Rethinking higher education: a call for intentional design

A lot can change in eighteen years. Since I started working in universities in 2006, I've experienced its challenges and opportunities first-hand. 

From my early days as a part-time lecturer to my current role running a creative learning design agency, I've seen the sector grapple with everything from funding crises to the rapid integration of new technologies.

Yet, despite seismic events such as the global pandemic and the development of artificial intelligence, what surprises me is how little the higher education business model has changed in nearly two decades. But given the financial pressures providers are now facing, something has to change.

An inflexible system

It’s difficult to deny that the current operating model for UK higher education is struggling. We're facing a perfect storm of declining resources, lack of investment, and uncertain policy direction. Universities were never originally designed to run as businesses, and the higher education ‘market’ does not offer the choice and flexibility that produce responsiveness and adaptability in other sectors. 

These pressures have created an unsustainable system propped up by international recruitment, and no amount of restructures and efficiency savings can make the current business model sustainable. As the cost of delivering degree programmes continues to rise, we need to develop more flexible, affordable ways to provide high-quality education.

Opportunities for innovation

The pandemic revealed the importance of the social aspect of learning. Simply putting lectures online did not constitute an effective learning experience – what was missing was community and collaboration. And yet, very quickly, higher education providers were able to innovate rapidly, compressing years of digital transformation into months. While this was challenging, it also showed the sector what is possible when we're willing to rethink our approach. We now need to harness that spirit of innovation and apply it more broadly.

So, what might this look like in practice? Many IHE members are already at the forefront of new models of delivery, but here are a few ideas the wider sector can consider.

1. Rethinking duration: The three-year degree is an unconscious custom in higher education, but why do most degrees have to take three years? Duration is a powerful tool for producing engaging experiences. The duration of a learning experience should be determined by the knowledge and skills that need to be learned, and the persona of the intended audience. This might produce a 10-week full time course, a three-year degree, or a five-year part-time experience. Already, many IHE members offer two-year accelerated courses, or modularised learning. What’s important is making intentional decisions about how to use duration to respond to learners’ needs while producing the intended learning outcomes.
2. Rethinking flexibility: The traditional academic year structure might not suit everyone. How might we harness AI to produce flexible learning pathways that allow students to learn at their own pace? With AI, we can move much closer towards a truly personalised, on-demand higher education experience that puts students more in control of their learning. Instead of seeing AI as a ‘threat’ that needs to be contained, there are opportunities to explore how it can open up new ways for students to engage more flexibly with learning experiences.
3. Rethinking employability: Despite the efforts of a great many people in universities, employers still complain that many graduates are not ready for the workplace. AI is also shifting the emphasis away from declarative knowledge and towards functioning knowledge, which must be reflected in how we design and assess learning. In all the courses we’ve designed at Ding, we’ve found there is a hidden curriculum of professional skills that requires more attention in course design. Skills such as communication, organisation, professionalism, teamwork and empathy can be learned more effectively using creative methods such as scenarios and simulations. They take time to learn, and require deliberate, repeated practice in authentic situations. IHE members are often already ahead of the curve in being ready to meet employer demand in this authentic assessment. These are the ‘AI-proof’ skills graduates need to be effective in the workplace and adapt to the rapidly evolving professional landscape.
4. Rethinking the first-year experience: Too often, students spend their first year just figuring out how university works. But, if you get the first year right by focusing on what really matters (i.e. not the discipline, but social skills, organisation and metacognition), you can accelerate students’ ability to learn. By designing a more intentional onboarding experience, we can improve students’ chances of success by giving them the tools they need to take ownership of their learning.

Intentional design

At the heart of all these ideas is the need to make deliberate, intentional decisions about learning experiences. This means being purposeful about every aspect of a course, from its duration to the technologies and people used to deliver it and to the social experience it produces. It's about asking "why?" at every step, and being willing to change if the answer isn't satisfactory.

This approach draws on principles from service design and learning design - disciplines that I believe have enormous potential to develop a more sustainable business model for higher education. Applying insights from these design disciplines can help us create learning experiences that are more aligned with students’ needs, more efficient to deliver, and more able to produce employable, adaptable graduates.

Change can be daunting, especially in a sector with so much history and tradition. But the challenges we're facing demand bold thinking. If we’re to respond effectively to funding pressures, rapidly evolving skill requirements and technological innovation, we need to be willing to question our assumptions and explore new possibilities.

The good news is, higher education providers are full of people with great ideas and enthusiasm for improvement. There are demonstrations of this throughout IHE’s membership. What we need now is a framework to channel that energy - a way to bring together different perspectives ideas to develop new operating models and learning experiences.

This is where intentional learning design can help. By providing a structured process for innovation, intentional learning design can help us navigate the complexity of the current operating environment. By making more intentional decisions about learning experiences, we can create a higher education system that's more flexible, more affordable, and better equipped to prepare students for the challenges of tomorrow. 

Tony Reeves is Managing Director of Ding Learning, a creative learning design agency.

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