Age and the University*

Liz Hoult (Canterbury Christ Church University), Philip Frame (University of Middlesex Business School), Tracy Harwood (University of De Montfort), Martin Jenkins (University of Gloucestershire), Kenny Lynch (University of Gloucestershire), Guglielmo Volpe (London Metropolitan University).

Paper presented at the Higher Education Academy Annual Conference, Nottingham University, 2006

* Please note that this is a work in progress and may not be quoted from without the authors’ permission: contact author: [email protected]

Introduction Government initiatives such as AimHigher are designed to support widening participation on the basis of encouraging a young group of students from non- traditional backgrounds to enter university. At the same time the ageing demographic change of the whole population means that older learners are potentially a significantly larger proportion of future cohorts. New students are not the largely homogenous group of 18 year olds of the past. They might just as easily be from groups that have been defined as ‘Boomers’, ‘Gen-Xers’ or ‘Millenials’ (Oblinger, 2003). This paper considers what issues might be raised by the increasingly pluralistic cultures of youth and age. What does all this mean for us as university teachers and how do we think about our pedagogies and professional identities in relation to different age groups? It explores the implications of the combination of an ageing workforce in the higher education sector with the widely diverse age groups of students. The central question is to what extent universities are prepared to adapt to the increasingly diverse age-profile of the student body. We examine the issue from the institutional perspective for the implications for marketing to and retention of multi-generational students; from the perspective of the university teacher in terms of the implications for teaching and learning approaches and

1 from the perspective of the learner in terms of the implications of age on the emotional response to learning in higher education. Finally four examples of real practice are presented in which the dilemmas posed by age diversification are being experienced and some suggestions for improving practice which can be derived from them.

The rapid expansion of the higher education sector has taken place in the context of demographic change which suggests that not only is the population ageing but that the decline of 18 year olds will fall dramatically in the coming years. In order to maintain the level of growth, institutions will increasingly need to look beyond the traditional cohort of 18-21 year olds for their students. The shortfall may be made up with the expansion into overseas markets or by domestic students who come from a wider age range than that currently experienced in significant numbers. UCAS statistics show that although the number of applicants from mature students is rising, the number of acceptances is falling. This suggests that institutions have not yet adapted to the challenges presented by the diverse age group of potential students. These challenges cluster around not just the generation gaps between teachers and learners in institutions but around the different groups of learners themselves. At the same time there is a growing recognition that the lecturing population is aging thus increasing the “generation gap” between the tutors and their students. At MUBS, for example, 66% on new student in 2005 were aged between 18 and 20, and 82% were aged between 18 and 23. In contrast, two thirds of the academic population of the campus is over 40 years of age.

“ Good teaching means seeing learning through the learner’s eyes” (Ramsden, 1988)

If one accepts the above assertion, the question then is how do we achieve this sight, how do we discover this different set of reference points which result from a different set of life experiences and thus produce a different “bank” of socio-cultural capital? Bourdieu’s (1986) notion of capital, when applied to the higher education context, suggests that learners with the most

2 capital, in the right symbolic quantities will be more likely to succeed, whereas learners with less capital are likely to experience a less successful trajectory. In this context, then, it is worth asking, to what extent the young learner (18 year old) is capital poor/rich when compared to the older learner (who, in UCAS terms is mature over the age of 21 but could be of any age group above this). It may be that in contrast to stereotypical notions of the youth culture, the older student has more in common with the teaching staff (in terms of understanding of educational protocols and the nature of knowledge) than the younger student whose social and cultural capital is not legitimized within existing norms.

If one takes the learner as the object and the topic to be learned as the subject, the distance between these, or degree of familiarity, will determine the ease or difficulty of the learning process, which we characterise as one which involves internalisation by the object of the subject. The job of the lecturer is to help reduce this distance by couching their instruction in terms which are not alien to their audience and which attempt to link the topic with the learners’ on-going life experiences.

But how to do this? We would argue that just as we keep up to date with developments within our disciplines, so we should keep up to date with developments in the contexts within which our students live and develop.

