Fostering professional capacity for blended teaching and learning

A case study exploring the affordances of collaborative unit redesign

Abstract

Blended learning (BL) in higher education (HE) has for decades been considered a transformative way for universities to reach a wider range of students, increasing equity and availability to meaningful learning experiences. However, there is little in the BL literature around teaching academics and instructional designers’ experiences and perspectives on BL. This case study explores collaborative redesign through the reflections of a team comprising an academic Unit Chair, Learning Designer, and a Sessional Lecturer. It illustrates how a collaborative BL redesign process strengthened a unit that in 2022 had been deemed to be unsuccessful, and built educator capability through professional learning (PL). The result was a pedagogical and learning shift, which led to the unit’s successful delivery for online and on campus students in 2023. The findings have implications for BL and insight into collaborative design team experiences offering value to the academic community at large and foregrounding the value of pursuing a ‘ground-up’ collaborative BL redesign model.