Global education market insights: TEQSA Conference
Learning Designer, Monty King, attended the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Association (TEQSA) Australia conference in Melbourne last month, and gave a ‘Lightning Talk’ presentation on ‘The Trends Impacting Universities Today and the Role for Collaboration’ citing a number of our partnerships with education providers.
The conference theme was ‘Partnerships Driving Quality’, which provided an opportunity to start the presentation highlighting the synergies between the visions of FutureLearn and our co-investors SEEK and The Open University. Examples of partnerships driving quality included our work with the Institute of Coding to meet their goal of widening access to coding courses for young people in the UK, Accenture’s portfolio of Digital Skills courses for young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET), and the work of the Partnership for Digital Learning and Increased Access (PADILEIA) project led by King’s College London.
Elsewhere, discussions about microcredentials and the implications for the HE sector in Australia featured prominently, though the focus was primarily on face-to-face study and quality of on-campus student experience. One of the final keynotes was presented by the former Vice Chancellor of Deakin University Professor Jane den Hollander, who reflected on her role as leader of a university in a regional Australian town- Geelong- experiencing an economic downturn. She cited the partnerships created with the local hospital, professional sports and light industry as examples of how Deakin was able to create employment for the local community and help it through a difficult time. The challenge for FutureLearn is to build partnerships which create value in the form of education and training opportunities with the flexibility and modularity that online learning offers.
Tertiary Education Quality Standards Association Conference 2019 – a summary by Monty King, Learning Designer at FutureLearn
