Our Annual Conference highlights lifelong learning and artificial intelligence

Around 900 delegates registered for QAA's Annual Conference 2024, which took place online on 18-19 September, with a focus on high-quality lifelong learning for all.

QAA Chair Professor Simon Gaskell opened the event by noting that ‘it's hard to deny the attractions of lifelong learning’. He added that ‘a more explicit adoption of lifelong learning offers many potential advantages - but the challenges of lifelong learning to maintain quality and standards are very substantial’.

QAA's Chief Executive Vicki Stott went on to introduce the two-day discussion of lifelong learning by observing that the diversity of approaches to academic quality can seem ‘a bit like entering the Marvel Multiverse’.

She argued, however, that ‘we need to apply the principles that we know work’, even if they look a lot more complicated in the context of the challenges posed by the delivery of opportunities for lifelong learning. She observed that demands for lifelong learning are coming to us at an accelerated rate, and that it's up to us all to ensure that we maintain a high quality of provision in this area.

Sessions over the conference's two days offered an impressive array of ideas as to how to achieve this across the myriad aspects of the conference theme. These included explorations of the nature of lifelong learning and adult learning, digital learning, vocational learning, apprenticeships, sector readiness, student transitions, modular delivery, credit transfer, student achievement, engagement and belonging, awarding gaps, partnerships, international students, and lifelong learning in Japan, Ukraine and across the world.

What is to be done?

One of the highlights of the first day saw Public First's Jess Lister, UCAS's Kim Eccleston, North East Scotland College Principal Neil Cowie and Wonkhe's David Kernohan (aka DK) engage in a lively debate - chaired by QAA Director of Public Affairs Eve Alcock - as to what it will take to make a thriving lifelong learning system actually work.

Jess pointed out that one of the problems faced by lifelong learning initiatives has come from popular ‘misconceptions about lifelong loans’. She argued that this perceived financial barrier is one of the key issues that need to be addressed - especially with older prospective learners. She also noted that lifelong learning is more popular with people who already have degrees and with those in professional and managerial positions.

‘We risk missing the people who would benefit the most’, she said.

Kim added that another major problem is that so many people - even those in the education industries - are still unaware of the opportunities for lifelong learning that are already available.

She also pointed to UCAS research which shows that mature applicants are particularly concerned with the financial, academic and mental health support that providers may be able to offer.

Neil argued that governments haven't given the support essential to progress their visions of lifelong learning and have failed to recognise or resource the key role played by the college sector in this area. He supposed that we may get ‘a bit too hung up on modules and qualifications’ and tend to ignore the inherent value of the broader skills that lifelong learning can promote.

DK recalled how previous attempts to promote lifelong learning had been fatally undermined by financial fraud and low-quality provision. He suggested that ‘we need stronger regulation and stronger quality assurance to ensure that learners and governments aren't being ripped off.’

He observed that outcome-based quality measures aren't appropriate to shorter packages of delivery and that we therefore need an institutional quality-driven approach informed directly by the student voice - and a system underpinned by consistent, sector-owned credit transfer mechanisms.

Jess agreed that it will be a real challenge to get all the dials right, and to target these opportunities where they can be the most effective in transforming people's lives.

‘I want to see bold ambition [from government] on this’, she said.

Learning for all

At the close of the conference's first day, Vicki Stott discussed the challenges of developing and implementing lifelong learning policies with the influential and iconic figure of Professor Dame Alison Wolf, Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, a passionate and formidable champion of lifelong learning.

Elevated to the House of Lords in 2015, Baroness Wolf is Professor of Public Sector Management at King's College London and Director of the International Centre for University Policy Research at King's Policy Institute. Her publications include a range of seminal texts on education and economics, including An Adult Approach to Further Education.

She led the Department for Education's 2011 Review of Vocational Education and served as a panel member for 2019's Review of Post-18 Education and Funding chaired by Sir Philip Augar.

She has also, as Vicki observed, been widely credited as the architect of England's Lifelong Learning Entitlement.

Dame Alison suggested that real progress has been made on this initiative in recent years, with all major political parties now committed to lifelong learning.

The essential intention has been, she said, to free up the system to broaden educational opportunities.

‘It's a reframing of student finance in a way that you can have it for life’, she explained. ‘If you change the structure, you will over time get change’.

She emphasised that it is fundamental to the possibility of the lifelong learning structure that it can be underpinned by mechanisms of academic credit.

But, of course, as Vicki noted, the ultimate goal is about the upskilling and reskilling of individuals to fulfil their career aspirations.

‘A lot of it’, Dame Alison stressed, ‘is about the skills and not the bits of paper’.

And who, asked Vicki, is the LLE for?

