Scaling-up technology-enhanced authentic learning across a university-wide curriculum innovation program

Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Authentic learning, enhanced by technology, is a curricular, pedagogical and assessment design approach that has been widely adopted in higher education and has led to positive educational outcomes. Building authenticity into learning activities, approaches and assessments can engage students with real-world problems, issues and analysis and allow them to connect to their discipline. These potential benefits are pronounced within placements, internships and work experience activities; however, these are commonly, and necessarily, enacted at smaller scales. Scaling up authentic learning activities can connect students in larger cohorts to disciplinary practices and enabled through technological affordances; however, implementing these projects requires a considered and collaborative approach across educators, designers and developers. This panel will discuss several initiatives in technology enhanced authentic learning implemented at scale, including inherent challenges and opportunities, and will be of broad relevance to university educators and third-space professionals.

Authentic learning can have significant benefits across a range of disciplinary contexts, but embedding authenticity into subjects and courses at larger scales can be challenging. Utilising the affordances of educational technologies can allow a scale-up of activities and assessments that are embedded in real-world contexts, using authentic datasets, documents and video media, or through virtual reality or simulations, but present their own challenges in implementation at scale that encompass not just technical aspects, but also factors relating to academic knowledge and capacity, institutional practices, and sustainability.  

Scaling-up innovative technologically enabled educational practice is not a simple, linear endeavour where, given sufficient resources, success is guaranteed (Bone 2022). Epistemic adjustments and shifts (Tsai et al., 2013) by teachers, as well as having a reasonable level of Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) (Saubern et al., 2020) are involved. Furthermore, educational settings are dynamic and multi-faceted, and learning itself is a complex socio-cultural process (Sabelli & Harris, 2015). These mean that each “scaling-up” endeavour in the university setting is not only challenging, but also distinct in its features though the objectives may be similar – for example, aiming to create positive learning experiences and outcomes for a large cohort of students through a set of technologically enhanced learning innovations.

The University of Melbourne’s Flexible Academic Programming (FlexAP) was a strategic initiative that aimed to (i) enhance the quality of teaching, learning and assessment; (ii) improve students’ learning experiences by offering flexible, additional study options (e.g. online/hybrid); and (iii) effectively utilise the University’s infrastructure and resources. To support the first aim, FlexAP provided funding and expert support to academics who wish to innovate within a single or set of subjects. As a part of the broader FlexAP project, the Foundational Curriculum Stream (FCS) supported subjects with over 200 enrolments, or clusters of subjects with a common focus of curriculum improvement that collectively enrolled >200 students). These projects received access to up to $40,000 of funding for academic time relief and support from the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE) and Learning Environments (LE). The FCS supported projects in three priority areas, with the Authentic Learning priority area seeking to improve the authenticity of student learning experiences by creating opportunities for authentic, real-world activities and assessments, in collaboration with external partners and practitioners as required, using models that are scalable to large cohorts.

This panel discussion brings together academic teaching and “third-space” staff who have worked on FCS projects in the past two years, to discuss key questions that reflect on our diverse experiences and learnings across different disciplines and learner groups, and highlight the new terrain in higher education that needs to be traversed. This panel discussion will be facilitated by an academic developer and held in a hybrid-enabled venue to serve online participants; a dedicated assistant for online participants will be appointed.