Approaches to generational integration

1) Adaptation by the university teacher/institution Beloit College, in the USA, offers a “mindset list”, or a world view, of today's students entering university to all academics at the beginning of each academic year. As the authors (Neif and McBride, 2006) point out, “the faculty will remain the same age as the students get younger.” and “faculty start to show signs of ‘hardening of the references,’” that may well not take account of “the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN, home computers, AIDS awareness, and digital cameras.” Some of the 75 items listed for the 2009 academic year are:

3  They don't remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.  Michael Jackson has always been bad, and greed has always been good  Salman Rushdie has always been watching over his shoulder.  Libraries have always been the best centres for computer technology and access to good software. In this way, the authors attempt to bring their colleagues “up to speed” with recent developments in the outside world which they hope will translate into the way in which academic material is presented, that is, one which recognises the context within which students have evolved and thus is able to provide meaningful reference points to which new students can resonate with.

We can perhaps go further in trying to understand and appreciate our new students by beginning to unpack the notion of “mindset” by using the ASKE typology of learning (Frame, 2001) i.e. new attitudes, knowledge, skills and emotions.

For example, there would appear to be a significant shift in attitudes to lecturers: Shepherd (2006b, pg 1) noted these changing attitudes as exemplified by students now bombarding “lecturers with email messages at all hours to make banal or impertinent queries in a manner which ranges from the overtly familiar to the downright rude”. This may well be associated with notion of student as consumer, and the attitudes which, as consumers, we all have learned. In terms of skills, the most dramatic examples relates to the utilisation of ICT in their elaborated form, together with enhanced visual literacy. Knowledge is addressed by the types of information noted in the mindset list above, which provides our students with an almost taken for granted points of reference. Finally, the significance and demonstration of emotions via emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly widespread.

4 One response to these developments is to engage in impression management (IM). Rosenfeld et al (2002, pg 4), who write about the field of employment, tell us:

IM is "the process whereby people seek to control or influence the impression that others form by what we do, how we do it, what we say and how we say it, and our physical appearance -from the clothes and make-up we wear to nonverbal behaviours such as facial expression or posture."

They go on to cite Eden (1991:28)

"Training ageing persons to be aware of behaviours that project an "old" impression and practicing "acting young" can help them counteract the otherwise natural expectation on the part of others (and themselves) that the aging individual inevitably declines...It's one's youthful or aged image that counts."

However research reported in the THES (Shepherd, 2006a:1) noted that some student respondents’ found “lecturers’ attempts at being hip insufferable.” One said ‘they pick up street information from the media and decide they understand today’s youth. It’s pathetic’.

This suggests that appearing to be up-to-date is not unproblematic. The issue is the extent to which the utilisations of current references thereby provide meaningful reference points to aid student learning, whilst not as a lecturer engaging in age inappropriate oral and physical behaviour.

2) Implications for marketing to the new students

It is worth considering what the newly diverse market referred to above will mean for institutions’ efforts to attract and retain students. Segmenting the customer base involves the division of potential customers in order to reflect the needs of homogenous groups of people and then tailoring and targeting the service (offer or product) so that needs

5 are met, as far as possible, that is (i.e., within business objectives). The approaches used in 'consumer marketing' include age and other demographic features of the 'population' but it has increasingly been found that this does not reflect 'aspirational buying behaviour', so companies use behaviour (attitudes, loyalty/relationship propensity) and something called psychographics (lifestyle and personality traits) to differentiate between groups of customers. Nonetheless, the idea is that in this way, it is possible to build a quite detailed pattern of consumer (consumption) behaviour which helps marketers to target groups of customers, allegedly, more efficiently and effectively. Ultimately, it is not about 'selling', but about producing products that customers demand in order to fulfil their needs.

There are a couple of major problems with translating this to our research interests, though: the huge opposition to the marketing of education, and treating students as customers. However, the principles of understanding the needs of, say, various stakeholder groups (educators, government, businesses and research funding bodies) and developing services which meet these needs holds good. HEIs are ‘co-producers’ with students. Even so, marketing ideas are the common response of institutions at present, whether we as academics like it or not. At the student body level, it can be interpreted in such a way that we develop a better understanding of attitudes/responses to learning in HE, and reflect these in our teaching and learning activities. This means that the differences in basic factors such as age/culture among students and between teachers/educators (culture, of course, being hugely complex and incorporating psychographic and behavioural factors) make tailoring teaching and learning rather difficult - simply because we academics fail to understand [changing] learner needs sufficiently well.

