We’re now entering the summer months here in the UK, and for the moment the sun is shining and it’s nice and warm, at least where I am. This is particularly encouraging given that in recent weeks the internet has been serving up articles entitled “Can you imagine a year without a summer?” and ”Why is June so cold and will it get warmer?”. As we prepare to enter what will hopefully be a summer-like July and the 3rd quarter of 2024, it’s time to reflect upon all the developments in online education we’ve seen in April, May, and June. The last quarter has been full of interesting news, announcements, and developments from various companies operating in online education and several UK higher education institutions (HEIs).

Partnerships between UK higher education institutions (HEIs) and private companies are a significant component of the online distance learning landscape. It is impossible to properly and comprehensively consider this landscape without including private companies and their relationships with UK HEIs.

If you are unfamiliar with the landscape, it may be interesting or confusing to consider that HEIs, whose core activity is offering programmes of study, might need external help to do so. At first glance, these relationships may seem odd.

After over a decade of the Conservative party being in power, there is a Labour party leader potentially on the cusp of becoming prime minister. But the year isn’t 2024, it’s 1963. This was the year Harold Wilson gave his famous “white heat of technology” speech in Scarborough before winning the 1964 general election. In this speech, he also mentioned his plan for a “university of the air,” and this new university was to be:

“designed to provide an opportunity for those who for one reason or another have not been able to take advantage of higher education now to do so”

It wasn’t until 1969 that this plan materialised as the Open University. It is also not the only example of a historical state-sponsored move to create a distance education university.

"Online learning is fundamentally broken” is a phrase I’ve encountered multiple times since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. While questioning the efficacy of online learning is as old as online learning itself, it’s been interesting to observe how the AI explosion has led some into discourse about the state of online learning. Online education isn’t the only thing that has experienced some “crisis framing” since that time; education itself has been framed as something that needs saving. Unsurprisingly, one reason for the uptick in crisis framing is that people want to tell you how AI can fix online learning or save education. Essentially, there’s a lot of AI-led problem-solution marketing going on.

It’s not been a great year for data in UK higher education (HE). Firstly, the key annual UK HE sector data compiled by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has suffered multiple publication delays. We’re now expecting to get data on the 22/23 academic year in August. The horse has already bolted by the time we usually get it in January for the previous academic year, but it’s well and truly over the hills and far away now.

The online programme management (OPM) company space has undergone significant turbulence in the last few years. The influences behind this are varied, causing changes among many of the companies in this market.

As of 2020, the biggest players in the OPM world were Pearson Online Learning Services (POLS), Wiley Education Services, Academic Partnerships, and 2U. However, all four have been involved in mergers and acquisitions that have fundamentally changed the landscape.

Sometimes it feels as though UK higher education likes creating reports on blended learning just as much as Warner Brother’s liked making Police Academy films. The latest in the franchise is the cross-party think tank Policy Connect's report “Digitally enhanced blended learning”, a title that, with a few more keywords stuffed in, would compel us all to shout “house!”.

At the end of last year, I wrote about a new online learning ranking announced by Times Higher Education (THE). At that stage, details were somewhat fuzzy, which, as might be expected, stimulated a lot of questions. On the whole, my conclusion was that an online learning ranking has the potential to be something positive, but there are challenges to doing this effectively and in a way that is trusted by the sector.

An article published online by one of the major UK national newspapers caught my attention this week. The headline writers excelled in capturing interest with the title "Online learning has all but destroyed the university experience.

If you've spent any time working in online education, you're likely familiar with headlines of this nature. You've probably also encountered negative perceptions, ranging from subtle criticisms to outright attacks. So much so that it's all too easy to adopt a defensive stance when faced with such headlines.

If you're anything like me, you'll be reflecting on how swiftly the year seems to be progressing and how distant January feels. We've now reached the end of the first quarter of 2024, making it an opportune time to reflect on online education news and developments in UK higher education.

Learning design in UK higher education has been on an interesting journey in recent years. It’s grown in popularity as a term, an activity, and as a moniker for roles that support learning & teaching activity.

The term, along with the role type associated with it; namely a learning designer, is one of the newer titles on the list of learning & teaching support roles in UK higher education. It is more contemporary than titles such as education developer, academic developer and learning technologist, arguably possessing greater cachet as a result.

The current financial situation in UK higher education is compelling universities to explore various avenues to attract students and ultimately increase their income. The primary mitigation for an increasingly dire set of financial conditions has been to attract more high-fee-paying international students to on-campus study.

How do you create great online learning experiences? Well if you paste that question into a search engine you’re likely to find a number of suggestions, and in most cases that number seems to be ten.

Listicles aside, what people working in online education should realise is that crafting a great online learning experience entails a wide range of considerations. There are always aspects that even the most knowledgeable and experienced among us might overlook, neglect, or need to compromise on.

Many people have questioned the extent to which the higher education sector has learnt lessons from the overall experience of the pandemic. For some, the sector has simply carried on regardless and reverted to its old ways. I think this view is quite simplistic, but there are certainly lessons that might have been learned that haven't been universally adopted.

The year is still in its infancy, yet it has already delivered some noteworthy news in online education. Coursera has just reported its results for Q4 of 2023 and the previous year as a whole, alongside official announcements of Online Programme Management (OPM) company partnerships with two UK universities. These developments are significant for what they reveal about the current state of the online education sector in relation to higher education.

I wonder if you remember the higher education discourse of 2020 and 2021. One aspect of it that sticks in my memory is the almost incessant talk about modalities, whether that be online, blended, hybrid or hyflex. The focus also extended beyond just the range of modalities and included the future trajectory for the primary teaching modality in higher education.

January has been a challenging month for those seeking positive news about UK higher education. The news has been full of stories of financial crises, fears of what would happen if a higher education institution (HEI) goes under and jolly topics like fraud in franchised provision. It’s clear the UK higher education sector is in a bad way.

Many HEIs are compelled to undertake a variety of measures to tackle the severe challenges they now face. This involves exploring either new markets or those in which they have not previously been active in.

If you've been following UK higher education policy, you'll know that a change to the student finance system is set to take place in 2025 with the introduction of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE). This is how the government describes the change:

“From 2025, the lifelong loan entitlement will provide individuals with a loan entitlement to the equivalent of 4 years of post-18 education to use over their lifetime. It will be available for both modular and full-time study at higher technical and degree levels (levels 4 to 6), regardless of whether they are provided in colleges or universities.”