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I will be supporting the BPP Student Engagement team for the BPP Innovation Award



The BPP Students Association is quite new, but is growing very fast, and has the following aims:

  1. An independent voice for BPP UC students and to work closely with the institution to put students at the heart of everything BPP UC does;
  2. Information, support and guidance to students about their academic and personal life during their programme of study;
  3. Academic, cultural, social and professional enrichment through the development of clubs/societies/events/initiatives;
  4. Awareness and enhancement of students’ employability.

I will be supporting the BPP Student Engagement team for the BPP Innovation Award, not least because Olivia, Clare and Laila have always been extremely kind, helpful and thoughtful to me, as I go about my business with my BPP Legal Awareness Society, but because innovation matters hugely to me. Dr Vidal Kumar taught me innovation as a special elective over several autumnal months in the building next to the Gherkin, at BPP Business School. As it happens, I came top in the year in it with 72% (the pass mark was 50%). I remember the task well – it was all about network theory of innovation, a hugely explosive formulation of how innovation works. Innovation is a really important topic in business management. BPP Business School will be formally conferring my MBA degree on Wednesday 21 February 2012, and I was the first in my cohort to pass the entire exam at one go earlier this year.

 

 

 

 

The student engagement team behind the nominated best innovation comprises Olivia (based in London), Clare (based in Manchester) and Laila (based in London) but, each, in fact, travel all over to meet with BPP students, organising student societies and empowering students through the “Student Voice” process to contribute to the development of BPP. They are always at the end-of-the-phone, or contactable by email.

You can easily search for the BPP students collaboration through the internet:

They have designed their own website which features short videos from centres, created by students as a guide to each of BPP’s centres. You can find it here. This video provides a general overview, however.

Their unique BPP Students interactive website, representing the BPP Students Association, provides information about clubs and societies in general, discounts from local and national businesses (including those discovered by students on a weekly basis), there are student association’s organised social events (including fairs, balls, nights-out), and help with finding accommodation guides (including rooms, hotels, and halls, and fairs where you can meet people face-to-face). You can run for various rôles in “Student Voice”, where you can run for any number of positions of responsibility, or even write for one of two publications “Business Brief” and “Legal Incite”. Their Facebook page currently has over 1000 likes.

The whole point about an innovation is that it is more than an invention – the interaction with the adopter is what makes it unique. The adopter in this case is a BPP student, and the innovation has to be simple, accessible and useable enough to allow ready ‘diffusion’ to the end user. The whole success of an innovation depends upon its uptake.

Here you can see their uptake has been very successful:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was from a Leeds student. This is from a Birmingham student.

 

 

 

 

 

This is from a Swindon student.

 

 

 

 

And finally, from where I started off, a BPP Business Student:

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, in this case, the success of the innovation is that it is all about building a collaborative network where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Through meaningful interaction between members of the network (and interestingly there is no hierarchy which can scupper such communications within (infra) a large organisation), links can be made between diverse areas of the network (e.g. a direct communication between a student, lecturer and professor) which would be hard to achieve otherwise. Building up such networks is a powerful way for any organisation to live in a dynamic way, and the organisation can take on a vibrant culture and learning of its own. In this way, students can directly contribute to their courses which they’re studying, and genuinely feel a part of it. I am a huge believer in inclusivity and accessibility, so this for me is very important. And finally – it is genuinely disruptive. In my day (I was a student at Cambridge in the 1990s originally where I did my undergraduate, Masters and graduate degree), we had cumbersome committees, with lots of pen-pushing, but where you didn’t get much done. I’m sure those still exist, with people taking minutes, etc., but this is a much more innovative way of doing things. The Government wished higher educational facilities to put students “at the heart of the system” in their White Paper published last year, and this for me is a perfect way for BPP to demonstrate innovative excellence in doing so.

 

Is the future of legal education online?



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An impression that the debate in delivering online legal education is fast gathering pace is a genuine one. Alex Aldridge reported in the Guardian last week that Peter Crisp, Chief Executive of BPP, had opined at a major conference about the merits of “online only solicitor training”: “More flexible learning options allowing students to “work while they study”, according to BPP Law School chief executive Peter Crisp, who was critical of the legal regulators’ refusal to allow his organisation to deliver online only solicitor training.”

