Employer involvement in course design

Employability must be a core focus for all higher education. With 8% of employers not able to fill posts due to a lack of applicants with the right skills and 13% of employers having similar issues with a lack of skills in current employees, workplaces need more skilled individuals. The sizeable gaps in the job market represent lost productivity for those companies, lost taxes that could help the poorest in society, and a large number of individuals that could have more profitable and rewarding jobs if they only had the right skills.

These skills gaps come alongside record levels of HE participation, with more than 50% of the population gaining a degree by 30. The Government has labelled this problem the skills mismatch, and it is getting larger. Universities are responsible for addressing the mismatch by ensuring that graduates leave their courses with skills that can get them jobs.

One step towards reducing the skills mismatch involves employers in the design and delivery of university courses. Initiating and developing these relationships can be time intimidating and consuming for academics that have not developed skills in this kind of relationship building. Here I have suggested five steps to building solid collaboration with employers in a gradual phased approach. Any such effort aims to reach step five, at which multiple employers help to design a course to fill their skills needs and are happy to add their brand to marketing materials and employ graduates that the courses produce.

Five steps of employer involvement:

Guest lectures
Student site visits
Employer developed assessments
Student Placements
Co-designed courses

The sunk cost fallacy

Many people continue a degree even though they do not enjoy the subject or stay in a career where they are not fulfilled. This lack of action to move toward an outcome that would be better, in the long run, as not to waste time, money, and effort already invested, is described by the sunk cost fallacy.

The sunk cost effect is manifested in a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made. Evidence that the psychological justification for this behavior is predicated on the desire not to appear wasteful is presented.
Arkes & Blume

A Sunk cost is the time, money, and effort you have already spent in the course of action that you can’t get back. We like to think of ourselves as rational and make decisions based on the best outcome for our future, but most of the time, we are swayed by the money, time, and effort we have already spent on our current direction.

The sunk cost fallacy is where we choose not based on the outcome we think will be the best in the future but based on a desire not to see your past investment go to waste. In a study by Arkes and Blumer (1985), they found that those that had a sunk cost in a project were more likely to estimate that it would be successful than those assessing the same project that did not have any sunk cost. They also found that those with theatre subscriptions were more likely to continue to attend, even if they were not bothered about the show.

The Sunk cost fallacy is similar to other psychological theories, including prospect theory (loss aversion) by Kahneman and Tversky 1979. It describes how people weigh loss more heavily than gains when making decisions. Loss aversion cannot fully explain why we make these decisions, as there is no direct way to assess the gains in most situations the suck cost fallacy is present. Other related theories include Overoptimistics probability bias, where we overestimate the future positive outcomes of something we have already committed to, the sense of personal responsibility to continue on a course we are committed to, and the desire not to be wasteful.

Understanding the sunk cost fallacy should help us make better decisions, but in the original paper by Arkes and Blumer, they found that Economics graduates, who are taught the underpinning theories of this idea, were no better at avoiding its effects on decision making than everyone else.

How to use the Suck Cost Fallacy

Pay attention to your decisions. For the small things like reading books, watching films, or attending a show, if you are not enjoying it, think about the event’s opportunity cost.

Opportunity Cost: The loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.
Oxford Languages

If the next best thing you would be doing would bring you more happiness, stop reading a book, watching the film, or leave the show and do the other thing instead. It is even more critical for the big things to calculate what you are missing out on by not moving to that alternative course or career.

Push past the feelings of sunk cost and instead make decisions that lead to better outcomes for your future.

Train all your running muscles

Running is a full-body activity, and the faster you run, the more of your body you use. There are close to 700 muscles in the human body, and you use most of them when running fast. If you do all of your training at a slow pace as many long-distance runners do, you do not train the majority of your muscles, and you miss the opportunity to get faster.

There are three types of muscle fibers; slow-twitch, Intermediate fast-twitch, and fast-twitch. At low intensities, you only use your slow-twitch, and as the workout gets more intense, you start to include your intermediate and then fast-twitch fibers. Pete Magill in Fast 5K suggests that you need to vary your runnings paces to train each type of muscle fibre and reach your maximum running potential.

