Briefing Paper Cross Institutional Provision: Key issues and challenges

The experiences of the MLEs for Lifelong Learning projects highlight a number of key issues and challenges for institutions developing and delivering provision across a partnership involving one or more colleges and an HE institution.

Developing a successful multi-institutional partnership

• Fundamental to the success of a partnership is a shared and explicit understanding of the partnership goals, whilst recognising that each institution will have its own development agenda. Partnerships are more likely to succeed when there is synergy between the goals of the partnership and the strategic vision and planning goals of the individual partners.
• Effective partnerships require a clear understanding of the potential benefits to each individual partner and to the collective whole. This includes the practical, business-oriented benefits of collaboration and its impact on medium to long-term financial planning. Institutions may wish to build partnerships based on existing successful relationships that have delivered tangible benefits, identify new partners with strong, demonstrable track records of delivering in other partners, or select partners with directly shared goals.
• Partners need to understand each other's business and educational processes and where these are aligned or misaligned, particularly when working across sectors. The cultures of FE and HE institutions can be very different, as can drivers and priorities, resources and expectations, history and customs, and rules of discourse. Working with such diversity requires careful analysis and management of business processes, and strategic vision underpinned with practical policy implementation.
• Identifying the 'right people' to engage at the differing levels in partner institutions is vital. The ease of achieving this is highly dependent on the extent to which partnership goals are shared and understood at both strategic and operational levels.
• A clear, comprehensive partnership or consortium agreement is a vital basis for the development and delivery of shared provision. The agreement should clarify roles, responsibilities and ownership issues, including IPR and copyright. It is important to realise that apparently operational issues can distort the working of a partnership if not clarified at a strategic level by formal agreement. The agreement should also make provision for the addition or withdrawal of partners.

Critical success factors for partnership operation

• Clear lines of communication are vital, not just between those involved in developments but also at the level of course delivery. This will help to ensure that problems are minimised and dealt with effectively, but both depend on and promote a shared ownership of partnership efforts.
• All staff involved with developing and delivering partnership provision need to be familiar with the terms of the partnership agreement, and in particular the nature of service level agreements relating to provision and support of services to the students and staff (academic, support and managerial) in the partner institutions.
• A tutor-student service level agreement should ensure that learners know exactly what support will be provided and what responsibilities they have for their own learning.
• Staff support needs must be addressed at an early stage, and address ongoing delivery as well as development phases. Support includes educational, technical and business processes as well as shared approaches to enrolment, induction, monitoring and quality. Staff development provision will need to address pedagogical issues of e-learning and blended learning approaches in terms of both course design and tutoring.
• Technical specifications and standards conformance for data transfer and interoperability facilitate smoother administration processes across institutions, including enrolment and access to services, integration of course management information and quality processes.
• Genuine quality enhancement across partnerships is a key issue for multi-institutional provision. Quality management has to be addressed from the outset to develop commonly owned approaches and understandings of quality processes and requirements across the partnership.
• Partnership provision needs to include effective marketing and the support required to ensure maintenance of viable numbers through to the final stages of the qualification or programme.