The Great Pandemic Pivot – will universities invest to embed the lessons learned?
Covid-19, the worldwide lockdowns, and the closing of university campuses caused the great pivot from face-to-face teaching to fully online that has mostly endured throughout the last year. While this caused a huge degree of shock and stress across the teaching and student communities, it has brought the use of online learning technologies to the fore, and in many ways improved their use across the board. The hope is that what has been learned will become embedded in standard practice when we move back to the physical campus. However, unless universities are prepared to invest in staff development and support, there is a real risk that the lessons learned will be forgotten.
The Post-Pandemic Shift
Have you noticed? The Learning Design world is abuzz. Our feeds are peppered with blogs and articles talking about the impact of the Great Pandemic Pivot to online and the inherent shift to new and improved ways of teaching and learning. Teaching staff’s acceptance of online learning and digital learning technologies necessitated by the immediate shift from classroom-based teaching to fully online has given many of us the confidence that this acceptance will be sustained. After the move back to the classroom which we can anticipate coming with the start of the 2021-22 academic year, we could – potentially, hopefully – see the much-vaunted shift into blended learning taking place. Academic staff have learned to work in online spaces over the last year and will be much better placed to blend these technologies with their classroom teaching. Moreover, even those diehard in-person only teachers, who could never accept that online learning could be equal to face-to-face, have had to find ways to get their teaching online and of making that a positive, supportive, educational experience for their students.
Perhaps, truly, the opportunity is there for us to grab, and following the Great Pandemic Pivot, we can make real the Post-Pandemic Shift.
Active Blended Learning
A great example of what can be achieved was given in yesterday’s webinar hosted by ELESIG (Evaluations of Learners' Experiences of e–Learning Special Interest Group) focussing on the pedagogic shift undertaken at the University of Northampton into ‘Active Blended Learning’. This very well-articulated model ‘[…] combines sense-making activities with focused interactions (with content, peers and tutors) in appropriate learning settings – in and outside the classroom’ (University of Northampton 2020). The presentations during the webinar illustrated how the model aims to engage students in collaborative and practical activities in the classroom which are clearly linked to learning activities outside of the classroom, including structured use of the virtual learning environment for delivery of learning content and further student and teacher interactions. A really powerful element of this model is the emphasis on ‘active’, ‘Active Blended Learning means our students learn through activities which develop their subject knowledge and confidence in applying professional skills.’ (ibid.).
This kind of institution-wide implementation of a blended learning strategy could potentially be super-charged by the current need for online teaching and the hoped-for greater acceptance of online and blended learning arising from it. Northampton are ahead of the curve, given that, ‘The institution-wide pedagogic shift led to the redesign of all programmes and modules for ABL between 2014 and 2018. Extensive staff development was made available to support the process.’ (Armellini, Teixeira & Howe, 2021-a).
[NB: If you would like to know more about the Active Blended Learning approach I'd recommend the information website and paper on student perspectives of ABL cited above and in the reference list, as well as the same team's paper on staff perspectives (Armelllini, Teixeira & Howe, 2021-b)]
The Challenge
Therein, however, lies the challenge. The widespread uptake of online teaching does not necessarily mean that there is widespread implementation of best practices, and where Northampton were able to provide ‘extensive staff development’ in order to embed the ABL approach, this may not always be the case across the sector.
The chat box during the ELESIG webinar was a particularly active and interesting one, and one of the key questions asked by several participants was ‘how can universities support staff to effectively take on blended learning approaches?’. There are a lot of great ways this can happen: through staff development sessions, best practice sharing, buddying and mentoring, with the engagement of students in focus groups, curriculum planning sessions and collaborative creation. However, these all need resource to establish practices, coordinate training, facilitate buddying, etc. Moreover, these activities and the professional development of staff will best be facilitated through the active support of Learning Designers and Academic Developers with expertise in online, blended and technology-enhanced pedagogies. Further, for staff to be able to use the online tools needed to make the most of the possible blends, they will need training and support from Learning Technologists and TEL Support staff.
This kind of support takes investment. External consultants and experts can be brought in to enhance the university’s knowledge base and perhaps formulate an exciting new strategy for blended learning. However, this input will have short-lived impact unless it is also driven at enabling a talented internal team of support staff who can continue to ensure the lessons learned are carried through and strategic change becomes the new standard practice.
References
Armellini, A., Teixeira Antunes, V. & Howe, R. (2021-a). Student Perspectives on Learning Experiences in a Higher Education Active Blended Learning Context. TechTrends (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00593-w
Virgínia Teixeira Antunes, Alejandro Armellini & Robert Howe (2021-b) Beliefs and engagement in an institution-wide pedagogic shift, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2021.1881773
University of Northampton - Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (2020). Defining Active Blended Learning. http://www.northampton.ac.uk/ilt/current-projects/defining-abl/.