Jack Daniels suggests that you need to train using five specific paces relative to your V02Max. Daniels provides an online running calculator to work out these paces based on your most recent race performance.

Training intensity	percentage of V02Max	Pace based on 1:35 1/2 marathon
Easy	59-75%	5:18-5:50 min/km
Marathon	75-84%	4:41 min/km
Threshold	83-88%	4:24 min/km
Interval	95-100%	4:03 min/km
Repetition	100%+	3:48 min/km

Running training paces

If you miss any of these five paces from running training, you leave gains in speed on the table. Start to build in all five paces into your running to get faster and wait till eight weeks before any race to start introducing specific workouts targeted at that event.

6-Second sprint test

My approach to holding 4 watts per kilo for an hour (FTP) on the bike has been to get strong, convert that to power on the bike, and then work to hold it for longer. First, I built up my strength with weight training with a target of a one and a half times bodyweight squat, and now I am working on building my power on the bike. But how much power do I need before focusing on maintaining that power for more extended periods?

Dr Andrew Coggan developed a power index with numbers for 5s 1 min, 5 min, and functional threshold power (60 min) to reflect neuromuscular power aerobic capacity, maximal oxygen uptake (V02max) and lactate threshold (LT). The index The numbers equivalent to an FTP of four w/kg are:

5s	1 min	5 min	60 min
17x bodyweight	8.3x bodyweight	4.7x bodyweight	4x bodyweight

Andy Coggan Power Index

For a weight of 82.5kg, that works out to:

5s	1 min	5 min	60 min
1403w	685w	388	330w

Power index at 82.5kg bodyweight

The 6-second sprint test

The 6-second sprint test is used by both the UCI World Cycling Centre to assess if a rider is more suited to sprint or endurance events and by the Janan Institute of Keirin as an entry exam.

The results of the test will give you an idea of your peak power and cadence. To perform the test, you ride as hard as possible for 6 seconds. You will get two figures, peak power over the single pedal revolution usually reaching in the first few pedal strokes and an average over the 6 seconds.

You will recover from the test quickly and so the 6-second sprint can be performed fairly regularly before a normal workout.

Graduate outcomes; employment and earnings

The UK government released employment and earning statistics over the 2018-19 tax year for graduates yesterday. The figures cover employment and earnings for English universities, FE, and other providers delivering degrees, one, three, and five years after graduation.

The headline figures:

Median graduate earning five years after graduation: £27,400
Graduates in sustained employment, further study, or both five years after graduation: 86.7%
Female median earning lower than male five years after graduation (gender gap in earnings): 13.4%
Median earnings for EU and non-EU graduates from English providers and employed in the UK: £31,000 (EU), and £32,800 (non-EU)

The average earnings for a graduate five years after completing their courses is just £4000 a year less than the national average (£31,,461) for all employees, five years into their 35+ year working life and generally earn close to the national average (£31,100) ten years after graduation. Students studying in England from outside of the UK who stay to work after graduating earn significantly more than those officially domiciled in the UK.

Despite making up 58% of graduates, females earn substantially less than male graduates on average. This gap has grown since 2017/18 (12.5%) and 2014/15 (10.7%); however, females are slightly more likely (2.6% after one year and 0.5% after ten years) to be in sustained employment or further study than males. Graduates from the Indian, Chinese, and White and Asian mixed ethnic groups had the highest earnings one, five, and ten years after graduation.

Graduate earning data is also provided by mode of study. Those who study a Sandwich course, which includes time spent on a business or industry placement and away from the university, were more likely to be in sustained employment or further study and earned more on average than full-time students. Part-time students performed less well in this measure, with only 82.7% in work or study ten years after graduating compared to 85.2% of full-time students and 86.2% of sandwich courses graduates. Graduates of part-time courses earn more initially after graduating than full-time students, but the difference reduces over time, with graduates from full-time programmes making more after ten years. The initial differences in part-time and full-time graduate earnings can in part be explained by part-time students generally being older than students on full-time courses.

The complete data set can be found on the UK Government website. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has produced a report on the returns on degrees, looking at differences between socio-economic group and ethnicity. Interestingly the Lifetime returns on a degree still show a significant drop, with considerable variation, from the Government stated £400,000 used to justify student loans and the 50% participation rate target.