Relationship marketing is slightly different.. At a business level, it is about developing customer loyalty, because it is more 'cost effective' to retain customers over a longer period of time than it is to acquire new. In HE, the approach is being openly used to develop alumni networks (pretty much in the same way that banks try to develop relationships with customers). But, of course, this is somewhat flawed!

6 People develop relationships with other people, usually. To set such an approach up effectively, it clearly has to have a purpose which benefits both parties, a strategy has to be integrated to ensure relationships are built which are meaningful from an early stage (this would undoubtedly be during studies), there must be a recognition that not all 'customers' will be worth the same to the organisation and the like. All of this is very difficult to do in industry, let alone in Higher Education.

3) Implications for understanding the learning needs of diverse age group

To be a critically reflective teacher, Barnett (1997) argues the three domains of learning are equally important: cognitive, cognitive and affective, without which academics as learners are ‘incomplete’. It is important, therefore to consider the particular emotional needs of the various age cohorts of students that may also be linked to their capital (Bourdieu, 1986). This links to the roles a teacher (or facilitator of learning) may perform in the educational process which are formative (educative), normative (administrative) and restorative (supportive), where the teacher shares expertise to build knowledge; maintains records that define boundaries of learning; and, also receives and responds to emotions (Brockbank and McGill, 2000). Rogers (1983) suggests it is important for relationships to be developed with learners in order to facilitate learning, which involves the giving and receiving of personal information, including feelings. This raises important questions about the extent to which a university teacher is able to ‘give’ to different age groups of students. More recently, Goleman (1995) promotes the use of ‘emotional intelligence’ which highlights the importance of self-awareness and identification of emotional states in order to influence emotions of others so that inter-personal relationships can be built and sustained. Brockbank and McGill (2000) argue the affective domain is, however, often dismissed as too ‘touchy-feely’ for most teachers.

The affective and emotional aspects are long recognised as being important for student learning but have received less attention than the cognitive domain

7 (e.g., Bloom, 1956). It is suggested that emotion comprises some stimulus, which is typically external, and a response incorporating physiological, affective and cognitive aspects. This results in observable characteristics, such as a motivational state and a physical behaviour, and a consequence which may be adaptive or disruptive (Oliver, 1997). Various taxonomies of emotions have been summarised by Ortony and Turner (1990), including Plutchik’s (1980) psycho-evolutional theory which identifies acceptance, anger, anticipation, disgust, joy, fear, sadness, surprise as being primary emotions. These may be paired as opposites of one another, for example, joy and sadness, and may be ‘blended’ to form other less intensely felt emotions (or states of arousal), such as aggression (from anger and anticipation), awe (fear and surprise) or disappointment (sadness and surprise).

In a learning context, Atherton (2006) argues the affective domain is actually concerned with values, and emotions such as excitement, despair, boredom and fear are often overstated in a learning context. Such values become increasingly complex as the learner develops, moving through stages of receiving, responding, valuing, organising, conceptualising and characterising values (Kratwohl et al, 1964). However, an understanding of motivations for learning, which is goal directed, can lead to an insight into the affective domain, which is largely indefinite (Hebb, 1955; Apter, 1989, Huitt, 1999), where learning takes place when the learner is moderately aroused between boredom and anxiety. This arousal is often inconsistent, causing reversal of a motivational state depending on levels of frustration, satiation and external influences, or contingencies (Heskin, 1997). Emotions and beliefs are thought to influence patterns of student learning, for example, the affective dispositions of empathy, optimism and enthusiasm are considered to be both positively and functionally (Huitt, 2005) related to academic success. Seifert (2004) summarizes five patterns of learning where emotions, both positive and negative, are linked to motivational theories. These are:

 ‘ mastery’, where learners are self-confident, competent, determined and perceive success results from their own efforts;

8  ‘ failure avoiding’, where behaviour is more negatively termed, seemingly because students seek to save face, although often believing outcomes are beyond their own control;  ‘learned helplessness’, where learners believe they will fail and are beyond help, they do not take personal credit for any successes and experience shame, humiliation, boredom and hopelessness;  ‘ work avoidant’ who are bright but bored, they are nonetheless self- confident, believing themselves capable learners but do not see the point, or draw limited meaning from their studies; and  ‘passive aggressive’, learners who can be angry and hostile towards their teacher for some reason and may withhold engagement as a form of retaliation, presumably because of their lack of control.

