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Professor Marcia Devlin presenting at EduTECH. Photo: Richard Garfield
Victoria University throws out the old model
Lessons on transformation
at EduTECH.
By Richard Garfield
I
n looking at ways to comprehensively
restructure its first-year student program,
Victoria University chose to abandon the
“industrial model of education that is very
hard to change”.
Professor Marcia Devlin, VU’s senior
deputy vice-chancellor, was presenting at
the EduTECH conference in Sydney recently
and went on to explain that in her 30 years
in higher education she has not seen
anything like the changes her university
has achieved.
“We abandoned the high-stakes,
confusing student experience involving
many concurrent study-related demands
and tasks. We did away with the old-
fashioned content: lectures, seminars,
tutorials and high-stakes assignments.”
In the new model, students now focus
on one unit of study at a time, encouraging
“immersive and deep learning”, rather than
covering up to four at once.
This four-week ‘block’ model includes
a consolidated timetable, so first-year
students now have three full days at
4
university which frees up the remainder
of the week: reflecting the modern reality
of students needing to juggle their studies
with other commitments.
Every unit of study was redesigned so
that the previous 12 weeks of content could
fit into the new four-week block.
Assessments, including exams (which
they are looking at removing), are
completed within the four-week block, and
the results are delivered to students before
they move on to the next subject.
“That takes week or months everywhere
else I’ve worked,” Devlin said.
So how was this radical change
achieved? Devlin explained it was the result
of taking in the findings of peer reviewed
literature and making “evidence-based
decisions” about new ways to approach
learning and teaching.
As part of the restructure, Victoria
University now has a separate college for
all first-year students – run by a completely
new staff hired especially for the purpose.
“They’re the happiest group of people
I’ve come across in an academic setting,”
Devlin said.
She added that there was a deliberate
decision to remove discipline groupings for
staff. Perhaps even more controversially, all
academic reporting lines were established
at random.
And what about the outcomes? Devlin
was quick to affirm that academic standards
have been maintained, if not increased
under the new regime.
“We halved the failure rates in first year
– from 26 to 13 per cent last year [the first
of this model],” she said, while the grade
distribution shifted up.
Devlin pointed out that the increased
flexibility means some students have been
able to commence study part-way through
the semester, in block three of four.
Other benefits Devlin reported include
increased student retention, and she
referred back to the happier and more
engaged staff.
Victoria University’s ambitious goal is
to apply this new structure to the entire
university by 2022.
Responding to a question from the
floor about how first-year students have
adjusted to the new learning system, Devlin
acknowledged that it has been challenging
for them, while also being “very intense”
for staff.
To finish, Devlin affirmed that this was
“a very disruptive change”.
“It wasn’t easy, but we did it.” ■