Working with E-Champions to Enhance Flexible Learning

 

Status: complete

Funding Initiative: Higher Education Academy

 

Description

Dr Simon Brown and Susan Patrick of the Faculty of Business, Sport & Enterprise at Southampton Solent University worked with BMAF on this project, funded under Discipline-focused Learning Technology Enhancement Academy 2009, an initiative from the Higher Education Academy to encourage departments/disciplines in their use of technology-enhanced learning.

The Faculty offers approximately 600 units across undergraduate, post graduate and professional courses, of these ten are blended. 

Champions have emerged on Fd Business (Blended Learning), and MA Business (Blended Learning) pioneering blended techniques closely supported by the University Learning Technology Unit.

These courses were originally developed for the British Army and, although small scale, are now delivered across the world. There are now students from a range of employers on both courses.  

Units on these blended courses have been very well received by students and external examiners.

Working with the Learning Technology Unit and through the Discipline-focussed Learning Technology Enhancement Academy, the Project supported e-champions on these two course teams to transform the units from very good to outstanding, ensuring that students are engaged and motivated to learn cooperatively and independently (Garrison and Vaughan 2008).

Through this support, units on these courses became university exemplars in blended learning and be disseminated across the university; there was particular focus on providing for the needs of new lecturers.

In addition to this, a ‘gold standard’ was developed for use across the University. This initiative was supported by the Dean of Learning and Information and Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, and had a high profile in the university.

Project Aims

  1. Improve blended units run by ‘e-champions’ on two courses from very good to outstanding
  2. Showcase exemplars of blended provision on the portal
  3. Identify and classify ‘gold’ standard blended provision so it can be used across the university.
  4. Develop workshop materials for dissemination for new lecturers
  5. Evaluate and produce lessons learnt to enable planning for future change in technology enhanced provision.

 

Project Deliverables

  1. Outstanding units on FD Business and MA Business (Blended Learning)
  2. Exemplars of outstanding provision on the portal
  3. Definition of gold standard blended provision
  4. Four new lecturer workshops
  5. Plans for two new blended courses developed

 

Start date

2009-10-01

End date

2010-12-31