This discussion intimates there are learned, non-learned and physiological elements to the affective domain. The literature on emotional psychology and development (e.g., Plutchik, Izard, and Mowrer) highlights organic evolution and instinctive patterns of behaviour which seem to be hardwired into the brain, such as fear and pain. Others (e.g., Erikson, Bingham-Styker, Woolfolk and McCune-Nicolich) identify the developmental stages of emotions from early infancy through to late adulthood which have implications for teaching and learning. For example, identity/self-esteem (adolescence) may be encouraged by offering career choices, offering support for finding self-help and encouraging participation in external activities (sports, hobbies, etc). It would be a mistake, though, to simply conflate maturity with older age in the student population.

Evidently, the affective domain is likely to differ between teachers in higher education and their students, not least because students may be at an earlier stage of emotional development, where the typical age of an undergraduate may be 19-24 years. Furthermore, emotional states will differ because of the nature of the educational environment, which seeks to add to, override or alter the learner’s knowledge, irrespective of age. This may represent a displacement effect, where the teacher is more confident in the learning

9 environment and the learner less so, which may be due to anxieties over assessment processes, life away from the familial home or normal work context, rather than learning or teaching experience per se. It is clear that students must become adept at coping with the affective domain because changes in working practices (service economy, consumerism, technology, globalization, entrepreneurism) will place increasing emphasis upon their personal qualities, such as networking, self-management, self-confidence, integrity, as well as basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic, listening, speaking) and skills for thinking, such as problem-solving, decision-making, learning (e.g., SCANS, 1991). Such changes will require teaching practices to address the affective domain in order to provide the appropriate scaffolding for learning (indeed, the dynamics of the higher education environment continually call for academics to change and adapt their teaching and learning behaviours).

4) Implications for teaching and learning

Example 1: Using E-learning to integrate students from diverse age backgrounds

Attitudes to learning (and teaching) are concerned with individuals’ values and prior experiences. This is captured by Prosser and Trigwell’s (1999) model of learning and teaching which identifies five factors that influence how students approach each learning event, making each situation a unique experience. They also argue that this model can be applied to the teacher, with each learning situation mediated by their prior experience, their prior approaches to learning, their perceptions of the situation, their own situation and their intended outcomes (Fig 1).

10 Teachers’ prior Teachers’ prior experience approaches to learning

Teachers’ perceptions of their situation

Teachers’ Teaching situation outcomes

Fig 1: Experiences of teaching in higher education (Prosser and Trigwell, 1999)

The significance of this mediation is reinforced by Boud and Prosser (2002), who state that:

“ Research has shown that rather than there being a direct connection between the way teachers teach and design their courses and the quality of their students’ learning outcomes, the relationship is indirect. The way students perceive and understand their learning environment and the way they approach their learning in relationship to those perceptions have been found to be major intervening factors between teachers’ teaching and students’ learning outcomes’ (pg 238).

These differences in experience and approach can be partly informed by age of staff and students and the opportunities provided through prior experience. For example, the majority of current academics (and students) do not have experience of being a student using a VLE. The experiences they bring with them and the teaching values, on which their practice is based, are therefore predominantly the face to face lecture/seminar model. Research has therefore shown that while the use of e-learning and VLEs in particular, is increasing significantly, these developments are having a limited impact on practice and learning design (Jenkins, Browne & Walker, 2005).

11 Against this background, and as noted above, students with a broad range of experience, knowledge and skills are being encouraged through widening participation strategies to study at colleges and universities. As a consequence this new, more diverse student body has different and changing expectations of their learning experience which brings with it a range of support issues for staff. For many students, the conventional delivery methods are no longer appropriate as they are working full or part time as “learner- earners” or “earner-learners” and/or have family commitments. They will therefore want to take full advantage of the flexibility of attendance and delivery modes offered by e-learning.

