Tag: Pat Moores

Learning from the US: new ways to evaluate & record skills and competencies

“Seeing online education as a ‘cheaper’ way to deliver higher education has long been debunked in the US”

Finding new ways to teach and accredit soft skills has never been more important, writes director and co-founder of UK Education Guide, Pat Moores. In this blog, she explores some of the lessons that educators can learn by observing the practices being adopted stateside.

At a recent presentation at the British Council’s International Education Conference, I was interested to note that none of the attendees at my session had ever heard of Western Governors University (WGU) or Competency-Based Education (CBE).

No big deal, of course, there are well over 5,000 US colleges, so not having heard of one is hardly a crime, but why does WGU matter and why does CBE matter too?

It is estimated 85% of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet and 65% of children starting school will one day hold jobs that do not exist now. It is widely anticipated that many existing jobs will be replaced by robots/AI.

“[There is a] real concern that we seem to be making it too hard for international students to thrive”

As the year draws to a close, it is a good time to review the news that made the most impact.
Funnily enough, it’s not a Brexit story that has stuck in my mind, but the drip, drip of news stories about accusations of cheating, directed against international students in general and Chinese students in particular.

In January, for example, there was the notorious email from the University of Liverpool international advice and guidance team about exam conduct, which translated the word “cheating” into Chinese but no other foreign language, on the grounds that Chinese students were “usually unfamiliar with the word” in English. A student petition condemned the email as “racially discriminative”.

However, underlying these headline stories is a real concern that we seem to be making it too hard for international students to thrive when they come to the UK to study…

“Even some highly ranked schools are now questioning whether the benefits of appearing in rankings outweigh the negatives”

As anyone who works in international student and pupil recruitment knows, rankings are revered by many families who believe that they alone provide the ultimate ‘judge’ of whether a school is desirable or not.

However, should this perception be challenged more than it is?

Major rankings are devised predominantly from public exam results and, of course, high grades are important. However, these grades are often achieved due to the highly selective admissions policies of many highly ranked schools.

“The pressure is on UK schools to make their schools as attractive as possible when it comes to projecting a ‘safe’ image”

Maryland lawmakers have approved a bill that will allow Johns Hopkins University to form its own, private police force to enforce the law on campus. Meanwhile, in the UK, over the past three years, universities have paid more than £2 million to 17 police forces in exchange for support.

Spending is rapidly increasing and the University of Northampton now has six fulltime police officers seconded to the University for 3 years, at a cost of £775,000. Safety is increasingly front of mind when students are deciding about overseas study locations. In IDP’s annual survey of almost 3,000 students in the five main overseas study destinations (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) Canada leads the way in terms of ‘safety’ versus its international rivals, with the UK ranking 4^th out of five.

Also, students from China are now reported to be as concerned by the safety of the destination country in which they intend to study as they are the relative academic position of their institution, according to the latest report from the Beijing Overseas Study Service Association.

October 4, 2019
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Boarding schools, Student Services, Study abroad, UK

How different will a UK Boarding school be in 10 years time?

“Classrooms will certainly look different with mobile chatbots offering support to individual students and more personalised learning plans”

With the technological advances in the last 10 years, it is a challenge to predict future changes in another 10 years. However, there is so much scope for existing tech to be developed further, it is a fair guess that many of the ideas outlined below will make a tangible impact on the UK Boarding school sector.

Chatbots are already an established part of academic and admissions support teams at some UK and U.S. Universities. At Georgia Tech one online support worker ‘Jill Watson’ helped students on Professor Ashok Goel’s Knowledge-Based Artificial intelligence class, for a whole year, without students knowing she was a chatbot.