While protecting consumer rights is hardly a new idea, it’s not something that has historically been seen as relevant to higher education. But that’s now changed: the shift to students paying tuition fees has seen the introduction of new consumer-protection legislation, along with increased scrutiny of the HE sector from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

In order to enable universities to deliver essential consumer-protection training flexibly and cost-effectively, Cylix is working with De Montfort University to develop an innovative new eLearning course entitled Protecting Students’ Consumer Rights. This will explore what consumer protection means in a HE context, why it’s so important, and key dos and don’ts for staying on the right side of the law.

Incorporating extensive HE-based case studies to explore how the law applies in practice, the course will have a total run-time of 50 minutes and will comprise the following four main sections:

Students as Consumers introduces

• what we mean by consumer rights
• the reasons why consumers need protection – both in general and in higher education
• the safeguards that have been put in place to protect consumers

What the law says explores the main consumer-protection provisions and rights relevant to HE, as defined in

• the 2015 Consumer Rights Act
• the 2013 Consumer Contracts Regulations (information, cancellation, and additional charges)
• the 2008 Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations

How this applies to you looks at how staff can comply with consumer-protection law in the three core areas of

• providing information
• defining terms and conditions
• handling complaints

Test your knowledge is a comprehensive mastery test to check retention and understanding of key points. On successfully passing the test, users will be able to download a personal course-completion certificate.

The course is being developed in Cylix’s groundbreaking new HTML 5 framework, so it will run on a broad range of computer systems and devices, including iPads and Android tablets. Universities will be able to deploy the course through any SCORM-compliant learning-management system, such as Moodle or Blackboard, enabling administrators to track and report on usage for audit purposes. Cylix can also provide a hosting service when a suitable learning-management system isn’t available.

Cylix is due to launch Protecting Students’ Consumer Rights in December 2016 and will be offering free evaluation access to the course then. Any university wishing to review the course should contact Cylix.