Blended learning innovations to support

postgraduate dissertation students

Norah Jones, Heather Skinner and Haydn Blackey

University of Glamorgan

HIGHER EDUCATION ACADEMY CONFERENCE Harrogate July 2007

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ABSTRACT

Since October 2005 the University of Glamorgan’s Centre for Excellence in Learning and

Teaching (CELT) has supported initiatives to embed blended learning across all faculties.

Staff who wished to engage in blended learning could gain advice and support from the

CELT Blended Learning Team, the eSupport Team, and from their faculty Blended

Learning Champion. CELT also introduced a bidding process for internal resources to

develop innovative blended learning initiatives.

This paper discusses an innovation that was the first to successfully bid for these

resources and see the initiative through to successful completion. The bid to CELT was

for resources to assist the development of common material that would lead to the

completion of a full research proposal in readiness for one-to-one supervision, and which

would be available to support the dissertation process for all Business School students

enrolled on the final stage of their Masters degree.

Innovation was to be evidenced in both the new process by which the dissertation was to

be managed, and also in the nature of the module materials that were to be designed and

developed. This then also offered a template that could form the basis for a University-

wide approach to postgraduate dissertation support.

Keywords: Blended learning; postgraduate students; dissertation; innovation

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INTRODUCTION

Contemporary Higher Education Institutions (HEI) operate in an increasingly competitive

global marketplace fuelled by innovation and new technology, in a business and

management environment which is becoming increasingly reliant on knowledge

management and engaging intellectual capital (Byrne et al., 2002; Carnoy, 2000;

Cornuel, 2007; Drago and Hay, 2004; Hawawini, 2005; Mihhailova, 2006; Mok, 2003;

Thomas, 2007).

As educators, we must prepare our students for this world (Drago and Hay, 2004; Karns,

2005; Mok, 2003), while responding to its demands ourselves (Mok, 2003). This however

poses a number of challenges for HEIs, not least the need to continually improve the

quality of the education experience for students in order to meet the challenges of the

competitive environment, but also to do so in a way that responds positively to the

changing technological environment with which students are often more familiar than

ourselves.

Students are increasingly expecting a contemporary HEI to integrate learning

technologies into its operations. The new generation of ‘Homo Zappiens’ are growing up

in a digital age, are very familiar with new technology (Veen and Vrakking, 2007) and, in

many cases, more so than those educating them. Blended learning can no longer therefore

be treated as an ‘add-on’ or ‘bolt-on’ to traditional methods of teaching and learning if

the HEI is to remain competitive and provide a high quality contemporary educational

experience for students in current and potential markets.

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Educational internationalisation and the University of Glamorgan

The University of Glamorgan is situated near Pontypridd in the South Wales Valleys. It is

continuing to expand both its home and international operations, and currently attracts

over 21,000 students of which over 11% are international students. According to Ayoubi

and Massoud (2007) the University of Glamorgan is defined as an ‘International Winner’,

a category comprising 37% of all UK universities. As such, the University is one of 43

UK universities “that have a high loading of internationalization in their missions, and are

very active in doing international student business” (Ayoubi and Massoud, 2007:345).

Around 1.6 million students worldwide are currently estimated to be studying outside

their home countries (Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka, 2006). This import model of

“bringing the world to the school” (Hawawini, 2005:772) is the traditional way in which

HEIs managed the internationalisation process, internationalising curricula and

integrating overseas students into faculties previously dominated by home students

(Schoell, 1991). However, through advances in education technology, students may now

receive a UK education offered via a blended learning approach, while studying in their

home country (Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003; Haywood and Hedge, 2002) through an

export model of internationalisation that, in contrast, takes the school to the world

(Hawawini, 2005).

So while new learning technologies are being integrated into the learning environment for

on-campus students, one key advantage, at least for the HEI, is the ability to allow the

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institution to better serve international markets from a distance (Mercado et al., 2004;

Thomas, 2007). Almost 15% of all Glamorgan students study off-campus both in the UK

and overseas. In the context of the competitive globalised market for education, this

number of students would not be sustainable without the University taking a proactive

approach to integrating new learning technologies.

Blended learning and the University of Glamorgan

The United Kingdom ‘Department for Education and Skills’ (DfES) suggests “if

someone is learning in a way that uses information and communication technologies,

they are using e-learning” (DfES, 2003). However, it is also becoming increasingly

accepted to view the adoption of learning technologies as blended learning (i.e. blended

with traditional techniques) rather than as e-learning, which tends to have an attendant

tacit assumption that such courses are delivered either wholly, or mainly, online and are

therefore somehow different from traditional learning.

