There are no doubt that it is possible to change most courses into using more or different kinds of information and communication (ICT) tools. The difficult part is probably to know when it is relevant to do a change and how large development cost that is acceptable for a potential change. When working at a university that have reached more or less a steady state for the courses and programs where the courses and programs provided a specific year is mostly the same courses and programs as the previous year, the incitement (and the budget) to change something is low. Most updates to the courses and programs are done because to change something that doesn’t work that well from a learning perspective or to modernize the content.
To encourage at least some change of campus courses into blended courses that use ICT tools at our university, I therefore need to encourage the teachers to do it step by step. I therefore like the model proposed by the EdTech Team at City University London [1] where they classify different ICT approaches for blended learning in a framework with low, medium and high impact approaches. Low impact approaches are when an online activity is added to an existing part of a course. Medium impact approaches are when an online activity is replacing an existing part of a course. High impact approaches are when online activities are developed from scratch for a larger part of a course or when online activities are developed to replace a larger face-to-face part of an existing course. [1] By using this model it is easy to see that also small steps can start to transform a course.
The EdTech Team at City University London also provides a list of low impact approaches that can be used to support the course participants’ retention of the course material [2]. Two of these approaches that are easy to add (despite that they might be time consuming to implement) is to provide the course participants with text, video and audio resources before the scheduled sessions and provide the course participants with real world problems to discuss in online forums. We are already today providing the students with preparatory material before some scheduled sessions, so video and audio resources are only a new format. We are also, at least to some extent, providing the students with real world problems to discuss,, so online forums are also just a new kind of format. Why not use these methods to change something that doesn’t work that well from a learning perspective in courses?
[1] City University London. (2016). The blended learning design framework. https://sleguidance.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BL/pages/36962416/The+blended+learning+design+framework .
[2] City University London. (2016). Blended learning to support retention low impact approach. https://sleguidance.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BL/pages/36962659/Blended+learning+to+support+retention+low+impact+approach .