ABSTRACT
Today’s colleges are the result of the way in which further education has developed since its beginnings. During this development colleges were required to offer a menu of courses suitable to the needs of the community, industry or commerce they served. This menu usually displayed the following characteristics:
1. Structure
a. structured on a programme of subject-focused courses, built around job-specific skills, general education, or personal development;
b. offered as a timetable at pre-determined set times, covering a fixed academic year which ran from September to July;
c. mostly teacher centred in terms of style and learning structures, and teacher controlled in terms of programme presentation, pace and direction;
2. Underlying skills
a. knowledge of qualification pathways, built around an understanding of entry requirements to courses and examinations;
b. ability to arrange course, room and staff timetables to meet the requirements of a tightly set menu of course programmes;
c. a match to examination requirements between the presentation skills of teachers and note taking for students;
3. Support systems: the outcome of the above programme characteristics and skill requirements is that the architecture of colleges has resulted in:
a. buildings dominated by teaching spaces divided into small or large general teaching rooms, dedicated specialist rooms and practical workshops;
b. buildings are supported by specialist technician services focused on servicing the teaching spaces and providing equipment or audio visual support to teachers rather than learners;
c. programmes are also provided with reprographics support for teaching materials, and other more general facilities such as library/ resource centres and administrative backup;
4. Management systems: colleges have inherited management control systems which focus on measures of efficiency based on the notion that all teaching takes place in large groups, in single rooms, under the direction of one teacher. Prime examples are measures of efficiency such as student/staff ratios (SSRs), average class sizes (ACS) and average lecture hours (ALH). These measures do not adequately measure the more flexible ways of structuring and accrediting achievement being developed by today’s colleges. For example, the system does not know how to measure or credit such work as assessment on demand or accreditation of prior learning (APL).