While the adoption of e-learning is now becoming more widespread, Oliver and Trigwell,

(2005) believe it has not been appropriately analyzed or conceptualized. Blended learning

has no one accepted definition (Ellis et al., 2007), and changes are happening in practice

prior to changes being evidenced in pedagogy (deFreitas and Oliver, 2005). Yet despite

this lack of conceptual resolution, and the challenges for pedagogic development,

blended learning is now deemed to be in its ‘second generation’, focusing on developing

students’ soft skills in comparison to ‘first generation’ e-learning’s focus on developing

the ‘hard’ technical skills needed to access the learning (Adams and Morgan, 2007).

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Bonk and Graham (2006) predict that more than 40% of courses will be blended by 2013,

and cite the University of Glamorgan as an example of accelerating growth in this area.

However, Bonk (2003:9) also warns,

“Unfortunately, while the constructivist revolutionaries have ventured onto the

battlefield of epistemological change, most have not provided practising

educators with the wherewithal to reconstitute and embed constructivist ideas

within their personal philosophies and teaching practices”.

To this end, since October 2005 the University of Glamorgan’s Centre for Excellence in

Learning and Teaching (CELT) has supported initiatives to embed blended learning

across all faculties. By providing support for such initiatives, the university through e-

learning has the opportunity to develop staff in a non threatening way by renewing

interest in learning and teaching. The University has also adopted a continuum of blended

learning which indicates the blend as the use of online medium increases from basic ICT

usage to intensive ICT usage (Figure 1).

Figure 1: University of Glamorgan’s Continuum of Blended Learning

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(http://celt.glam.ac.uk/Blended-Learning-at-Glamorgan/?c=about_BL)

The postgraduate dissertation at Glamorgan Business School

Supervised study is the “normal path for entry into the research and academic

community” (Johnston, 1995:281), and “the requirement to complete a dissertation or

major project remains a core feature of UK Masters awards” (Edwards, 2002:5). This is

certainly the case at Glamorgan Business School, where a dissertation module of 60

credits, common to all awards offered by the school, is required to be undertaken to

complete a masters programme of study (although this is subject to change during the

quinquennial review process for certain awards). While integrating learning technologies

at other stages of study is evident in many HEIs, the concept of ‘virtual supervision’ of a

masters’ thesis (Carberry et al., 2002) is not yet adequately explored in the literature,

although some advances are seen in the acceptance of e-theses by HEIs such as Robert

Gordon and Cranfield Universities (Bevan, 2005).

Understanding the quality of the student-supervisor relationship “as an important factor

mediating outcomes of the postgraduate research experience” (Styles and Radloff,

2001:97), the University of Glamorgan’s Business School was providing 15 hours of one-

to-one supervision for each of the 700 postgraduate students enrolled on the dissertation

stage of their masters’ degree. The Business School has a much higher proportion of

students studying off-campus than other faculties of the University of Glamorgan.

Around 50% of all the school’s postgraduate students study their entire programme

overseas, others return home for the dissertation stage even if they have undertaken

earlier modules on campus at the University or within our partner college network. As the

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School’s postgraduate programmes grow, and student numbers increase, this time

resource was not deemed to be sustainable. It was also recognised that offering some

common front-loaded taught support followed by less individual supervision could lead

to a more resource-efficient process with less duplication of effort for supervisors. This is

similar to the feedback gained by Edwards (2002) from supervisors of postgraduate

dissertations at Wolverhampton Business School who found some students were slow to

set up appointments with supervisors, and that some students’ research ideas and topics

were not “sufficiently clear” (p10) for the supervision to proceed fruitfully.

Moreover, at the time, off-campus students had access to dissertation support that,

according to our continuum of blended learning, was solely E-enhanced, where

traditional practice is supplemented with access to some online resources provided

through the virtual learning environment (VLE), Blackboard, such as announcements and

lecture notes on the web. On-campus students had access to dissertation support that was

both face-to-face, and E-enhanced. The innovation was also therefore aiming to enhance

the international student’s learning experience, and to deliver an enhanced, equitable and

consistent learning experience for all students, regardless of location,

Stages of project development

The initiative was to design an E-focused postgraduate dissertation course available for

all Business School students enrolled on the final stage of their Masters degree. The bid

to CELT was for resources to assist the development of 8 hours of common material that

would lead to the completion of a full research proposal in readiness for one-to-one

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supervision which would then only take 7 hours per student. Innovation was to be

evidenced in both the new process by which the dissertation was to be managed, and also

in the nature of the module materials that were to be designed and developed. This then

also offered a template that could form the basis for a University-wide approach to

postgraduate dissertation support.

An initial short proposal form was submitted to CELT by the Business School’s

postgraduate dissertation co-ordinator. Once this was accepted a more fully developed

proposal form was submitted for scrutiny by a committee of the University’s senior

management and representatives of CELT. The proposal was required to evidence

innovation in areas including delivery, assessment, feedback, or education management.