Our analysis shows that over the whole life cycle, university pays off on average for men and women from all socio-economic and ethnic groups. Within all groups, more than two-thirds of university students benefit financially from their degrees. However, there are substantial differences in average returns between groups.

Returns vary relatively little by socio-economic status, with only those who went to independent schools – especially men – getting substantially higher returns from their degrees. Net lifetime returns are also high for those from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds, especially for women. At the other end of the spectrum, returns for state-educated men and women near the 54 top of the socio-economic status distribution are relatively modest
The returns to undergraduate degrees, IFS

Living on Mars

Award-winning architectural firm Abiboo Studio has developed plans for the first Martian self-sufficient and sustainable city called Nuwa. The city is one of five, each located near specific resources required to live on the surface of Mars. The designs were created as part of a science-based competition run by the Mars Society and SONet, an international network of academics and scientists seeking sustainable exploration solutions off Earth.

The city caters for 250,000 residences and requires very little imported materials from Earth for construction and maintenance. Nuwa contains designs for housing, food and energy production, as well as social and cultural spaces. The team brought together by Abiboo also had to create a governance system, economic models, and provision to educate the population.

For the city to be self-sustaining almost all the materials required for construction needed to be obtained within the immediate region. The majority of the development is made from excavating into a cliffside to create a series of ‘micro-buildings connected by tunnels. Food production is a mixture of crops, microalgae, farm animals and insects to provide a healthy diet for the population and power is generated by capturing radiation from the sun.

Construction could start as early as 2054 and be completed by 2100.

Time-limited project approachs

Today, I was asked to do a last-minute presentation on my teams approach to course and module design for online and flexible programmes. The main aim is to get the right people in the room and create space to take them through a practical approach based on what we know to work and addressing what has gone wrong in the past.

In the presentation, I focused on three key characteristics of the approach;

Parkinson’s law where work expands to fill the time allocated
Capabilities Maturity Model, where we formalise and optimise the process to reliably and sustainably produce required outcomes
Design thinking, a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.

Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. The more time we allocate to a task, the more of it we waste, the less time we assign, the more efficient we have to be, cutting out anything that is not essential to getting the job done. When a deadline is far away, we tend to spend some of our available time in active procrastination or giving away the time to other demands. It is only when a delivery date approaches that we ruthlessly trim anything non-essential to complete the task and constrain our activity to what matters. Restricting the delivery time allotted to only what is needed to complete the task creates focus.

Once we have trimmed the time, we need to use a defined series of actions to help get the outcome required. Process maturity refers to the extent to which the process is managed, defined, measured, and controlled to ensure a reliable and sustainable development each time the process is used. As a manager, I need to know that no matter who is assigned to a project, I can have confidence that a certain level of service and quality is achieved; a mature process with frequent feedback loops supports this. The Capability Maturity Model has five levels;

Initial: Unpredictable and reactive – each individual runs each project based on their own with little standardisation
Managed: Project management – projects are dealt with in a systematic and organised way
Defined: Proactive – standards and process are provided across all projects
Quantitatively managed – Measured and controlled – metrics are used to monitor and improve performance and provide a predictable level of quality
Optimising: Stable and flexible – feedback loops offer continuous improvement and the ability to be agile and innovative.

Design thinking is a structured approach to product development and provides the process that the capability maturity model fits around. There are three broad phases; First, you understand the problem, explore possible solutions, and then finally materialise the selected outcome. Within these three phases, there are six main activities;

Understand
- Empathise: carry out research such as interviews and observations to understand the user or client and their stories.
- Define: use the research to write a clear definition of the problem. This might include user personas that use cases.
Explore
- Ideate: Divergent thinking is used to generate as many possible solutions without judgment. Then, Convergent thinking is carried out, with each idea evaluated, and the best is chosen.
- Prototype: A version of the solution is created to test the idea with the user or client. This might be as simple as a paper prototype on a series of slides or a one-page document, or a quickly generated but fully working minimum viable product.
Materialise
- Test: The prototype is put in front of users to refine and validate the proposed solution.
- Implement: The solution is built and delivered to users.

