing approach, typically used for Australian universities services such as libraries, but rarely for teaching and learning.

An upbeat project brief, based on the National Centre for Academic Transformation’s work with around 150 US institutions, notes that many universities have adopted "new ways of infusing technology" to enhance teaching and learning and extend access.

"However, most universities have not fully harnessed the potential of technology," it says.

"NCAT has established a number of proven approaches to assessing student learning as well as a variety of strategies to overcome potential implementation obstacles."

"In the past, cost reduction in higher education has meant loss of jobs, but that’s not the NCAT approach," it adds.

"In the vast majority of NCAT course redesign projects, the cost savings achieved through the redesigned courses remained in the department that generated them. NCAT thinks of cost savings as a reallocation of resources that allows academic staff and their institutions to achieve their ‘wish lists’."

This could include offering new courses, enrolling more students, releasing staff for research or course development, or relieving oversubscribed "academic bottleneck" subjects.

Dr Goedegebuure stressed that the aim was to reinvest in learning, not shed jobs. But he said the Australian pilot may not adopt the NCAT approach of maximising bang for buck by concentrating redesign efforts on introductory or feeder subjects with large enrolments.

"I would like to see a bit of variety to test how sensitive the methodology is to different class sizes," he said.

"From an experimental perspective, the more you can vary, the more information you get from it. But it’s up to the institutions to decide."

He said the aim was to select the four subjects for redesign by the end of the year.

 "Then we can get on with the redesign of those courses and run them real life, and test whether they make a difference.

"We’ll have the base measurement and the outcomes measurement at the end of the course, to see whether it has made a difference in terms of the costs and learning outcomes. Then we will see, was it worth it?"

LH Martin is "convinced there is merit in trialling this," Dr Goedegebuure said.

"If it works, we’ll be doing the sector a great service and the institutions will be doing their students a great service."

The $300,000 project is co-funded by LH Martin and the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, with infrastructure and staff time contributed by JCU and ACU.

While NCAT will have an advisory role, Dr Goedegebuure said he hoped this wouldn’t be necessary in the future.

"We would hope [the pilot] would lead to development of sufficient capacity in the system so that we’re not dependent on US expertise to roll this out on a larger scale, if it proves to be viable."