In this extra post, Liz Lovejoy defines non-traditional learning and illustrates how crucial it is for the University to support such learning in order to cater to the diverse journey of learners within the University community and beyond. Liz is the Registrar for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
What it’s not
Defining by negation is when you provide an instance of what something thing is not. In this case, non-traditional learning (NTL). But a risk is that negation somehow accidentally implies lesser, or indeed no importance. So this blog post is about how work within the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (CAHSS) seeks to assert, avow and attest (antonyms of ‘negate’…) to the absolute importance of non-traditional learning.
What it is
NTL has another definitional challenge – that it’s an umbrella term to cover a wide range of activities, many of which our University has been engaged with for many years or in some cases, decades. In June 2021, the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS), with brilliant help from Edinburgh Innovations, started some work focussed on NTL; to understand what we do now, what we’d like to do more of, what our learners would like us to do more of and where the challenges and opportunities lay. We use the term learner here to describe the many thousands of people who engage with NTL in our University but who are not matriculated and/or study part-time.
Traditionally when thinking about the learning taking place at a University, the vision that emerges is one of defined Undergraduate and Postgraduate degree programmes focussed on an educational pathway for young students coming directly from school. Non-traditional, and indeed lifelong learning, is about a diversification of learners entering, re-entering or coming late to Higher Education where each learner can have different motivation for learning, reflecting unique personal and professional context.
Perspective Matters
That work has already seen us overhaul how we think about Postgraduate Professional Development, invest in Executive Education and commission the Centre for Open Learning to develop a thought leadership piece of Continuing Professional Development. A very early lesson was about the impact and implications that may categorise a portfolio of learning assets. If you choose to categorise by type offered, it certainly lets you understand the full breadth of portfolio as a provider or supplier. But, if you categorise the exact same portfolio by the reason why someone might be motivated to learn with us, it lets you invert the focus to people on the outside of The University of Edinburgh looking in.
What we’re doing
In September 2022, CAHSS decided to establish a Short Life Working Group to weave all these strands back together again, thinking about the complete NTL umbrella from the perspective of why learners want to learn with us. The group brings together representatives from right across the College and we’re aiming to report before the end of the academic year 22/23 to the CAHSS Strategy & Management Committee in the first instance but potentially more broadly if there is interest. Whilst the working group is based in CAHSS, we hope to further support and celebrate NTL across the institution, indeed the Centre for Open Learning is already doing this through its work with all three academic Colleges.
Our work is all about enabling NTL. We want to improve the experience of prospective learners, be clear on how we support enrolled learners, make the best use of institutional investments in new infrastructure, acknowledge the pedagogical skill required for NTL audiences, make it easy for interested staff to develop high quality NTL resources that respond to academic strategy, are reflected in transparent workloads, be clear and consistent on business models (and where the income goes !), apply robust and proportionate Quality Assurance, as well as ensure we can evidence and celebrate learning outcomes.
Why and what next
NTL is already a large-scale activity, last year CAHSS alone supported more than 5,500 learners (alongside our population of more than 23,000 matriculated students) but we think that a concerted focus on enablement will lower some of the current barriers to participation. Strategy 2030 includes a commitment to encouraging a culture of lifelong learning and we hope this work within CAHSS directly contributes to this institutional aim.
Alongside learning, NTL is also an important route to engagement and to impact. Examples in the Business School from the Executive Education portfolio offer an exciting clue to the value that NTL can add to our reach at home and abroad. We’d love to share more of our progress with you as the Short Life Working Group concludes and so the chance to contribute to this blog series is our first baby step, much more to follow.
Liz Lovejoy
Liz is the Registrar for CAHSS, a role she took up on the 1st June 2020. Liz joined The University of Edinburgh in 2007 and before joining worked in the commercial biotechnology sector where she was the Director of Research for a US biotechnology company. Liz has worked in all three Colleges and in the period between 2017 and May 2020 was also supported to undertake to two external secondments. The first of these was to establish Health Data Research UK Ltd (https://www.hdruk.ac.uk) as a charitable company spun out from the Medical Research Council. The second, was with NHS Education Scotland, NES, as the Chief Operating Officer responsible for the establishment of the NES Digital Service (https://nds.nhs.scot).
