More than 50 people attended our workshop at the ALT conference, following an equally healthy turnout for Dave’s paper on the expectations of incoming school students. We introduced some findings from the HE study and asked participants to respond to five postcards from the future, outlining how student expectations and needs might change. You can view our slides here.
Participants came up with some interesting ideas in response to these (near)future scenarios. Asked what students might expect from their HE experience they came up with issues such as:
- Spoonfeeding. they will expect to be treated like they were at school, with a tablet to do all.
- They’ll expect all content to be ready and accessible on a tablet device.
- More competency in digital practices amongst staff.
- Ease of access to systems – everything intuitive and doesn’t need learning
- Increased flexibility and choice about where they study, with opportunities to move if they want/need to.
Asked how HE might (uniquely) support students in these different future environments, they suggested:
- Help students to manage their time as independent learners
- Give students confidence and a sense that they are in control of their online environment
- Make students aware of the possibilities of online environments for collaboration and collective exploration of ideas
- Help students learn how to learn – anew
- Help students to make use of all the tools that are out there
- Support students in the skills and attitudes they need to adopt and use the range of specialist software they may need
- Design learning opportunities that recognise, build on and enrich the other activities (eg work) that students are engaged with – a curriculum that lends itself to self-defined, project based work, rather than a very separate ‘academic’ track
We then asked participants what one thing institutions should do to enhance the student digital experience. You can read their responses here, and compare them with previous ideas we have generated in response to this same question.