 

On 17 July 2012, it was reported that Edinburgh University had become the first UK university to sign up to a major influential US online delivery project of education. The investment in this project has been substantial; for example, elsewhere it is reported that: “Adding to Coursera’s success are UPenn and Caltech combined investment of $3.7 million in the company. With additional investment from current investors New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the company now totals over $22 million in funding.”

 

Educators tend to wish to go off the record about their views, which makes debating this much harder. One lecturer at BPP that I know remarked, “Truth told, I’m still mired in old-world teaching and techniques. The classroom sessions I deliver are very traditional”. Yet, another lecturer at BPP whom I know well too commented, “Be careful what you try to destroy. Education is very personal. One size doesn’t fit all.” In response to this, Jon Harman, Director of Learning Design and Media at the College of Law responded, “one size doesn’t fit all yet we keep insisting on it in formal education.”

 

The Legal Practice Course (LPC) as currently set, across most institutions and centres, is delivered as a ‘standard product’. This means that it has a highly rigorous specification, and the learning objectives and assessment criteria for each part of it are clearly specified. I appreciate how this is organised, from having had an OFQUAL/QCF course approved myself in fact. These can be aligned transparently with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) document for key objectives for the LPC which is available on their website. However, when it comes to the issue of face-to-face teaching and learning, the SRA is in fact very precise. According to clause 3.50 of the ‘LPC Information Pack’ (available here), “A face-to-face requirement has been set to ensure there are opportunities for all students to interact with each other and with tutors and to develop together their professional skills, attitudes and behaviours.”

 

As a student, I fully agree with this. Being a bit banal about it, BPP is ‘preparing you to practice’, not ‘preparing you to sit at one of a computer terminal to meet assessment objectives’. Teamwork and communication are highly sought-after competences in corporate law firms, and your ability to communicate articulately with colleagues and explain your ideas must be a key attribute of trainees. However, I remember once asking a partner at Freshfields how much international corporate law is done online, and he explained, characteristically openly, “an awful lot”. So the component of international corporate law which is being done online is growing itself, one suspects.

 

I learnt a lot about innovation management in my MBA, and this is a specific sector within business which decades of experience in other sectors of business might not match. I graduate in November, having completed this course successfully at BPP Business School earlier this year. With an ‘innovation hat on’, having done a full course with my tutor Dr Vidal Kumar (@VidalAndreas) which I loved, we were taught about the importance of culturing a wider network through key participants of a network, such as the Coursera network involving Stanford, Michigan, Lausanne and Princeton above; about having some ‘key adopters’ such as A-star universities, the operational issues which might limit or facilitate its success (e.g. fast technological infrastructure, clusters of innovation), but most importantly how you could secure competitive advantage through your business model through innovation. Crucially – and most fundamentally – you need to understand what an innovation is. An innovation is more than an invention – it has to be a dialogue between the person who created it, and its purpose, and its intended recipient. That is why it’s going to be interesting to see whether Menshn ‘takes off’. Innovation is not necessarily about improving on design specifications, in the spirit of the famous Henry Ford saying, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse'”. Likewise, producing an e-book is not the same as digitising a ‘conventional’ book.

 

This aspect is the heart of the issue. Democratising education is incredible, in that your outreach of the audience is of a different scale, but it means that you can offer online courses to the world. Many do not pass such courses because of the high attrition rate. Providers need to be able to ensure that such courses are not offered just because they are cheap, and indeed that the concepts of ‘cheap’ and ‘low price’ are not conflated with ‘cheap and nasty’. I believe online education can work, if supported by other means (such as the fact that students are individually supported by a real-life teacher so that there is regular monitoring of the learning experience which may not necessarily be the same as the assessment objectives). I first went up to Cambridge in 1993, so this is now my 18th year in higher education of some sort (some of which has not been on full-time or part-time courses), so I have much experience as an ‘end user’.

 

But the question must become also: what’s in it for the law school? By offering so many courses so cheaply, it is hard to see where the profit comes from, unless the inward investment comes from private equity or venture capital; but even then the private equity and venture capital firms need to consider carefully how sustainable the investment is, and in simple terms what the return-on-investment is? For example, the social media have been notorious in monetising their innovations; even possibly the chief strategy of making a profit from innovation, the initial public offering, has turned sour for Facebook.