To illustrate the approach, I used three examples;

Example 1: Google’s Design Sprints
Example 2: The universities Course Design sprints
Example 3: My teams adapted ABC Module Design Workshop

Time-limited approaches to projects work as they create focus. A mature process optimises the time available, and divergent and convergent thinking produces better ideas. Testing the solution allows a design to be refined and validated before it is released.

Limiting delivery times and defining the process is effective once working, but the transition creates challenges. The first is that those implementing the changes need to build credibility, so they are trusted. Most people know how they want to solve a problem and can be resistant to a design process they see as unnecessary and overly structured. Finally, most people are busy but are unpracticed at estimating how much time something takes to complete; they tend to panic when they see work in clearly defined packages and want to ‘just get work done.

Humility

Most of us are taught from a very young age to be humble. Religions tend to see humility as a virtue. In the Bible, humility is described as being without pride or arrogance and putting others before oneself. It is also the idea that God is all-powerful and that we are insignificant in comparison. I think the concept of humility is essential to happiness as it allows us to reflect on how lucky we are within our situations and genuinely appreciate those around us.

Humble: having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s importance.
Oxford Languages

The opposite of humility is narcissism and hubris.

Narcissism: selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterising a personality type.
Oxford Languages

Hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence.
Oxford Languages

I was reading a book today and came across a definition of humility that emphasised recognition of greatness in others. This type of humility, where you recognise and publicly celebrate others’ excellence, is vital to Level 5 leadership from Jim Collins.

Humility implies an aptitude to learn: a willingness to listen: a recognition of the greatness of others.
Percy Cerutty

We all want to develop mastery and become successful by whatever definition we give success. Success requires a deep level of belief in ourselves and what we can achieve. This personal belief does not sit well with the simplicity of the Oxford Languages definition of humility. It feels much easier and more appropriate to focus your efforts on others rather than develop humility by focusing on your ego. We need to understand how much we still need to learn, understand that everyone can teach us something, and appreciating other people and their skills as a route to humility.

In a world becoming more narcissistic, be a person of humility.

How many hours does it take to transform a campus-based university module to online learning?

A recent post on WONKHE, the higher education policy news site stated that it takes 80 hours to convert an existing module into an online or blended one. WONKHE gave no details for where this number came from other than academics had repeatedly mentioned it as the time required.

This comes as no surprise; speaking with hundreds of educators across the sector, we know that, on average, it will take 80 hours to transform a module from face to face delivery with lectures and seminars to high quality online or blended delivery.
WONKHE

I want to do a thought experiment for fun as to where these hours might go. I will make many assumptions, so comment at the bottom to correct me or suggest better hypotheses to use.

My first assumption is that the 80 hours are on top of the existing workload allocation. The module team would use the standard hours for prep and delivery of live (synchronous) learning and facilitation of on-demand (asynchronous) learning.

Assuming the average university module is 20 credits, and one credit is equal to 10 hours of notional learning, students should spend 200 hours on average completing each module.

The term ‘notional learning time’ is used to denote all time expected to be spent by a student in pursuit of a higher education qualification. This includes independent study and reading, preparation for contact hours, coursework, revision and summative assessment. This term is used because the actual time that learners need to achieve designated learning outcomes varies considerably. Notional study time of ten hours per credit is the agreed tariff that higher education providers use in designing their programmes and learning outcomes for higher education qualifications, with 360 credits making up an honours degree.
QAA.ac.uk

Let us assume that a module might be delivered over half an academic year, over 15 weeks, with a one hour lecture and two one hour small group seminars per week as contact time. That would mean that the academic would have 45 hours of teaching time to convert from campus-based to entirely online or a blend of online and campus-based. The other 155 hours would be made up of independent study and working on assessments. This conversion is due to the pandemic, so the independent study and assessment would probably not change too much, even if the assessment is transformed from a three-hour exam to a 24-hour open book exam done remotely.

So, 80 hours to convert 45 hours of teaching to online learning.

Let us further assume that the seminars will stay live (synchronous) through Microsoft Teams or Zoom or, if they are lucky with rooming and social distancing, stay live on campus. That gives us 15 hours of online content and activities to create to replace lectures.

