Comments on: UKVI is taking a view about how much remote learning is permissible for international students

By: Paul Bacsich

Paul Bacsich — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 09:33:18 +0000

Both Alejandro and “BJH” make excellent points – to me the best way forward is to (a) ensure the guidance stays vague but (b) informed by research and good practice from long-established experts in the online learning field.

It would also do no harm for UK providers and regulatory agencies to peep over the parapet a bit and see what other countries are doing.

I don’t want to be boring but I am duty bound to mention in the the FE/TVET sector the concepts of “learning hours” and “guided learning hours” are used routinely without the sky falling in and without having to get too precise.

By: Prof Alejandro Armellini

Prof Alejandro Armellini — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 11:21:00 +0000

I find it remarkable that some organisations and individuals in the sector continue to talk about measuring “delivery” (in this case “remote delivery”) in percentage terms. What does “20% of a course” mean, exactly? It could refer to one of many things, such as 20% of…
– the time that a student spends on synchronous (real-time) sessions.
– the time that a student spends on the course overall, including asynchronous work and assessments.
– the hours of study needed to complete a course or module as per the specification document.
– the time that staff spend on synchronous teaching for the course.
– the time that staff spend on the course overall.
– the number of credits allocated to the module or course.
– the weighting of certain module(s) within the overall course or programme.
– something else.
Can anyone really put a figure on this level of vagueness with any degree of seriousness? Consider this: “My course has a 20.83% of remote delivery components”. “Oh, mine has 19.1%”.
This is nonsensical. UKVI should learn about how these things work before drafting a policy like this.
In any case, I prefer to leave “delivery” issues to the likes of Amazon and the Royal Mail. Let’s teach well instead, across all modes of study.

By: BJH

BJH — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:56:20 +0000

This was discussed at the recent ARC UKVI meeting and there was a very clear feeling that whilst this is not ideal, the reality was that it would not, or should not cause a great problem and that there was a lot of benefit in keeping the policy as vague as possible. It does not apply to PGR and it was made clear that individual student circumstances, where there were good reasons not to be on campus, would be ok.
Rather like the attendance monitoring requirements the worst thing that the sector could do is to push for clearer definitions as to what is allowed.