Independent Learning

Posted on 16/12 by Andy Roberts

I haven’t written much about my degree course for a while so here goes. The next assignment is an Independent Learning Module ( ILM), which sort of means I can do whatever I like or need. First a bit about the course. I was lucky enough to have found myself amongst the first cohort in a new kind of degree course called Ultraversity
Independent Learning uv researchers

Three things about this make it highly unconventional:

  • 1) It’s conducted entirely online.
  • 2) No subject content is delivered.
  • 3) It’s a 3 year honours degree conducted simultaneously with a fulltime job.Numbers 1 and 2 are perplexing enough for most people, but for me it is number 3 which is by far the most challenging.It’s not a sandwich course, so no day-release or anything like that, and it’s not the Open University where you can spend 6 years studying correspondence content in your spare time and attending summer schools. The rough idea is that you can make use of experience and informal learning from your workplace, add reflection and analysis skills, magnify learning through the ‘hothouse’ of online community and apply newly learned theory back into workplace practice. But this still exists within the mainstream education system, so no learning is deemed to have taken place unless the necessary evidence can be demonstrated, hence the need for assessment and assesssment products. You can see a recent example of the kind of work I am handing in here:

    So next, I have an Independent Learning Module.

    In order to cope with the workload, I’ve been advised to try and use something which I’m doing anyway – makes sense. I’m a thinking person with decades of experience doing all sorts of different things, some of them quite highly analytical. They ought to just give me a degree really Independent Learning icon wink But the way it would have to be explained and written up would be just as much work as quickly cramming up on French literature or geology, attending a few lectures and dossing about in the union bar for 6 months of the year.

    In fact I’ve chosen to use some work that I did last summer, attending a course and writing a proto-business plan. But to what extent will I be able to just “cash in” what I’ve already done, and collect the 20 credits without expending additional hours? That will be the interesing question as far as researching the effect of number 3 is concerned.
    In order to meet the assessment criteria I will need to demonstrate certain things which may not be evident in the existing documentation, so I’ll have to provide an accompanying narrative. If this gets out of hand, and there will be strong encouragement to analyse and reflect on the work, and then reflect on the reflections – so I could end up with the already done work reduced to being little more than an artefact about which I have to produce a 4,000 word essay, in which case I might just as well have chosen something of more current interest. The reality no doubt, will turn out to be somewhere between those two extreme positions, so – we shall see.

    Oh, and if you’ve actually read this far and don’t have a degree yourself, you’d probably be interested in finding out whether Ultraversity might be the thing for you too. There’s a new intake being registered now, for a start date at the end of February 2005 and if you should happen to be a stay-at-home father or mother or know anyone who is, then there’s even a contingent designed specially for those circumstances as well as for waged workers. Just click below for more details:

    Independent Learning Cohort3

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    2 Responses to Independent Learning

    1. Eve Thirkle says:
      16/12 at 9:31 pm

      You being paid for the advert Andy?

    2. Stephen says:
      17/12 at 4:04 am

      I would add at least two more to your list Andy, and that is that it is an Undergraduate research degree and that as well as developing the individual it seeks to have an impact on the workplace.

      The process of identifying learning for assessment in HE is called Accredited Prior Experiential Learning (APEL). One of the complaints I have heard is that it is overly complex and in some instances it would be easier to simply undertake a module. As you point out, attending a course is not evidence of any learning so this needs to be shown in some way. At the heart of graduateness and beyond is the notion of criticality in analysis, evaluation, etc and as you indicate it is this that you will be demonstrating for assessment. Mostly the UV model has a ‘forward looking’ approach to APEL , that is reather than retrospective claims it is about constructing a portfolio around a set of meaningful learning activities that are then pulled together at the end of the module with a reflective commentary.

      Remebr, the 4000 words is that or an equivalence, but I would agree that there is no way getting round the feeling of ‘hoop jumping’ for two reasons. The first is that many of UV the researchers have operated in their work at graduate level and beyond for many years. Secondly, it is hard to identify only authentic learning tasks that contribute to researchers daily work, although this is the aim of the programme.

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