So, 80 hours to convert 15 hours of teaching to online learning. Suppose the academic spends four hours redesigning their module through a workshop activity like ABC, and six hours of training and experimentation to use the software. In that case, this gives our fictional academic 70 hours to create 15 hours of online content and activities for our made-up module.

70 hours of development time to produce 15 hours of video content, text, activities, and self-mark questions mean 4 hours and 40 minutes of development time per hour of online learning.

Let us say that each one hour lecture is 40 minutes of content and then 20 minutes of discussion and answering questions on an audience response tool like Mentimeter. If we allocate 40 minutes of development time to set up a discussion forum and convert the questions to the VLE quiz tool, that leaves four hours to develop four ten minute videos or one hour per ten-minute video.

To sum up, a Module Leader might spend 80 hours converting their existing module to online:

6 hours of training
4 hours of design using the ABC model
70 hours creating content
- 1 hour for each 10-minute video
- 40 minutes for each 20 minute activity time

This is a tough ask for academics that may not have the digital skills or technology at the start of the pandemic to transform their modules in just 80 additional hours. It is important to note that these 80 hours will not have been given to academics within their usual workload but instead done on top of everything else.

Let me know what you think in the comments or via Twitter if you want some discussion.

This weeks training

An example of a current week of training:

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
Bike	30/15 – 3 sets of 11 reps @125% FTP	60 mins between 62.5 and 75% FTP	90 mins + 6 second maximal sprints	30/15 – 3sets of 12 reps @125% FTP	60 mins between 62.5 and 75% FTP	90 mins + 6 second maximal sprints	Off
S&C	MP 5x(2,3,5) Snatch 3×7 Swings 3×7	Squat 8-6-4 Deadlift 120kg Swings 10×7	C&P 5×1 Snatch 3×7 Swings 3×7	C&P 5×1 Snatch 3×7 Swings 3×7	Squat 8-6-4 Deadlift 120kg Swings 10×8 Loaded carries	C&P 5x(1,2,3,4,5)	Off
Core	50 sit-ups 60-sec plank	50 sit-ups 70-sec plank	50 sit-ups 80-sec plank	50 sit-ups 90-sec plank	50 sit-ups 100-sec plank	50 sit-ups 110-sec plank	Off
Run	20-25 mins	Hill sprints 3x 8 sec	20-25 mins 10 min warm-up Surges 8x 20 secs w/ 40 sec jog 5 min cooldown	Off	Drills Hill sprints 3x 8 sec 20-30 mins	20-25 mins	Off
Stretch	Dead hang Squats Couch stretch Indian knot All – 3×30 secs	Dead hang Squats Couch stretch Indian knot All – 3×30 secs	Dead hang Squats Couch stretch Indian knot All – 3×30 secs	Dead hang Squats Couch stretch Indian knot All – 3×30 secs	Dead hang Squats Couch stretch Indian knot All – 3×30 secs	Dead hang Squats Couch stretch Indian knot All – 3×30 secs	Off

Training plan for week commencing 22nd March

My main goal is to get to a four w/kg FTP on the bike and total around seven hours of riding on Zwift each week. As my main priority, the riding is done in the morning to make sure I don’t ever miss it. The schedule follows a polarised programme with two HIIT sessions per week. The 30/15 intervals involve repeats of 30 seconds at 125% FTP, followed by 15 seconds at 50% of that number.

The strength and conditioning workouts support my riding goal and is mainly maintenance. Swings are with a 40kg kettlebell (The Bulldog), the presses are with a 24kg kettlebell and a 32kg for the 5×1 clean and presses. The strength sessions are short and fit into a break at lunch on most days.

I am using the running to get some additional aerobic training, get out of the house, and prepare for the second half of the year when I transition to focus on getting to the next level of the distance runners progression 40 minutes 10km. I run in the evening after work.

My current morning routine

6:00 Wake up

6:05 50 sit-ups

6:10 Protein shake

6:15 Plank

6:20 Yogurt + berries

7:00 Bike

8:30 Shower

8:40 Stretch

8:50 Work