 

This is a very complicated debate, but one which I will be sure to follow even though I will be leaving legal education for good in two months time, having done my LLM, LPC and MBA.

Read the Browne Report and executive summary.



Here is the full report.

Here is the executive summary.

England has an internationally respected system of higher education. There are now a record number of people enrolled, studying an increasingly varied range of subjects at a diverse set of higher education institutions (‘HEIs’). Graduates go on to higher paid jobs and add to the nation’s strength in the global knowledge based economy. For a nation of our scale, we possess a disproportionate number of the best performing HEIs in the world, including three of the top ten.

However, our competitive edge is being challenged by advances made elsewhere. Other countries are increasing investment in their HEIs and educating more people to higher standards.

In November 2009, I was asked to lead an independent Panel to review the funding of higher education and make recommendations to ensure that teaching at our HEIs is sustainably financed, that the quality of that teaching is world class and that our HEIs remain accessible to anyone who has the talent to succeed. Over the last year, we have consulted widely and intensively. Our recommendations are based on written and oral evidence drawn from students, teachers, academics, employers and regulators. We have looked at a variety of different systems and at every aspect of implementing them – financial, practical and educational – to ensure that the recommendations we are making are realistic for the long term. I would like to thank all those who have contributed their
knowledge, experience and time to this review. Our findings are contained in our full report and summarised here.

• Great advances have been made in making it possible for more people from all backgrounds to enter an HEI. Currently 45% of people between the ages of 18 and 30 enter an HEI, up from 39% a decade ago. Improvements have been made to ensure that students from disadvantaged schools or backgrounds are given a fair chance to study for a degree. Our recommendations build on this success. Support by way of cash for living (‘maintenance’) will be increased. Those studying for a degree part time will be given proportionate access to funding to those studying full time.
• The quality of teaching and of the awarded degrees is the foundation upon which the reputation and value of our higher education system rests. Our recommendations in this area are based on giving students the ability to make an informed choice of where and what to study. Competition generally raises quality. The interests of students will be protected by minimum levels of quality enforced through regulation.
• England’s HEIs are very varied, in the type of student they attract, the standards of attainment they require for entry, the courses taught and so on. While most of higher education takes place in an HEI called a university this one word does not capture the reality of their diversity. Our recommendations reinforce this diversity. And since one size does not fit all, we would expect the result to be that HEIs will set varied charges for courses.
• A degree is of benefit both to the holder, through higher levels of social contribution and higher lifetime earnings, and to the nation, through higher economic growth rates and the improved health of society. Getting the balance of funding appropriate to reflect these benefits is essential if funding is to be sustainable. Our recommendations place more of the burden of funding on graduates, but they contribute only when they can afford to repay the costs financed. Students do not pay charges, only graduates do; and then only if they are successful. The system of payments is highly progressive. No one earning under £21,000 will pay anything.

We estimate that only the top 40% of earners on average will pay back all the charges paid on their behalf by the Government upfront; and the 20% of lowest earners will pay less than today. For all students, studying for a degree will be a risk free activity. The return to graduates for studying will be on average around 400%.
In formulating our recommendations we had to balance the level of participation, the quality of teaching and the sustainability of funding; changing one component has an impact on the others. What we recommend is a radical departure from the existing way in which HEIs are financed. Rather than the Government providing a block grant for teaching to HEIs, their finance now follows the student who has chosen and been admitted to study. Choice is in the hands of the student. HEIs can charge different and higher fees provided that they can show improvements
in the student experience and demonstrate progress in providing fair access and, of course, students are prepared to entertain such charges.

Our recommendations will lead to a significant change; we do not underestimate the work that will be required. Since this review was commissioned the pressure on public spending has increased significantly. This will add urgency to make funding sustainable. We hope that, as these recommendations are debated, no one loses sight of the powerful role that higher education will play in continuing to build the greatness of this nation.
Respectfully submitted on behalf of the Review Panel, by

Lord Browne of Madingley, FRS, Feng Chairman

12 October 2010

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