To add to this complexity, students of different ages, such as the “Baby Boomers” and “Netgeneration”, will have different attitudes towards using computers for learning (Tapscott, 1998). Those students who have grown up in a world in which computers are part of life like to multi-task and they are used to continuous communication through texting, phone calls and email and instant access to information via the Internet (Oblinger, 2003). These students expect a range of web based learning opportunities to be available and these include resources, assessment and communication tools and that these are available through a VLE. Oblinger lists ten attributes of the “Netgeneration”; these are:  Computers are not technology  The Internet is better than TV  Reality is no longer real  Doing is more important than knowing  Learning more closely resembles Nintendo than logic  Multitasking is a way of life  Typing is preferred to handwriting  Staying connected is essential  There is zero tolerance for delays  Consumer and creator are blurring

12 An increase in student expectations for the use of e-learning does raise issues for staff. For example, the focus on the traditional transmission mode and ‘place’ for learning is exemplified by academic concerns that students will not attend lectures if lecture notes are available online. However, recent research has found that only 1% of students stop attending lectures for this reason (Newland 2003). The communication tools within VLEs can also help many students, including non-English speakers, disabled students and shy students who find it easier to participate online than in face to face situations. Working in an online environment requires new skills and expectations of the student. Even with an increase in e-literacy skills within the general population and particularly the younger generations (Oblinger, 2003; Kirkwood & Price, 2005) it cannot be assumed that students will have the skills or knowledge to operate in an online learning environment, that is, to be online learners. Jochems, van Merrienboer and Koper (2004, pg 201) believe that integrated e-learning is not the best approach for the ‘low-ability’ learners, those suffering from motivational problems or from cultures where the traditional school system does not allow for any form of self-directed learning or indeed its development. When using e-learning, students have to be more self- directed in terms of choosing tasks, media and collaborating, and this requires higher order skills (Jochems, van Merrienboer and Koper, 2004, pg 200). However through good design and support, an appropriate environment open to ‘low-ability’ learners can be created, but they must be actively supported.

Merely putting students into an online laboratory or a forum for discussion does not necessarily lead to learning taking place. (Bates and Poole, 2003, pg 230)

In addition to the demand for online learning, student expectations on where learning takes place is now changing with many now having their own PCs and mobile technologies. The increase in laptops and wireless access has implications for where and how students are able to study. They are no longer restricted to using PCs which are often supplied to encourage individual work by being located in rows in computer classrooms and libraries, but instead

13 can easily participate in group work with their laptops. In terms of place, the use of physical learning space is now also very different. This has been recognised in recent reports on the development of new learning spaces (JISC, 2006; Scottish Funding Council, 2006) which see a move from teaching spaces to learning spaces and increasing emphasis on student centred approaches. The Scottish Funding Council report in particular highlights how the increasing influence of social constructivism is encouraging three key learning styles: learning through reflection, learning by doing and learning through conversation. In response to these changes, and the opportunities offered by ICT, new designs of learning space are being created that do challenge the transmission paradigm of HE.

Expectations for and use of e-learning does illustrate ‘tensions’ between generations both within academic staff groups and student cohorts, and between staff and students. The use of learning technologies can challenge paradigms linked to individuals and institutional values and beliefs which can impact on learning design and on the design of physical learning spaces.

Example 2: Human Resource Management

In the field of Management Studies in general, and Human Resource Management in particular, the significance of being up to date is of real significance. The majority of programmes in a typical business School, such as Middlesex University Business School, are vocationally orientated, that is, are focused on the development of professionals who can operate effectively in the real world. In order to do this, lecturers must be aware of this real world and changes therein, and be willing to demonstrate this awareness to their students. It is in this way that learners can be supported in developing their practice in a way which recognises the significance of the worlds outside the classroom.

This world outside is of major significance in respect of discipline content. It would be unusual for a management programme not to include a major component on managing the external environment, which is sometimes

14 known as the organisational context. Various heuristics have been devised to assist in the process of both identifying environmental domains (PEST: political, economic, socio-cultural and technological; PESTEL: ecological and legal) and of monitoring these. Such activities form a major aspect of strategy formulation and revision, as organisations are seen as open systems which need to both be aware of and respond to their outside world.

An awareness of the current milieu is of great benefit to the lecturer, for it helps them illustrate particular concepts in a way which is likely to be more rather than less relevant to their students. Thus organisational culture can be exemplified by reference to the McDonald organisation, in the certain knowledge that the majority of the audience will have has some contact with that firm.

Finally, and particularly with teaching HRM, involving as it does recruitment and selection, and development and training, for example, we lecturers need to be aware of the increased employment activities of our full time student. Only if we are so aware can we then encourage our learners to draw on their own experience of any or all of these processes, derived from their part time work activities. Encouraging students to identify such examples helps them create the hooks of experience on which they can hang discipline-specific content, thus enhancing the relevance of particular models and theories and encouraging the process of internalisation.

