Issues Raised by Implementing RBL Within Higher Education Institutions

[This is an extract from "Institutional Support for Resource Based Learning" published by the Oxford Centre for Staff Development]

In preparing these case studies (which can be found in "Institutional Support for Resource Based Learning" published by the Oxford Centre for Staff Development) a dozen institutions were visited and documentation was collected from a dozen more. Those included here were selected because they had interesting and distinctive features. Other institutions with interesting features and worthwhile developments were excluded only on the grounds of space. Very often many of the key features are a product of the unique characteristics and context of the institution and it is not always easy to see how to extract generalisable points from specific instances. This is particularly true of the two FE colleges included (Norfolk College of Arts and Technology and Wirral Metropolitan College) where many features are FE specific. Nevertheless these two institutions demonstrate what a whole-institution comprehensive strategy can look like and the way many interlocking components have to be in place if the whole is to function. Thames Valley University is another example of a radical and comprehensive strategy in which resource-based learning is a component - though few institutions share TVU's characteristics.

Other case studies have been selected to highlight interesting and effective individual components of support for RBL, often in the absence of a comprehensive institutional strategy. Some such components, such as the long-standing educational development support at Oxford Brookes University, can eventually bring change to many areas but still are unlikely to provide an effective overall model for rapid and comprehensive change. Some such components we identified were so isolated within their institution and, in practice, so ineffective in supporting the widespread and successful adoption of RBL, that they were excluded from this publication. Particular features which seem ineffective include:

• concentration on materials production (whether print or IT-based) rather than on course design and delivery and an enabling infrastructure;
• excessive centralisation of organisation, projects or expertise so that lecturers are not trained, engaged or involved and central developments become free-standing, separate from the everyday reality of course delivery;
• over-rigid central specification and control of the model of course design, materials design or course organisation, allowing little scope for local initiatives matched to local and unique contexts;
• inadequate funding or time for lecturers to bring about the necessary changes or materials production;
• unrealistic time scales for change;
• failure to recognise the interlocking nature of the many necessary support features, highlighted in section 2 above, so that impressive developments in one or two of these features bring little change due to blocks elsewhere in the system.

Some institutions had centrally devised strategies or policies without adequate means to influence and support the staff who will implement them. In the end it is teachers, librarians and students who implement RBL, not policies, management, learning resource centres, open learning 'units or teaching committees. Central decision-making (such as taking away bookable classrooms or class contact) may force lecturers to recast their teaching but it cannot not force them to rethink it or to do it well. As some of those institutions who have sought most publicity about their radical approaches have found, RBL does not automatically work and is particularly unlikely to work well where there is little support for lecturers and little expertise in delivering RBL courses. At one university with a large and expensive open learning centre and a multi-million pound learning resource centre investment programme a large course which adopted an RBL approach. A result of central investment succeeded in increasing student dropout and failure, lowering average marks and moving students progressively from a 'deep' to a 'surface' approach to their studies. Achieving quality involves clear policy and strategy, organisation, resources, challenge, support and commitment. There is seldom a shortage of challenge, and there is sometimes no shortage of policy, but clear and comprehensive strategy is less common and adequate support for and commitment from lecturers seem relatively rare.

Finally it is no surprise that there is no "old" university among these institutional cases. In collecting case studies of courses which had adopted RBL for the nine discipline-specific publications which accompany this volume it was clear that the vast majority of innovation is among the "new" universities and the colleges. While some excellent cases were to be found in "old" universities, they were invariably a local (usually departmental) exception of some IT initiatives there is very little evidence of "old" universities gearing themselves up to support RBL in a comprehensive way. This may be because they have less need to change because they are financially better off, with less pressure from recently increased student numbers and with better stocked libraries. It may be because they have more devolved and departmentally based organisational structures and little history of centrally led institution wide change. Or it may be that they are simply less innovative.