Embedding Blended Learning in a University’s Teaching Culture: Experiences and Reflections Hugh Davis and Karen Fill

@ CSFIC 06 Who are we? Hugh Davis – PI on DialogPlus Project. From ECS. Head of Learning Technology Research Group. Recently University Director of Education (e-learning) Karen Fill – Educational Researcher employed by RGSE and based in Centre for Learning and Teaching. Two other D+ papers  Martin and Treves describe the School perspective on change  Durham and Arrell describe a particular Geographic outcome Our paper focuses on the institutional perspective.

@ CSFIC 06 What were the barriers?  Institutional  At Southampton/Leeds there is little (no?) central support for e-learning (educational delivery is a School matter)  The ethos of these universities is all about evidencing world class research.  Purchase of educational software unrelated to educational needs  School  Schools are charged with education, but have insufficient funds to experiment with changing the current methods (even though increasing class sizes have stretched these methods to their limit)  Reluctance to change (“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”).

@ CSFIC 06 Barriers (contin)  Teaching Staff  Teaching staff must keep research focussed  Occasional early adopters have set very high standards for others to achieve  Concerns about technical ability  Reluctance to change / not convinced that change will be improvement  Lack of a “library” of resources to start with  (I hope we have avoided the “fear of redundancy” rubbish)  Technical  Lack of Interoperability of LO’s  Non standard VLE’s  Authentication issues  IPR / DRM issues

@ CSFIC 06 What did we do?  Most importantly, recruited Heads of Schools as part of team (there was no steering group)  The HoS’s were able to conduct curriculum reviews to identify places that could benefit from blended learning  Employed teaching assistants to either implement innovations or cover teaching of those who would  We allowed Geographers to define Learning Objects/technology  Provided Learning Design Toolkit (scaffold)  Learning technologists into schools  Partnership with other schools provided validation (what was the US benefit?)

@ CSFIC 06 Did it work?  From an Institutional Perspective (Soton)  The culture in the School of Geography has changed (thanks also to the UKeU as well)  We have developed a model for helping those that want to change to change  We have embedded that model in our university learning and teaching strategy  DialogPlus cost JISC £500K at Southampton over three years. But now we have done that we believe we might be able to help another School repeat the process at maybe 30% of the cost…  From Geographer’s Perspective  See Martin & Treves and Durham & Arrrell  From the Student Perspective  Like all innovations, the student response is not uniform, and we need more time to evaluate the extent of improvements.  We have learned some lessons at the micro level about things that work and don’t.

@ CSFIC 06 Some things did not work  The US collaboration was not wholly successful  Sharing of learning resources was not widespread – but we learned a great deal about sharing courses/students

@ CSFIC 06 Will it last?  The change in approach in Geography at Southampton will most likely last (will it a Leeds?)  School now has curriculum that includes blended learning  School now supports 2 full time learning technologists  Will new activities be created?  The lessons learned at the institutional level are embedded in the e-learning strategy. We will attempt to repeat the exercise at our own cost.

@ CSFIC 06 Critical Success Factors  Active Involvement of Senior Management  Whole Curriculum Approach  Put Education before Technology  Funding models  Support at the point of need  Collaboration