Exploring the Invoiced at Course Level (ICL) route to a postgraduate award research playback 4 February 2025
We’re running an open invite event on Microsoft Teams to share what we learned through staff engagement and user research about the University’s flexible study options. This includes the part-time intermittent (sometimes called ‘Invoiced at Course Level’) route to a postgraduate award and its overlap with other flexible study options. Join us to learn more about prospective students’ perceptions of newer formats such as ‘stackable microcredentials’ and the internal challenges to providing more flexible study routes.
Event details
What: An online playback of insight from user research with current postgraduates on a part-time intermittent route, people taking a short course, those looking for flexible study formats and the staff supporting them.
When: Tuesday 4 February 2025, 10:00 to 12:00
Where: Online, via a Microsoft Teams meeting
Booking: Open to all University of Edinburgh staff via the Events Booking System
This session will be recorded and summarised as a blog post after the event.
Who should attend
This session should be of interest to you if you:
- are responsible for recruiting taught postgraduate students, particularly for part-time study
- are responsible for recruiting online learners
- are interested in the provision of flexible routes to study, including the part-time intermittent route to a postgraduate award, short courses, Continuing Professional Development and Executive Education
- field enquiries from prospective taught postgraduate students
- manage digital channels targeting prospective taught postgraduate students, including degree finder entries
Schedule
The session is in development, so the timings may change but we intend to cover:
- Introduction and context of the project (10 minutes)
- What we learned from interviews with Edinburgh staff (20 minutes)
- Insights from user research with current and prospective learners and students (60 minutes)
- Where this insight fits into the website transformation project (10 minutes)
- Time for questions and discussion (20 minutes)
Background and context
To support the redevelopment of the central web provision for prospective students, and the transformation of the degree finders, we have been conducting user research on an ongoing basis. During work on the taught postgraduate degree finder, we identified a gap in our knowledge related to the part-time intermittent route (sometimes called ‘invoiced at course level’ or ICL).
We wanted to understand this route in more detail so that we could present it more clearly on programme pages. We also knew that it could overlap with other study options that the University offers, for example:
- Short online courses,
- Continuing Professional Development (CPD),
- Executive Education (ExecEd)
We convened a stakeholder group to collaborate with other initiatives across the University. The group included colleagues from the online learning marketing team who are developing the new short courses catalogue, Student Recruitment and Admissions, CMVM marketing, Edinburgh Business School, the Bayes Centre, EFI and the Curriculum Transformation Programme.
To begin with we invited the stakeholder group to a workshop to help us set the brief for this project which I wrote about previously.
Read more about the start of the project to explore the ICL route to a postgraduate award.
We met for 3 further update sessions while the project was being planned and executed. This enabled stakeholders to provide ongoing feedback on what we were learning, to help us make connections with colleagues around the University and recruit current and prospective learners for user research.
Broad exploration rather than a detailed deep-dive
In previous user research for the degree finder transformation project we could easily start a detailed exploration of a subject because we already knew the context that it existed in. In contrast, we needed to establish the broad context for this project, rather than digging into one aspect in detail.
We needed to understand the part-time intermittent route in the context of flexible study which meant exploring more than the provision of taught postgraduate degrees. We needed to look at short courses and flexible postgraduate study formats in the context of the future direction of the Higher Education sector and the University strategy.
To understand flexible, part-time study options their strategic relevance and their associated target audiences we explored:
- the range of flexible study formats, including: short courses both for and not for credit, micro-credentials, executive education, continuing professional development, study for personal interest
- the flexible formats currently offered at the University and how easy they are to find and understand for the people seeking them
- why and how staff are making flexible options available
- comparison with flexible options available at other universities
- trends in the strategic direction of Higher Education
- challenges and barriers to providing flexible options, including the current part-time intermittent route
We also wanted to identify where we could clarify the part-time intermittent (ICL) route by understanding :
- the administration processes and challenges for schools
- what information is needed to clearly convey the part-time intermittent option to prospective taught postgraduate students
- where prospective students encounter difficulties understanding this option
Insight from research with current and prospective taught postgraduates and people looking for or taking a short course
Insights from our 1-2-1 user research with current and prospective taught postgraduates, executive education and short course learners:
- motivations to study and why people are looking for flexible study
- perception and understanding of the flexible options available
- perception and understanding of the terminology being used, for example: ‘credit-bearing’, ‘stackable’, ‘digital badge’, ‘microcredential’
- how the University website can best support prospective students looking for flexible study
- where participants intuitively looked for a flexible route to a postgraduate award
Next steps
Our first priority is to inform the project that is transforming the central provision for prospective students with recommendations on how to clarify the part-time intermittent route on programme pages in the degree finder.
A secondary goal for the project is to document what we learn on the current state, to surface and identify any current and possible future challenges.
Join us on Tuesday 4 February 2025
When: Tuesday 4 February 2025, 10:00 to 12:00
Where: Online, via a Microsoft Teams meeting
Booking: Open to all University of Edinburgh staff via the Events Booking System
