King's & Pearson on the impact of distance education
King’s College London last night cemented its new partnership with Pearson, the world’s leading education company, at a policy seminar examining the impact of distance education on the global higher education sector.
The event, chaired by Alison Goddard, Editor of HE, saw King’s President and Principal, Professor Ed Byrne joined on the panel by Rod Bristow, President, Core Markets, Pearson and Charles Clarke, former Secretary of State for Education, to discuss development opportunities for higher education in a globalised and digital age.
Professor Byrne argued that new provisions for distance learning allow real comparison in quality and richness to traditional on-campus programmes with distance education programmes steadily becoming part of the mainstream of the higher education sector.
He suggested that the maintenance of academic credibility is of the utmost importance, regardless of how the programme is delivered and that the new partnership will allow King’s to provide flexible, high quality programmes benefiting from the latest technological knowledge as well as additional pastoral support services.
Professor Byrne said: ‘We are pleased to be working in partnership with Pearson to deliver our new distance education programmes. Our partnership with Pearson means we will get high quality delivery of our programmes, benefit from the latest technological knowledge and receive additional pastoral support services for our distance education students.’
In his comments as part of the panel Rod Bristow said: ‘There is certainly no doubt in my mind that one of the factors behind the initial popularity of these two courses is the well-earned reputation that King’s College London has for providing learners with an outstanding education and world-class teaching and we are extremely privileged to be making this journey with such a respected partner.’
Recruitment for new courses is already underway with programmes beginning in early 2016 when students will be able to access the following post-graduate qualifications:
• Psychology & Neuroscience of Mental Health MSC (aiming to begin in March 2016 with recruitment already open)
• International Corporate and Commercial Law LLM (aiming to begin in May 2016 with recruitment already open)
Learners will benefit from the same outstanding quality of education as on-campus students; unlike traditional teaching however, students will be able to access learning at a time and location convenient to them, fitting their work around a job or changing personal circumstances. As well as having an assigned academic tutor, students will be able to have weekly 1-2-1 interactions with academics online, participate in discussion forums with fellow students and study using video lectures and guided reading lists.
Pearson provides online services to approximately 40 universities in the United States including Arizona State University, and has recently begun to do the same at Monash and Griffith, two major Australian universities. In total Pearson supports around 200,000 online course enrolments at higher education institutions around the world.
Note to editors:
For further information contact the Public Relations Department on pr@kcl.ac.uk or 0207 848 3202
For Pearson media enquiries please contact: Hannah.hawkins@pearson.com.
For further information about King's, please visit the King's in Brief web pages.
About Pearson
Pearson is the world's leading learning company, with 40,000 employees in more than 80 countries working to help people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives through learning.
Learn more at www.pearson.com/uk