From values to quality enhancement: a hands on journey through technology-enabled course design and delivery

This highly practical, full-day workshop attracts academic and support staff in a variety of roles in further and higher education. The focus of the session is on strategies that enable positive change in moving towards design and delivery of blended learning courses in a UK university. Most of the session is hands-on, so you should expect to do quite a bit of work and interact with colleagues and facilitators throughout the day. The workshop is divided into four parts. The first part invites participants to engage in practical appreciative enquiry activities exploring values in teaching in tertiary education, and conceptions of the role of technology. It consists of three elements through which you (a) explore the value set that underpins your learning and teaching practice and the implications for a move to blended learning, (b) compare the contribution you see technology as playing in what you and your learners do, and (c) consider related staff development needs. To further explore the implications of such factors for successful change processes, we will share and discuss responses drawn from interventions at Northampton. The second part invites you, following a brief, to draft a storyboard for a specific campus-based course that is to be re-designed for delivery in blended learning mode. To encourage you to produce an exciting, student-centred storyboard, we will draw on previous research and examples of current practice at Northampton and elsewhere. Ideas for developing effective storyboards will be presented and shared. In the third part you will be invited to participate in a series of structured online peer observation activities. You will have the opportunity to undertake observation of practice on online courses designed on the principles explored in parts 1 and 2. The observation will be based around participant development interests and will revolve around teacher and learner activity online. Your own experience will be compared with those of participants in previous online peer observation of these courses. You will need an internet-enabled laptop for this component. The final section of the workshop offers participants an opportunity for consolidation and reflection on the lessons learned. It brings together the first three by synthesising, “warts and all”, the process of implementing these changes at Northampton, where quality enhancement and a shift to blended learning are of critical strategic importance in the context of the development of a brand new campus, opening in 2018. Workshop Objectives To illustrate and critique practical strategies of a change process designed to promote positive staff engagement in the necessary move to blended learning. To explore strategies fostering a positive, evidence-based attitude towards blended learning, capacity building and the redesign process that an institutional shift of this nature entails. To offer a practical taster of storyboarding as a means to conceptualising effective course redesign. To engage participants in using tools facilitating development through a participant-centred approach to online peer-to-peer observation. To conduct and reflect on peer observation of online teaching and student support as a lever for effective institutional capacity building and quality enhancement. Agenda (a) Exploration of developmental peer observation (b) Observation preparation, identifying development interests (c) Practical observation of practice on online courses.