Example 3: A National Teaching Fellowship project designed to widen generational participation

The link between socio-economic class and the uptake of higher education opportunities is well established, as recent research by Target has demonstrated, in respect of the deterrent effect on state school pupils in considering a University education by the introduction of tuition fees (Taylor, 2006). In the United Kingdom significant government funding has been allocated to widening participation in higher education for under-represented

15 groups of ‘non-traditional learners’. One of the main agents of this funding initiative is AimHigher whose goal is to encourage young people from areas of social and economic deprivation to consider higher education as a life choice. Another funding initiative is the award of National Teaching Fellowships to outstanding university teachers. The Extended Family Learning project combined the work of a national teaching fellow with AimHigher and ran in Kent and Medway in the South East of England in 2006 with wide aim of local regeneration through extending educational opportunities.

The joint objectives were to provide members of the extended family with the learning support skills to support the youngsters’ learning (AimHigher’s priority) while at the same time encouraging the adults to see themselves as potential university students (National Teaching Fellow’s priority). The project was located in an innovative joint campus of three universities in Medway that has been set up with public money with the explicit aim of local regeneration and the vision of higher education as a transformative process.

The project was unusual because a range of extended family members (rather than just parents) were targeted who had children/grandchildren/siblings/ nieces and nephews who attended secondary schools. Family members were identified approached via the head teachers and AimHigher cluster leaders. The project consisted of a series of evening sessions in the local areas with a full day university (universities) visit on the concluding Saturday. All refreshments and transport to the universities were financed by the project. The sessions focused on the nature of effective learning and the nature of study. Family members were provided with ways of supporting study at home and facilitating converstations about learning in ways that could help the young people to progress. At the same time the adult learners were able to explore their own identities as learners (through work on learning styles and exploration of models of learning) and their own educational trajectories with the aim of helping them to consider higher education for themselves. The adult participants who took part in the project had the opportunity to meet and discuss their experience of learning with

16 mature adult learners from non-traditional backgrounds who had returned to part-time learning and were current learners at one of the universities.

Early evaluation data from the project indicates significant success. 50% of the adult participants are now registered for higher education courses with the Open University (funded by the project) and the feedback from the schools and young people has been good. The National Teaching Fellow’s work as co-project director allowed her to develop her own project in a way that was linked to a bigger funding initiative in a way that broadened the understanding of widening participation to include age as well as class. The broad aim was to make an impact of a transformative nature on the aspirations and perceptions of the local population through university outreach work and the project has made progress in this area.

Example 4: Economics

Within economics issues associated with the ‘generation gap’ have not aroused any interest and have therefore not been addressed. As Taylor (2009, pg 60) quoted:

Economics departments use old-fashioned teaching methods and fail to put their subject in touch with the modern world.

If an economic analysis of the ‘generation gap’ problem is attempted, a simple demand and supply model could be applied to identify the ‘demand’ from students for a greater attention to the issues associated with the students-staff age differential and the ‘supply’ by lecturers who adopt practices aimed at addressing these issues. A way of identifying patterns of demand or supply is through surveys.

The Economics Network at Bristol University (ref) carries out a biannual survey of economics students aimed at obtaining information about students’ perceptions of studying economics. The survey is helpful in identifying issues that economics students find relevant for their learning and strategies that

17 staff and departments are putting in place in order to address the students’ concerns. The last survey was conducted in 2004 and while no direct questions were asked about the possible issues emerging from the students- staff age differential, some deductions can be inferred from a number of the questions.

Students were asked whether ‘The teaching staff on this degree course motivate me to do my best work’. More then two out of five students (43.1%) agreed with such a statement. But at the same time, almost every third student is undecided on this question and more than one in four do not find staff motivating them to do their best work. Several factors have a statistically significant effect on students’ answers to this question. In particular, the more mature students are more positive on this issue: 60.0% of them agree with this statement, while for the 18–20 age group this number is 41.8%. This suggests a positive link, in terms of learning, resulting from the age similarity between students and lecturers

Students were also asked whether ‘The teaching staff normally give me helpful feedback on my work (oral and/or written).’ Nearly half of the students – 47.2% of them – agreed with the statement. A quarter of all students were not sure, and more than one in four did not find it the feedback helpful. The most positive answers came from mature students, from the 26 and older group. Only 16.7% of them disagree with it, compared to 29.6% form the 18– 20 age group.

