England needs meaningful modularity

When I studied with the Open University (OU) in the mid-1980s, the predominant learning model there was one of genuine modularity. You could put together a BA (Hons) out of a variety of subjects, and there was an excitement in not quite knowing the direction your studies might take next.

When I subsequently worked at that wonderful institution at the turn of the century, I witnessed a general move towards more programme-oriented study. That move made sense, driven as it was by student demand. But I looked at it with some regret.

Now, UK universities all have modules. However, they don’t have meaningful modularity because they don’t have systems that enable learners to capitalise on its potential benefits. For many reasons, including traditional “course-only” funding and the requirements of professional, statutory and regulatory bodies, students are mostly offered prescribed programmes of study. In fact, we have rather expertly created a sector in which only the disadvantages of modules – their self-contained isolation from each other – are permitted to shine through.

In that sense, I welcome the government response to the Augar review of post-18 funding in England, published earlier this year. Funding for smaller chunks of learning through a lifelong learning entitlement (LLE), in concert with a higher valuing of level four and five sub-degree qualifications, should push universities further into actual modularity.

If the general response from universities is simply to revalidate their programmes with 30 credit modules, then little in practice will change. But in the best possible world, the LLE will see the old OU model become embedded into mainstream higher education to complement existing programmes of study.

Too often in English universities we deal in the constriction of opportunities. Too often we collude with the “what do I need to do to pass these assessments?” model of “learning”. I’d love for us also to be offering the more expansive “I can’t decide which of these exciting subjects to study next” model of genuine learning. It goes without saying that employability and employer relevance are drivers of the direction of travel, but that shouldn’t mean that scholars can’t get a look in when it comes to figuring out how things should work.

A major challenge will be the implications of a sector-wide drive for unit equivalence in assessment at levels four and five. It would be bitterly ironic if the pursuit of greater flexibility of offering had the unintended consequence of producing more homogenised (less flexible) assessment requirements. Homogenisation entails redundancy. There is already a lot of that, and we don’t want more. How many times, for example, is a social sciences student assessed on their capacity to reference their work during the course of a three-year degree?

When programmes control their own learning and teaching strategies, they have a fighting chance of limiting some of the worst excesses of over-assessment and duplication of effort. They can make an appropriately varied diet of assessment make sense in terms of a student’s trajectory through an entire course. But when a module assessment is designed to act as a stand-alone thing, it’s tempting to make the task safer and more generic.

The sector urgently needs to stop conflating “assessment” with “practice” and “learning”, such that assessment tasks are thought of as necessary drivers of learning and the means by which students practise. If we could just recognise that students should learn stuff first, then practise, and only then be assessed, we would already be in a much better place to deal with the changes to come. In short, we need to pay more than lip service to notions of authentic assessment.

Increased structural flexibility in post-18 education is to be welcomed. Learning and teaching stand to be enhanced by the part that universities may be required to play within a more diverse, levelled-out field. But we have to think carefully about how to get the best of both worlds: the programme-driven one and the modular one. Rather than simply rearranging the deckchairs yet again, that might involve designing different ones entirely.

Andy Grayson is associate professor of psychology at Nottingham Trent University.