‘It's for everybody’, Baroness Wolf insisted. ‘It's not a separate parallel initiative. It's a recasting of the student finance system. It is for everyone’.

She urged action to promote these opportunities for lifelong learning: ‘The sector really has to go out and offer it. And there has to be some resource. And this probably comes back to the government to incentivise it’.

Brave new world

Day two of our Annual Conference began with QAA's Director of Corporate Affairs Tom Yates reflecting on the related policy developments that have taken effect over the last few years - to ask whether a ‘golden age for lifelong learning’ is in fact achievable.

‘As we advance towards a flexible future for lifelong learning, it is also important to consider how education can equip students with the skills to meet a range of future challenges’, Tom observed, noting that ‘one of the many “wicked issues” faced by educators in the current environment is artificial Intelligence (AI)’, as we face the question as to ‘how the tertiary education sector can proactively embed AI within their approach to teaching and learning’. 

This was indeed the question addressed later that morning by the conference's next plenary session - as QAA's Ailsa Crum chaired a panel of experts (featuring the American University in Cairo's Maha Bali, Cardiff's Nigel Francis, Greenwich's Gerhard Kristandl, Bath's Richard Mason and NHS England's Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas) which conjured a vision of how artificial intelligence will have revolutionized curricula by the end of the decade.

Gerhard supposed that by 2030 we will have realised many of the potentials of generative AI. These, he said, might include personalised and interactive learning, opportunities for simulation and role-play, and greater emphases on creativity and critical thinking.

Henrietta argued that curricula will have to change to deliver the skills which will be needed, but that the difficulty is that institutions are going at different paces in embracing these technologies.

‘We're being forced to adjust the way we teach at the moment’, Nigel agreed. ‘We don't really know where Gen AI is going to go. We're seeing a need to educate our students and the public about how we can use it in an ethical way’.

Richard predicted considerable innovations and dramatic transformations in the ways we teach. But he also pointed out that the rise of Generative AI may reaffirm and re-energise traditional ideas about education, particularly around who owns and disseminates knowledge.

‘What's striking when I talk to colleagues is how old some of these questions are’, he said.

Maha agreed that that these technologies have revived questions as to ‘what is good learning and what is valuable about a university education’.

She argued that if we can successfully teach literacies in artificial intelligence, then ‘people will be more thoughtful and wise in the way they use these things’.

Reframing the debate

As the conference headed into its penultimate plenary, former Executive Director of the Lifelong Education Institute Marius Ostrowski enjoyed some blue sky thinking about lifelong learning with QAA Board Member Xenia Levantis.

Marius pointed to the fragmentation of providers, qualifications and regulatory regimes which impact upon the lifelong learning landscape. He argued that we need to abandon traditional ideas of linearity when we're thinking of lifelong education and stressed that many of the current debates are therefore about how we think about learning not as a ladder, but as a climbing frame - a framework in which learners may well wish to take frequent changes of direction.

He added that enhanced productivity and economic growth, important though they are, are not the only goals of lifelong learning. He emphasised its value as a tool of social inclusion and that its strategic development should involve the participation of a comprehensive set of stakeholders, including providers, learners, employers, governments, trade unions and community organisations.

He argued that such learning needs to be properly funded not by loans - which deter those already saddled with mortgages and financial responsibilities to their families - but by grants, including maintenance grants.

‘This requires coherent collaboration across all the stakeholders - a cultural shift as well as a political shift,’ he said.

Where do we go from here?

And finally, at the end of two very full days of extraordinarily stimulating discussions, our CEO Vicki Stott was joined by UUK Chief Executive Vivienne Stern, Independent HE Chief Executive Alex Proudfoot and Bath SU's Amber Snary to consider how we might most usefully try to progress these debates.

Vivienne pointed out that to broaden participation and meet the needs of declining numbers of older and part-time students we have to develop a greater degree of flexibility in delivery and incentivise collaboration rather than competition between providers - to allow people to study in more flexible ways and to move more seamlessly between providers.

Alex agreed that the sector needed to be supported to work more collaboratively. He added that there are many providers out there who want to do something different from, and more flexible than, the traditional three-year degree and that Independent HE is committed to the aspirations of lifelong learning - and would indeed like to see plans for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) become even more ambitious.

Amber stressed that the LLE would have been perfect to support her own situation as a disabled student and emphasised that this kind of flexibility wouldn't support only disabled students but would be valuable in promoting the participation of all kinds of non-traditional learners.

She added that the LLE would also have allowed her to tailor her studies to her academic passions and career ambitions.

Vicki agreed that ‘we need to focus on the idea of students as co-producers of their own education’.

This, she said, will be essential if we are ‘to meet the needs of students going forward’.