While this evidence needs to be interpreted carefully, it seems to suggest that the way in which staff relate to students in different age groups can be quite different. From the evidence above, mature students seem to gain more benefit from the interaction with staff, while less satisfaction is expressed by younger students. The question that emerges is whether there is indeed a problem for staff in communicating with, or relating to, younger students and if so, what can be done to deal with it.

18 On the supply side of this analysis, the practices and attitudes of lecturers are also captured by a biannual survey by the Economics Network.(ref) The last survey was held in 2005 and, while lecturers where not asked direct questions about the age differential problem, a selection of answers to the survey can be used to infer some general trends.

Staff were asked whether they changed their teaching methods since the last survey. More then half of the respondents (56%) replied that they have changed their teaching methods in the past two years, while two out of five said that they have not done so, with 6% having taught for less than two years. Some of the respondents commented on the essential need for change in teaching – “If you are a reflective or reflexive practitioner it should”, “Teaching always changes to meet the diverse needs of students”. However, when asked to elaborate on the factors that induced them to change teaching methods, no reference to the age-divide was made. The survey also reveals a significant increase in the use of technology in teaching economics. More of the lecturers are now using a VLE or departmental web sites in their teaching (58% of the respondents used it in 2003 and 87% in 2005). VLEs are also used in more creative ways: their use for communication with learners has increased from 40% to 72% and for online assessment from 17% to 23%. They are used for tracking the progress of learners, supporting PDPs, and “providing means to do independent and self-driven studying and research”, as one of the respondents put it. Various reasons were provided for the increase in the use of technology but no specific reference to the needs of a diverse intake of students was made.

This (limited) evidence seems to suggest that there is a demand on part of the students for academics to cater for the different learning styles of different age groups. However, the economics academic community has not yet fully acknowledged and addressed the issue.

Other aspects related to the age-gap issue concern the role of teaching assistants and the development of a new multimedia support for maths teachers in economics departments.

19 a) In many universities, teaching is mainly carried out by PhD students or young teaching assistants. In this context the age-gap can become less relevant and (younger) students can connect better with their tutors. On the other hand, the lack of teaching experience can negatively influence the learning process. It would be interesting to investigate whether students relate better with these teaching assistants rather than with the ‘older’ module leaders.

b) METAL is an FDTL5 (HEFCE funded) project (ref) which is developing resources to enhance the teaching and learning experience of lecturers and students in level 1 mathematics for economics units/modules. In developing the mathematics questions bank, the project coordinators have agreed to use a terminology and sentences that are more likely to connect with the young generations. The hope is that this ‘less formal’ way of communication will be more appealing to students, less ‘threatening’ and will engage them more with the subject matter.(Any examples?)

It appears then that economics academics are beginning to realise the impact of the age differential between students and their tutors on effectiveness of the formers’ learning, in respect of both face-to-face interactions and those which are ICT based, and are taking some limited steps to address the issues that are beginning to be identified.

Conclusions 1. Traditional notions of what it means to be a university student are fragmenting rapidly. Learning as a form of consumption may well be an aspect of current and future students’ expectations of the university experience. This is as true for the 18 year old student who is studying full time as for the 50 year old student who is combining work with part- time study. For university teachers this means that we need to think through how we can retain the integrity of our vision for effective learning while taking on board these changing expectations.

20 2. If effective teaching is suited to the needs of the learner then the age and experiences of the learner need to be taken into account in teaching and learning processes. This need not manifest itself in crass attempts to re-model the teacher’s identity according to the age of the student but could mean that an understanding that some learners will have more capital than other learners in particular learning situations, might inform the way that teaching is differentiated to meet the needs of particular students. 3. The traditional notion that the mature student will have more problems in adjusting to the university environment than the young student may be reversed if we consider how shared notions of knowledge and communication might be more similar between groups of older students and their teachers than between younger students and their teachers. 4. In terms of marketing, the sector needs to understand that the potential student body is significantly more pluralistic in terms of age as well as other factors than it has been previously. This should mean that higher education professionals broaden their understanding of widening participation to include age.

21 References

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