How can we engage and enable our time-pressured teachers design rich blended and online courses (modules)? The European Commission’s Education and Training 2020 Strategy (ET2020) recognises the need to improve the quality and relevance of teaching and learning in higher education (HE), to modernise and digitise educational systems. We need to design future-looking, digitally rich, flexible courses (module), mobile-ready and attuned to students’ expectations for engaging, professionally related learning experiences (e.g. UK Open University “Innovating Pedagogy 2016”). Yet we know only a few pioneering academics currently have the design skills, technology knowledge and above all time to remodel their programmes to the creative standards they would like and the future of education demands. Deep sector change must by definition engage mainstream teachers, but course redesign processes, while effective, generally demand too much time and support to be scalable. This contradiction frustrates educational ambition at all policy levels. Recognising the need for a radical rethink, the highly experienced digital education team at University College London (UCL) developed high-energy hands-on learning design workshop locally called ABC with a focus on blended (ICT-rich) learning. The key to this approach is pace, engagement and collaboration. In just 90 minutes using a ‘rapid prototyping’ format teaching teams work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ outlining the type and sequence of learning activities (both online and offline) required to meet the course’s learning outcomes. ICTs, assessment methods, cross-program themes and institutional policies are all integrated into the process. Extensive testing at UCL and other institutions has shown high levels of transferability, academic enthusiasm and satisfaction. ABC to VLE has grown from that experience and is an ambitious transnational project to further test, refine and expand this rapid-design format in other institutions taking into account cultural issues, localisation and language, alignment with local institutional strategies and technologies, alignment with quality and other policies, diverse delivery and evaluation approaches and localised support capacity. The eleven partner institutions cover a broad range of contexts, representing ten countries, ten languages and a variety of supported educational technologies, meaning this project will provide outputs relevant to a large proportion of European universities, as well as being of benefit to those further afield. The primary outcome is the development of a learning design and staff development online/downloadable ‘pack’ including contents, and methods for localisation, training or cascading (i.e. run locally). The pack will be validated in three ways, firstly by co-development by the project team, secondly by longitudinal case studies by the project partners in their own educational contexts, tracking the intervention though development to the student experience in order to refine the process and thirdly by the initiation and engagement of a transnational community of practitioners who will use and feedback on the pack throughout the project. The inclusion of these multiple perspectives will enable the resources are adaptable across varied educational contexts and will ensure widespread impact.
The rapid move to online learning as a response to the Covid crisis in early 2020 underlined both the importance of learning design and the challenge of engaging mainstream teachers in this process. Traditional course redesign methods, while effective, demand too much time and support to be truly scalable. Well before Covid, this contradiction frustrated educational ambition at all policy levels. Recognising the need for a radical rethink, the digital education team at University College London (UCL) developed a high-energy hands-on learning design workshop locally called ABC Learning Design (ABC LD), with a focus on blended (ICT-rich) learning. The key to this approach was pace, engagement and collaboration. In just 90 minutes, using a ‘rapid prototyping’ format, teaching teams work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ outlining the type and sequence of learning activities (both online and offline) required to meet the course’s learning outcomes. ICTs, assessment methods, cross-program themes and institutional policies can all be integrated into the process. The Erasmus + ABC to VLE project aimed to provide guidance and templates to enable educational institutions across Europe and further afield to localise the method and link to the institutional virtual learning environment (VLE), or Learning Management System (LMS). The thirteen partner institutions involved in the ABC to VLE project were chosen to represent a broad range of contexts, including ten countries (UK, DK, BE, RO, HR, FR, FI, IT, IE, EE), ten languages (EN, NL, IT, HR, FI, RO, ET, DA, FR, SV) and a variety of institutional educational technologies (Moodle, Canvas, Fronter, eDidaktikum, Blackboard). Some had used ABC before and others were completely new to the approach. This ensured the project was able to provide outputs relevant to a range of European universities, and beyond. The primary outcome was the co-development and release of a learning design and staff development online/downloadable ‘Toolkit’ including a resource 'pack', and seven guides for localising, training and cascading the ABC LD method within local communities. The pack was validated in three ways, firstly by co-development by the project team, secondly by case studies by the project partners in their own educational contexts, tracking the intervention on the participant experience and thirdly by a releasing version of the Toolkit in early 2019. This encouraged the establishment of a a transnational community of practitioners, many from beyond the original project group. The inclusion of these multiple perspectives has enabled the resources to be adapted across varied educational contexts and has already ensured widespread impact. The project was able to respond to Covid by adding a section on online ABC for the 2020 version of the Toolkit.