QAA launches Quality Insights Conference resource

With more than 1,100 people taking part over two days, this year's Quality Insights was our biggest ever.

And now QAA has launched a resource of materials from that two-day online event, including recordings of the plenary sessions and presentation slides.

The conference opened with a keynote address from Coventry University Provost Ian Dunn who looked to the challenges and opportunities facing higher education during this decade.

He stressed that it is crucial that we engage students in our conversations about the huge opportunities and challenges posed by Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) because ‘our students understand how they use this technology’.

Ian was joined on our virtual podium by NUS Scotland's Ellie Gomersall who added that we must ensure students are ‘genuine partners’ in higher education because ‘no one knows what students needs are better than students’, a point echoed in that opening session by Ellis Thomas from the University of South Wales Students' Union.

Artificial intelligence

Other conference highlights included a panel on the impacts of Generative AI chaired by QAA's Eve Alcock.

Recruitment consultant Rebecca Fielding argued that the core purpose of education has come full circle, turning back towards an emphasis on learning agility and critical thinking. Deloitte's Lucia Lucchini also stressed the value of such key skillsets as critical thinking, creativity and social intelligence - as well as the ability to challenge the outputs of AI, in order to best reap the benefits of that technology.

Meanwhile, behavioural scientist - and former AI enthusiast - Naeema Pasha explained why she has become increasingly concerned about the impacts of AI on education, and again stressed the crucial importance of critical thinking.

King’s College London’s Dr Martin Compton supposed that we are still very far from any level of normalisation or consensus on the uses of artificial intelligence in higher education: ‘We have to think not only about how we're teaching and learning with these technologies but also about how we're teaching and learning about these technologies’.

The future of quality

Another plenary session saw QAA's Director of Membership, Quality Enhancement & Standards, Dr Ailsa Crum, lead a discussion on the future of quality processes, alongside QAA's Demelza Curnow who is leading a significant joint project between QAA and the Quality Strategy Network exploring the trends in what we used to describe as annual monitoring and periodic review. The session also included Emma Lewis from the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), who is leading a QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project on innovation and quality processes.

Emma detailed the results of a survey conducted as part of that project. 65% of its respondents had felt that quality assurance processes supported innovation, while 35% had identified teaching and learning strategies as the quality assurance (QA) domain which had most impact on innovation. It also suggested that 68% of the changes made to quality processes during the height of the COVID-19 crisis had been retained.

The panel were joined by the Open University's Graham Garforth, who stressed that quality assurance processes should support the enhancement of the student experience, while Jon Renyard from Arts University Bournemouth argued that ‘QA needs to be valuing critical thinking alongside the paperwork’.

The future of HE

‘These challenges raise pretty fundamental questions about what higher education is for and how we engage students’, he said.

He was joined by Universal Higher Education's Professor Shelley Kinash who asked whether we have to choose between supporting the development of students as learners or as earners. In doing so, she reminded us that it is crucial that we have the right tools to tackle institutional dissonance - in such situations as when your value-based quality expectations for students, staff and learning might not match with the values and expectations of your institution.

Sustainability

Day two also saw QAA's Dr Kerr Castle chair a discussion on how we address global challenges and sustainability through pedagogy and everyday practice.

Katie Major-Smith from Plymouth Marjon University argued that students want sustainability to be mandatory and embedded across curricula, and that providers cannot implement sustainable practices across the sector without student involvement.

Dr Alex Ryan, Director of Sustainability at the University of Gloucestershire, echoed that point and introduced the anti-greenwash education toolkit developed through the QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project she had led.  Alex explored how students and educators can become more influential in this area, and asked how soon it will be before students call out attempts at curriculum greenwashing.

Meanwhile, UWE Bristol's Dr Georgina Gough proposed that learning strategies need to reflect sustainability developments in industry and professional practice needs to be designed into the development of students, while Dr Eirini Gallou from Strathclyde University introduced a set of practical approaches to inclusivity in sustainability strategies.

Last words

Finally, in the conference's closing panel, Dr Ailsa Crum asked our speakers whether they saw Generative AI as a blessing or a curse for higher education.

‘If we're not careful, AI doesn't support student learning, it substitutes for it’, the University of Exeter's Professor Tim Quine warned.

Isabel Lucas, from the Heads of Educational Development Group, added: ‘2030 is not that far away. The transition between work and learning is going to become a lot more fluid. I’d really like to see more bite-sized, stackable learning so that people can dip in and out. Students currently want to have more choice, both on what they study and how they study it, where and when they study it, and I think that is going to be a driver for how teaching and learning changes’.

Recordings of all these plenary panels and keynotes are available as part of our new conference resource, along with sets of slides from the rich and varied range of presentations which took place across our parallel sessions. These can be accessed on our Membership Resources site. Sign up to use the site by completing our simple registration form.