TUC Education and the QCF

User experience research

National Open College Network

Report from the Open Learning Partnership

The learner voice

April 2008

Purpose
This document follows on from the initial headline findings from the research into
TUC education and the QCF. In this second report we focus on the views of
learners on the TUC courses and their reaction to the QCF trials.

Research questions
The research attempts to find answers to a number of key questions about the
TUC education qualifications framework:

 what beliefs and intentions do users have about the framework?

 what is their experience of involvement with it?
 how in their view could it be improved, and what barriers need to be
lowered?
 are there any factors which lead to success in using the framework?
 how does it affect their role in the workplace and union?

We emphasise that the research is not a technical study of the implementation of

the QCF, although inevitably technical issues were raised by research
participants.

Status
In the first report we were able to in directly report on learners' views, as
reported by their tutors. Among other points tutors noted that:

● gaining qualifications is not for some learners at least their primary

motivation for attending a course
● on the other hand there has been little adverse reaction to the
accreditation of TUC courses
● the continuing trend towards formalisation of personal development
reviews, often linked to appraisals at work, is tending to emphasise the
value of course accreditation for large groups of learners

In the subsequent stage of research we were able to test and to a certain extent
quantify these assumptions.

Methodology
The method used was to construct a short survey of learners on TUC courses. the
survey was available online and in a corresponding paper format. Tutors in five
colleges involved in the QCF pilots assisted with distributing the survey.

Time constraints, with the early Easter date in 2008, meant that conditions were
not ideal for getting a reasonable response to the survey. TUC courses were not
running at the time of distribution of the survey. This meant that the surveys
arrived 'cold' with no prior explanation.

A further caveat is that distribution of the survey by email will have created some
bias towards those learners who are active users of email. These learners amy
tend to be more computer literate on average than the whole population of TUC
learners, although there is some evidence that email use among union
representatives has risen rapidly in recent years.

Survey results
In spite of distribution and timing problems the learner survey has had a good
response, even though only a limited number of college centres were involved. In
less than seven days 76 responses from learners were received. This is a good
response which gives us some confidence in the analysis.

The unions
The 76 respondents included representatives from 12 unions: ATL, Community,
CWU, GMB, PCS, POA, RMT, SOR, Ucatt, UCU, Unison, Unite. This is a good
mixture across a range of sectors.

email
Email addresses were given by 68 respondents - 89% of the total. This
corresponds with anecdotal evidence that about nine out of ten union
representatives have access to email. The finding is also significant given the
importance of email communications in the ULN/LAR administration systems.

Further analysis of the email addresses shows that 29 of the 68 - 43% - gave a
work based email address. This may be in part due to the fact that some
employers restrict use of work email to within the organisation's firewall,
meaning that a personal email account has to be used at home.

Highest qualification
The survey sought information about the highest level of qualification achieved
by the respondents. The results are shown in Figure 1.

Level 1 - NVQ1, GCE

1.5%1Level 2 - NVQ2, GCSE
16.9%11Level 3 - NVQ3, A level
40.0%26Level 4 - Degree
24.6%16Level 5 - Higher degree
16.9%11
4. What is your highest qualification? Response
PercentResponse
CountLevel 1 - NVQ1, GCE
1.5%1Level 2 - NVQ2, GCSE
16.9%11Level 3 - NVQ3, A level
40.0%26Level 4 - Degree
24.6%16Level 5 - Higher degree
16.9%11 Other (please specify)15