Exploring Active Blended Learning Through the Lens of Team-Based Learning

This chapter showcases how the collaborative learning and teaching strategy known as Team-Based Learning™ (TBL) can deliver against the conceptual components within active blended learning (ABL), through exploration of different case studies from the authors' university. It begins by detailing the core concepts and theories underpinning each pedagogic approach before considering how adoption of TBL is consistent with the wider implementation of ABL. Case histories are used to highlight how these approaches enhance the student learning experience and how learning technologies can enable staff to do more of what they value within the classroom. The value of different learning spaces to facilitate TBL and augment the learning experience for both staff and students is considered. Finally, the chapter explores some of the more difficult questions around the lack of broader uptake of TBL within an institution committed to ABL as its standard approach to learning and teaching.

Making Class Time Count

This case study describes the ‘semi-flipped' redesign of an undergraduate Introductory Management Accounting module with a large cohort, using a newly refurbished ‘collaborative lecture theatre' at a large English research-intensive university. The chapter outlines the affordances of the collaborative lecture theatre and explains how these were used to promote the active application of theories and techniques in small groups during redesigned lecture sessions. The case considers the approach, design, practice, and space, and includes pedagogies readily transferable to other disciplines. The chapter considers the evaluation of the collaborative lecture theatre and the module redesign from staff and student perspectives. It identifies current challenges relating to the topic in the institutional context and concludes with recommendations and solutions for other institutions wishing to reconfigure spaces to promote active learning approaches.

Becoming Blended

‘How Many Ways Can an Articulate Alien Analyse an Animated Robot?' is a performative, becoming-blended, active learning lecture that has evolved into one modelled on the principles of active blended learning. The author assembles the thinking of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Paulo Freire, and bell hooks, amongst others, to create a discussion about how working with students actively, collaboratively, and in modes of blended delivery can enhance critical thinking and student engagement. The structure of this chapter echoes the way the lecture is organised, as in a three-act play. This enables a form of immersive experience, as the acts and actions of the lecture, dissected throughout the chapter, unfold.

Increasing the Visibility of Graduate Students' Employability Skills

This chapter highlights the contributions of the EPICA project in reducing the skills gap of graduate students in sub-Saharan Africa. It presents the solution designed and implemented to improve the quality of employability skills development and visibility to prospective employers. The first part of this chapter provides an overview of the skills gap between higher education institutions and the workplace in sub-Saharan Africa. It includes the description of the specific eAssessment pedagogical framework and methodology supported by the EPICA ePortfolio as a transition tool designed to address this gap. The second part of the chapter outlines the challenges that could hinder the solution's implementation and the full exploitation of its benefits. Solutions and recommendations are also discussed with the aim to increase the impact in the EPICA stakeholder community and encourage the implementation of the proposed solution in other universities, especially those adopting blended and online learning models.

Employability in Practice

The Employability in Practice initiative at Anglia Ruskin University aimed to develop employability in the curriculum as one dimension of the university's strategic commitment to active learning. A team of academic leads for employability (ALEs) was appointed to advocate applied and authentic learning, with responsibility for supporting all undergraduate course teams to redesign their programmes. The team became a key part of the wider development group supporting the rollout of the active curriculum framework through a programme of course design intensives (CDIs). To articulate employability as a dimension of active learning, the ALEs developed a design framework reflecting a set of graduate capitals. Using this, the ALE team produced a diverse range of tools for engaging academics, personal development tutors, and students. The chapter reflects on the ‘symmetry' and the compatibilities found in the active learning and employability agendas.

Reciprocal Empowerment Through Remote Service Learning

This chapter presents a novel pedagogical approach of “remote service learning” (RSL), which was applied in an undergraduate health degree program at an Austrian university. Remote service learning is a form of active blended learning that combines academic learning with practical experience and social commitment, using a range of tools and methods from online didactics. Drawing on emancipatory pedagogies such as transformative learning, an RSL-focused course pursues the ambitious goal of promoting reciprocal empowerment, that is, the promotion of mutual educational processes. “Reciprocal” refers to all stakeholders involved in the course, directly or indirectly: university students, the local community, the Austrian NGO, and the educator. Survey and qualitative data results have shown that the fundamental triad of learning, acting, and reflecting in remote service learning not only leads to a deeper understanding of the course content and discipline but also increased self-awareness, empathy, and a heightened sense of the highly complex social realities in different parts of the world.

Active Blended Learning at Scale

This chapter analyses the deployment of active and blended approaches to course design and teaching across one of the largest writing programmes in the British higher education sector. The programme, which teaches and assesses 12,000 students per academic year, adopts an entirely active and blended approach to all elements of its design. This chapter presents the pedagogical underpinnings to the programme, a case study of how the programme has been deployed, and discussion of some key challenges. The chapter establishes that active and blended learning approaches were central to the success of the programme, and that without such pedagogical designs the programme would have failed to meet its essential requirements.

Measuring the Success of Active Blended Learning

Active blended learning (ABL) is a defining aspect of the University of Northampton and has generated national and global interest. Within a few months of the author taking up a senior leadership position with the university, ABL was a significant positive factor in the university's ability to lock down the campus in response to COVID-19 and deliver education remotely. However, there is a scarcity of evaluation of ABL to provide evidence of the scale of its adoption in the university, its forms in different academic disciplines, its impact on different groups of students, and how to improve its effectiveness. Ideally, evaluation is always integral to pedagogic initiatives. It is however a reality that evaluation comes with challenges. This chapter explores why evaluation is so important and also so difficult. It proposes a way forward in the context of ABL by combining nationally available metrics with small-scale case studies.

Active Blended Learning in an Undergraduate English for Academic Purposes Program

This chapter presents a multi-method qualitative study of an active blended learning (ABL) activity in an undergraduate English for academic purposes program at a North American university. The purpose of the study was to understand how instructors facilitated ABL in five online book clubs. The community of inquiry (CoI) framework is used to analyze the comments and posts in the book clubs. This data is discussed with data from interviews with three case study students and four book club instructors and data from a CoI student survey. The findings indicate that instructor book selection, questions, scaffolding strategies, modelling, and manner significantly mediated student perceptions regarding their engagement, participation, and interaction in the ABL activity, specifically whether students scaffolded each other's learning, read extensively, and practised academic reading strategies. Implications of how instructor pedagogy mediated student perceptions about their participation and learning in the ABL activity are then presented.

Optional Learning Activities for Personalising University Courses

This chapter focuses on a specific, simple strategy to foster active blended learning, a pedagogical approach that values flexibility. The author discusses the use of optional learning activities (OLAs) in graduate courses as a strategy to enable the customisation of the learning pathway and the effective incorporation of formative assessment. A sample of 68 former Master's and doctoral students, who engaged with OLAs, answered an online survey. Their views were predominantly positive. Participants agreed that OLAs promote active, personalised learning, and considered them motivating. Moreover, the number of OLAs completed positively and significantly correlated with final grades. OLAs represent a simple, low-investment way to create engaging, personalised courses. These activities empower students to explore their own interests in a structured, meaningful way. Recommendations for practice are described.