Using the new VLE for Promoting pedagogical Disruption: managing institutional change at scale [1836] Home : Annual Conference 2017

Public Group active 1 year, 4 months ago

Thu, Sep 7 2017, 1:00pm – 2:40pm
Authors: Diogo Casanova, and Linda Price
Room: Harold Wilson (2)
Theme: Wildcard
Type: 20-minute session

Description

One of the difficulties in advancing a university approach to TEL is to go beyond the noble, although often disconnected, educational technology innovations developed by TEL enthusiasts. Typically, these tend to lead to wide institutional variation in TEL instantiations and how they connect with the underlying institutional culture and policies – see, for example, UCISA TEL Survey (Walker et al., 2014). What has become clear is the need for sustainable approaches to developing TEL that link with underlying institutional culture, whilst also providing students with better educational opportunities and experiences.

This abstract presents our approach to delivering institutional innovation and managing that change at scale. We present our model for supporting the transition to a new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) – Canvas^tm. This was used as a catalyst for promoting pedagogical disruption and sustainable change. The TEL ‘Research to Practice’ Model is built around key Learning Design principles that we developed, underpinned by current TEL research (Basham et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2009) and key institutional priorities, such as consistency, transparency and accessibility in learning and assessment. We used templates to underpin these Learning Design principles and key institutional priorities as a way to promote the seamless acquisition of best pedagogical practices by our own teaching staff, with the lowest effort possible. Staff training on the new VLE was designed to help module leaders build content and activities using the new templates. We argue that by introducing those templates we promoted a positive pedagogical disruption to the way our teaching staff were designing learning in the VLE.

Our experience shows that by adopting such an approach, that combines research evidence with key institutional priorities, we are able to positively impact on institutional teaching practices at scale. It enables support for innovative VLE pedagogy and evolution of institutional policy that supports such changes (Marshall, 2010). An initial impact of this initiative is a narrative of consistency between different modules in the same programme. Students are now able to easily identify all the assessments, reading lists and learning outcomes consistently across their entire programme of study This consistency has led to new institutional policies regarding module guide/handbooks, external examiner processes, and more coherent assessment practices across the entire university.

REFERENCES

Basham, J. D., Smith, S. J. and Satter, A. L. (2016) ‘Universal Design for Learning: Scanning for Alignment in K–12 Blended and Fully Online Learning Materials’, Journal of Special Education Technology, SAGE Publications Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA, 31(3), pp. 147–155.

Marshall, S. (2010) ‘Change, technology and higher education: are universities capable of organisational change?’, Research in Learning Technology, 18(3), pp. 179–192.

Walker, R., Voce, J., Nicholls, J., Swift, E., Ahmed, J., Horrigan, S. and Vincent, P. (2014) 2014 Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning for higher education in the UK, Oxford, [online] Available from: http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/~/media/groups/dsdg/TEL Survey 2014_29Sep2014.

Williams, K., Kear, K. and Rosewell, J. (2009) Quality assessment for e-Learning a benchmarking approach, 2nd ed. Heerlen, The Netherlands, European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU).

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