Supporting the Development of Blended Learning; with a focus on Communities of Practice

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Supporting the Development of Blended Learning
with a focus on Communities of Practice 

• Mark Stone, HELP CETL Director
• Higher Education Learning Partnerships
• Centre for Excellence in Teaching Learning
• m2stone_at_plymouth.ac.uk
• Quality Network Day
• Elfordleigh Hotel, Plympton, Plymouth
• Friday 16th June 2006

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Capacity building approaches

• Working together to improve the student
  experience by
• developing and recognising staff
• enhancing infrastructure and resources
• supporting regional development employability
• sharing good practice, through
• dissemination
• collaborative research development
• promoting scholarship and research

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Key activity strands

1. CPD Fellowship Awards
2. Development Activities
3. Communities of Practice
4. External collaboration
5. Dissemination recognition

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1. CPD Fellowship Awards

• 21 Holders from 1st round 2005-6
• Continuing Professional Development Awards CPD
  lt 3,000
• Fellowship Awards lt 10,000
• 2nd round launched in Feb 2006
• Building a cohort and cadre
• Building from last year
• Other awards and activity

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CPD Awards

• Awards to facilitate academic and support staff
  in work that will enhance their professional
  development
• The majority of the CPD Award should be spent on
  personal development
• Work done should be aligned to CETL Communities
  or Development Activities

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Fellowship Awards

• Enhance the quality of learning and teaching for
  a Subject Forum
• Develop materials or ideas that can be applied by
  colleagues more widely to enhance the student
  experience
• Result in scholarly outcomes including
  publications or conference presentations
• lt 20 of the Fellowship Award should be
  used for personal development

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2. Development Activities

• Development Activities DAs are work packages
  targeted at taking forward UPCs strategic
  mission
• Development Activities along with the work of
  CETL Award holders have been grouped within a
  Community of Practice CoP framework
• DA work package leaders will be publicising
  participation opportunities from 2006

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3. Communities of Practice

• The CETL is working to support new and emerging
  communities to research their practices and to
  share disseminate activities learning
  materials within the region and beyond
• The aim is facilitate both groups and networks to
  become more effective physical and virtual
  Communities
• Initial work on technological tools

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Blended Learning Communities of Practice

• Subject and thematic based communities e.g.
  Blended Learning Work based learning
  Collaborative Curriculum Design in Tourism and
  Hospitality A shared development activity
  covering FD and University stage 1/2
  collaborative flexible curriculum design
• Subject Convener in Sport part of a trial to
  take forward the working of regional partnership
  Subject Forums - looking at Re-usable
• Learning Objects RLOs

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4. External collaboration

• Other CETLs HE in FE Consortia
• HE Academy HEA Subject Centres e.g. HLST /
  Escalate / ADM
• Foundation Degree Forward FDF
• Other national projects

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5. Dissemination recognition

• Recognising existing and developing expertise
  excellence
• Building capacity in educational research and
  scholarship
• Facilitating the sharing and dissemination of
  knowledge, experience and outputs
• Use of assistive technology CoPv
• Event contribution and attendance

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Key Contacts

• Julie John not yet started
• UPC e-learning Co-ordinator
• julie.john_at_plymouth.ac.uk
• Nick Davy Barry Smith
• HELP CETL Community of Practice Developers
• nrdavy_at_hotmail.co.uk / barry.smith_at_cornwall.ac.uk
  
• Chris Smart
• HELP CETL Operations Manager
• cjsmart_at_plymouth.ac.uk