Page - 104 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

110 J.Cullen knowledge. ‘Employability’—a set of generic skills considered useful in employ- ment contexts, is embodied incoursedocumentation,moduledescriptors, andbuilt intorecordsofachievementortranscripts.Theemployabilityagendaisalsoreflected in a host of schemes andprojects aimed at creatingworking relationships between highereducation institutionsandemployers. Curriculum planning has largely gone down the outcomes led path, within a rational planningmodel. The ingredients of such amodel include a tight coupling between goals and objectives, curriculum and choice of instructionmethods, and assessment of learning andevaluation—consistentwith theviewof theuniverse as determinate and linear. As Knight (2001) observes, rational curriculum planning has a commonsense quality about it that fits well with the managerialism of the public sector. Such amodel, he suggests, is ill-suited to the complex learningwith whichhighereducationinstitutionsareconcerned.Complexlearningisindeterminate and non-linear. It calls for attention to the quality of the learning environment and learningcommunities.Curriculumplanningneeds tobeconcernedwith the spaces, interactions, experiences, opportunities and settings inwhich formal learning takes place. In such a processmodel, curriculum planning becomesmainly amatter of orchestrating good learning processeswith each other, the content (the topics that subject/areaexpertsidentifyasworthstudying), theavailablelearningtimeandother resources. The concept of the managed learning environment, it is argued, has changed froma timeandspaceboundsetting—the lecture room, seminaror tutorial and the laboratory—toamuchmorefluid settingwhich includes combinationsof real time learningandvirtuallearning;andformallearninginaninstitutionalsettingalongside othermodesof learning inworkplace, communityor simulated settings, andwhich includesmorefluidsocial relationsbetween teacherand learners. 7.3 Critique of the Influenceof Prosumerismin Higher Education In recent years, this critical view of the increasing trend towards centralising the studentexperienceas thekeydeterminantof ‘success’ inhighereducationhasbeen amplified to deliver a critique of ‘prosumerism’ itself. Amajor influence on this critiquehasbeenGeorgeRitzerwhoseseminalbookTheMcDonaldisationofSoci- ety, argued that principles of fast food restaurants have come to dominate virtu- ally every aspect of society (Ritzer, 1996).Ritzer identified fourmainprinciples of McDonaldization—predictability,calculability,efficiencyandcontrol—thatcharac- terise how fast-food restaurants operate but which can also be applied to a wide spectrum of social structures and processes. In higher education, these four prin- ciples, it is argued, have converted universities into ‘McBusinesses’, turning stu- dents intoconsumerswhobuydegreesmadeupofbite-sized, credit-ratedmodules, enslaving universities into competing with each other to top national and global