Pilot of a Blended Delivery Format in Accelerated Graduate Degree Programs
CONTEXT
Regis University's College for Professional Studies (CPS) has offered accelerated (8-week) undergraduate and graduate degree programs in classroom and online delivery formats for 32 years. In recent years the technology available to learners and faculty has changed the students' expectations for how and where they receive course work, and challenged (and changed) faculty's abilities to design and deliver curriculum that meets expectations and accreditation standards. Three years ago Regis University, CPS decided some form of blended courses and programs must be part of its curriculum delivery options. To that end CPS sought and received a grant from the Sloan-C Localness Initiative to "pilot" a blended delivery format in select graduate programs. The School of Management's (SoM) 12 course General MBA and the School of Education's (SEC) 12 course MEd in Principal Licensure programs were selected and the pilot was launched in July, 2009. The balance of this presentation provides insight into the decisions made and issues addressed by the CPS "blended implementation task force (task force) including a summary of results from the pilot. This task force was comprised of selected faculty from both schools (SOM and SEC), marketing, student registration, and operations and was charged with all aspects related to offering blended courses for Regis CPS.
PROBLEM APPROACH
The Regis University, CPS values and beliefs incorporates an "enterprise model" for teaching and learning. The enterprise model specifies that any course offered must have the same learning outcomes, regardless of three learning formats being considered. For example, a course that is to be offered in a blended format, a traditional classroom format, and a fully online format would all have the same learning outcomes, though the activities to accomplish the learning outcomes may different. However, the assessment strategies were the same for all three delivery formats. Both schools selected faculty to add to the course development team for their overall experience in teaching their course(s), and for their demonstrated proficiency in both classroom and online delivery. CPS' Department of Learning Design (DLD) was called upon to provide instructional design support. The first problem facing both schools and the instructional designers in providing a blending learning experience to students was the need to revise 12 courses in each program for the blended format while operating within the current course offerings environment, as well as rolling out/implementing newly revised blended courses to new students while course development process was still underway. An added challenge for the instructional designers was to assist the schools' course content experts in conceptualizing and navigating a virtual environment, and how to best integrate learning opportunities seamlessly between classroom and online for the blended delivery format. The SoM's initial strategy was to offer the blended courses at two satellite campuses thinking they would provide more flexibility to students and bolster enrollments at the satellite campuses. The SEC chose to implement its part of the pilot in cohort group at school sites. These decisions had a number of impacts on pedagogical and operational issues for blended delivery. The Sloan-C Localness Initiative grant committed the task force to a minimum of 12 hours of face-to-face classroom learner/instructor contact. This presentation addresses how the two schools chose to meet this requirement as well as how the accelerated eight week programs chose to allocate time and activities for the online and classroom blended sessions. The task force also needed to work with two markets to create awareness of the blended course sections: internally, with university departments, including faculty and staff; and externally, with prospective students. Internally, the implementation task force had to work within the university's existing Student Information System (SIS) to distinguish blended courses in the Course Schedule from the same courses already being offered in 100% online and in the classroom sections for learners and faculty. Externally, the implementation task force and CPS Marketing needed to consider how to best present blended delivery to potential students.
RESULTS
The task force experienced significant and unanticipated learning during the pilot as issues arose such as pedagogical issues, course design issues, and issues. The pedagogical and course design issues addressed how to clearly identify what materials and advance preparation learners needed for the classroom sessions so that they came well prepared to fully engage with the facilitator, peers and content. The operational issues addressed adding new courses codes and more-than-usual detail course descriptions for the Course Schedule. More importantly, faculty and learner issues addressed the need for more learner orientation to blended delivery. The task force's ability to respond to these issues was aided by student satisfaction surveys gathered specific to the blended delivery format. Additionally, faculty and learner interviews were conducted at various times during the offerings for both school's blended course delivery. This presentation will provide detail of those surveys and interviews. Both schools saw disparities between classroom and online versions of their programs more clearly and because of this process made the necessary adjustments to bring them into line with each other. The unexpected result learned was greater consistency of teaching and learning across all three delivery formats; blended, fully classroom, and fully online. Despite some initial struggle to adapt to the blended format, instructors for the blended format noted another benefit: a change in their teaching paradigm. Instructors' believe their new understanding of the relationship between what was being taught, how it was being delivered and assessed, and how students best learn began to inform their teaching, in the online and classroom formats, not just blended delivery. The task force discovered how these pedagogical, course designs and operational issues presented significant barriers to successfully implementing the blended course delivery format. It is felt that student learning and satisfaction were impacted by these barriers and this presentation offers solutions to barriers, and lessons learned when developing and implementing blended classes in an accelerated format.