The proposal was submitted at the start of the 2005/2006 academic year, with a view to

commencing the project 1st December 2005. It detailed benefits to the university in terms

of resource savings due to the reduction in one-to-one supervision hours, benefits to the

University’s internationalisation agenda by the improved support for overseas students,

and benefits to the development of pedagogy in terms of blended learning. An additional

benefit was that a more fully developed dissertation proposal, containing an initial,

although necessarily brief, review of relevant literature, could also help detect plagiarism

by ease of accessing software as the proposal was to be submitted on-line via the digital

drop-box in Blackboard – a key benefit found at Cranfield where theses are submitted

electronically (Bevan, 2005).

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The materials were to be created in a Content Management System (CMS).

“Although the use of CMSs in higher education has increased rapidly … some

researchers argue that CMSs are promoted as ways to manage learners rather than

to promote rich, interactive experiences” (Kim and Bonk, 2006:26).

Given the rationale for the materials to be developed at all, and also given the nature of

the postgraduate dissertation as self-directed study, whose goals “include autonomy of

thought and action for the learner, increased self-efficacy and adaptability, and a

heightened awareness of and control over what, how, and why learning is achieved”

(Styles and Radloff, 2001:98), Kim and Bonk’s above comment, while not disregarded,

was deemed not to have negative implications for the project. Indeed, Kim and Bonk’s

(2006) survey into online teaching found that 27% of their 562 respondents believed that

use of CMSs would “increase most drastically in the next five years” (p25). Although the

Business School’s postgraduate dissertation co-ordinator had seen the CMS used in

courses offered by the University’s E-College, she had not had any previous experience

in creating or delivering materials within it. Therefore the project was resource-intensive

in terms of technical support, and required the following as part of the bid to CELT:

1. e-Learning Facilitation & Information Publishing - To ensure that the current e-enhanced content is developed into interactive learning materials.

2. Multimedia Development - To repurpose any multimedia resources already available for dissertation support

3. Systems Development & Support - To repurpose the underpinning technology of the ‘research guide’ to integrate it for a postgraduate environment

4. e-Resources Management - To provide resources which can be integrated into this course based on the Learning Resource Centre’s existing materials on Citation, e-Journal access etc.

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A target completion date was set for 28th February 2006, allowing three months from start

to finish, with evaluation due to take place 8 weeks following the materials ‘going live’

(Figure 2). As many of the materials were already available in hard copy, although from a

variety of sources, this timescale was deemed to be, and indeed was, achievable.

Figure 2. Proposed Action Plan Month

Action Points

Outcomes

1

Materials to e-Learning Facilitation & Information Publishing

Development of e-focused materials

1

Contact with e-resources Management

Appropriate resources identified

1

Contact with Multi-media team

Identifying appropriateness of existing multimedia systems

1

Contact with Systems Team

Identify appropriateness of existing infrastructure systems

2

Repurpose existing multimedia and infrastructure

Complete repurposing

3

Release course to students

Make material available to students

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5

Evaluate

Completed evaluation of programme after first 8 weeks.

Once the materials had been developed, it was then necessary to provide training to

supervisors within the Business School. This training covered the content of the

materials, in order that supervisors would know what was being made available to

students, and also the ways in which the new process for submitting proposals would be

managed. This was completed by the end of March 2006, by which time the majority of

full-time postgraduate students who commence programmes of study at the start of the

academic year had finished their taught modules and were ready to proceed to the

dissertation stage.

Students were informed by each scheme management team that additional materials were

now available to support this stage of their studies. Face-to-face sessions were made

available to those studying on-campus. This delivered the 8 hours of materials available

in the CMS (and accessed via the VLE) to help them prepare the dissertation proposal

itself. Off-campus students were informed how to access the materials as self-directed

study. This was done either by individual e-mails, or via an announcement on the VLE

(depending on scheme and mode of study, and at the individual choice of the relevant

scheme’s management).

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CONCLUSION

Evaluation of the initiative was undertaken in conjunction with a colleague from CELT,

and, while not everything ran smoothly, the overall evaluation was positive. A year on

from completing the materials the school no longer requires the resource input of one

person to be responsible for managing the postgraduate dissertation process across the

school. Each cohort of students is now introduced to the materials by members of their

own scheme team. Proposals are submitted by students to the digital drop-box in the

VLE. Proposals are logged by the administrative team in order to keep track of any

students not engaging with the process by the due date. Non-submissions are followed up

by either a member of the scheme team or the postgraduate student achievement

coordinator in the school’s Advice Shop. To date, 922 users have been enrolled and can

access the materials (although this number also includes the academic and support staff

involved in the process).

While the materials were initially designed to support students at the front-end of their

dissertation, these materials are also proving useful as a resource to support students

throughout the research process, as all information up to on binding and presentation of

the finished dissertation is available on the CMS, thereby not restricted in access to when

a student can discuss queries with a supervisor at an appointed time.

The template within the CMS is now available as a repurposable resource across the

University even if individual faculties wish to change certain content, and is providing

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best practice in managing the Glamorgan dissertation, and providing equitable support to

all students of the university regardless of place or mode of study.

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