Blended learning 3.0: Getting students on board

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that smart technologies offer exciting potential for university teaching and learning. In this brave new world, educators are urged to discard traditional teaching methods, such as the lecture, and replace them with student-centred modes that incorporate digital technology, self- and peer-based teaching and online content. In the communications and media studies discipline, many educators have been incorporating new technology for 10 years or more. However, we tend to use technology to enhance existing Material and methods: effectively, we are still using the lecture-tutorial teaching model of last century. We are approaching the third decade of the 21st century, yet research shows that real technology-driven change to teaching methods has been slow to develop. This is for many reasons, including institutional lag in providing access to cutting-edge software and networks. More often cited is educators’ resistance, particularly in light of surveys in which students express dissatisfaction when blended or flipped classroom methods are introduced. I contend that the main reason for this dissatisfaction is about training: not of university staff, but of students, who we expect to automatically accept major changes to the way most have always been taught and assessed, without adequate explanation. Student training is part of what I see as the move to ‘blended learning 3.0’, in which we reassess what has worked and what has failed, on the way to revolutionising the way educators teach and students learn in 21st-century smart universities.