Blended Learning Strategy

Principles of the VU Blend

Implementation of the VU Blend has a number of underlying assumptions and principles.

• Blended learning is established on a number of recognised pedagogic techniques, models and skills.
• Blended learning approaches should be selected that are appropriate within the context of the discipline, and at the whole-of-course level to ensure consistency in student experience.
• Learning materials should be fit for purpose and may include open education resources and materials developed internally.
• The VU Blend should optimise the impact of any face to face contact time.
• The VU Blend should enable flexible and mobile access to teaching and learning resources.
• The VU Blend implementation will support students and staff in the development of their digital literacies and identify other contingent work needed to ensure its success.

These principles are based on a tripartite relationship between capability, infrastructure and learning assets.

Outcomes

Successful implementation of the VU Blend will achieve a number of outcomes for students, staff, and the University.

Students

• Provides a learning experience that reflects contemporary uses and applications of technology.
• The ability to access interactive, networked and creative learning opportunities on and off campus.
• Improves and extends digital literacies.
• Enhances student engagement.
• Enables the increasing use of mobile technologies for learning.

Staff

• Reduces the amount of repetitive teaching.
• Opens opportunities for the use of publicly available content and resources.
• Provides access to data about student learning and engagement.
• Improves and extends digital literacies through engagement with authentic formal and informal professional development.
• Assists in the provision of greater consistency and responsiveness in the experiences of students.

The University

• Brings the institution up-to-date in the use of digital environments.
• Affords the opportunity for collaborative creation and sharing of resources.
• Develops a greater capacity to gather and utilise learning analytics data.
• Facilitates the potential to attract and retain students thorough the use of blended learning as a differentiating core teaching and learning strategy.
• Investigation of a Wow! factor to promote the VU brand and proposition.

Deliverables

The main deliverables from the VU Blend strategy are transformed units of study that reflect modern flexible learning opportunities for students. This in turn should lead to increased satisfaction, retention and throughput. As satisfaction increases it is hoped that net promotion and enrolment will also increase. The specific interim deliverables are:

The VU Blend overall

Staff support, development & communication

Systems & infrastructure

Governance, accountability & evaluation

Investigate the development of a Wow! Factor for new students

Challenges

Any transition process brings with it challenges in infrastructure, changing practice and capability. There are also challenges inherent in any curriculum and pedagogical models, including the status quo.

Blended learning places responsibility on the learner to work independently and students may not always be predisposed to the required self-regulation and management, or be immediately comfortable with technology based learning. Appendix 1 describes some approaches to blended learning.

Establishing best practice in blended learning requires careful choices about what materials, tools and approaches are utilised. It implies that unit and course redesign is required in order to optimise the blended learning approach, supporting techniques and curriculum organisation. This requires professional agility and development as well as the rational application of resources, along with local and institutional leadership.

There are also technological challenges for the institution and the user to ensure access to supporting systems, tools and infrastructure. Particular infrastructure challenges within the current VU operating environment include:

• the need to put learning analytics data in the hands of students and staff. This requires making operational the VU Collaborate (Brightspace) analytics module amongst other things
• the need to create a website that more strongly encourages students to enrol at VU and within that a creation of resources pages that encourage staff to access and use resources for blended learning
• greatly improving the technology infrastructure for students and staff including WiFi, Hardware and data access
• greatly enhancing the learning space infrastructure to create modern learning environments for structured and unstructured learning
• increasing the productivity and efficiency of VU as a whole through a systemic review of practice including the appropriateness of academic workload models for a future blended environment.

Project & risk management

Work needs to proceed quickly but carefully and stakeholders and community needs to be able to see evidence of early success before the end of 2016. A detailed risk matrix will be developed and maintained and then used as a working document.

A clear and present risk is that materials are created and provided online for students to
engage with without taking into account a corresponding need to manage the overall
structure and organisation of teaching and learning, leading to what is commonly called a
‘course and a half’.  

The best way to avoid this is to design the unit or course from scratch but in the absence of this, a staged approach is often advocated whereby technology and resources are provided to replicate in-class resources for use online, followed by enhancements to the blend where more significant changes to pedagogy are applied, before a transformation to the blend through requiring students to meet learning outcomes out of class.

There are many definitions of blended learning as well as the pedagogies and techniques that support them. What follows are some examples. VU will build its own catalogues of examples in practice over time.

Blended learning models

The most common definition of blended learning involves the use of online learning combined with face-to-face experiences. Some universities suggest that 30%-70% of the learning should occur online for it to be considered ‘blended’.

Victoria University is not mandating a ratio but regardless of the amount of online or on campus learning activity, the goal is to provide students with an integrated learning experience in which students have some control over the time, place and pace of their learning. There may also be opportunities to personalise learning through a choice of paths through the learning process.

Within these general requirements, there is a wide range of blended learning models and approaches, often broken down into a typology of six primary models.

Supplemented face-to-face models

Rotation models

Lab models

Flex models

Self-blend or 'a la carte' models

Online-driven models

It should be noted that blended learning is not simply moving current teaching materials online and expecting students to engage with them. It is a fundamental shift from lecture based instruction to student centred learning where technology is used to support active student learning rather than being seen as an end in itself.

Blended learning pedagogies & techniques

The key here is to choose applications, techniques and content that encourage and incentivise student engagement. We will build our own collection and showcase of examples over time.

As well as a wide variety of freely available resources and support materials available online, instructional materials for staff may be accessed such as the excellent blended learning essentials online course from FutureLearn - a 20 hour course over 5 weeks.

Entrepreneurial mindset

VU knows that preparing students for the future requires them to have an entrepreneurial mindset. As such it is prioritising entrepreneurship above, across and within the curriculum.

In his book, Dr Yong Zhao, Fellow of the Mitchell Institute, Victoria University & Professor and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education, University of Oregon says: 

“Massive changes brought about by population growth, technology, and globalization not only demand but also create opportunities for “mass entrepreneurship” and thus require everyone to be globally minded, creative, and entrepreneurial.

 

Entrepreneurship is no longer limited to starting or owning a business, but is expanded to social entrepreneurship, policy entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship.” 

Entrepreneurship panel discussion video

Entrepreneurship at VU

Learning Environments

Both the online and physical learning environments are critical to effective learning and teaching at VU and the Blended Learning Strategy.

Learning Environments sets the direction for, designs, and evaluates improvements in these spaces, and provides support for staff wanting to enhance the student experience through innovative use of these environments.

Further information

For more information on our Blended Learning Strategy, please refer to the VU Blend Frequently Asked Questions or contact the Learning Environments team. Download Victoria University Blended Learning Strategy and Operational Plan(PDF 243KB)