Blended Learning (BL) offers advantages for all the stakeholders involved in the educational process (students, teachers, management), and has a positive impact on the quality of students’ learning and degree of knowledge acquisition [1] [2]. It is an institutionalized methodology with respective implementation policy and learning approach implications, although assessing the quality of BL (QBL) remains a complex task [3] [4]. Developed in a partnership of currently 18 European universities (EIT Digital Network), the EIT Digital Master School offers education not only in the technical major components of its master programmes in ICT but also in an Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) minor, which counts for 30 ECTS (European Credits Transfer System) in the 120 ECTS master programmes. To harmonize the I&E education across the network of universities, enhance pedagogical cooperation and enable distribution of pedagogical material among partner universities, the best teaching materials, co-designed and co-produced by partners, constitute a data-base of online contents made available through a common repository [5]. In a BL approach, the shared contents constitute the online component of the I&E courses taught by each partner university and is combined with face-to-face (F2F) pedagogic activities, employing different BL models (flipped class, online pre-packaged content, independent learning, etc.). Online contents are organized in sets of around 5-10 min videos, which teachers can select, combine and package in various ways, in accordance with the needs to structure and deploy their I&E courses. The same online content is available for all universities, but their combination and the blending models applied depend on the courses, allowing for a level of differentiation on top of the harmonized online contents. This context of networked partners using shared online contents, with the opportunity to employ different BL models, has led EIT Digital to conduct a set of experiments and define a quality framework to assess the learning impact of BL models implemented in I&E education and provide insights on how to select and/or improve these models. To have comparable results and share lessons learned, the EIT Digital partner universities have conducted experiments based on a common frame for setting them up and for reporting the experiments’ results. Drawing upon this methodology, the paper describes an approach to define a framework - based on four components efficiency, effectiveness, impact and scalability - to assess the courses QBL in a pan-European network of universities. Moreover, the paper explores how to valorize the collected results for improving the quality of BL models and methods used in the courses. Such findings may be relevant in the context of other European Universities networks - sharing similar characteristics - as an approach to leverage the value of such networks for increasing the education quality.
Blended Learning: quality framework for a pan-European universities network / Guri, G.; Renouard, F.; Pisoni, G.; Marchese, M.; Vendel, M.; Wetters, Akos R.. - (2019), pp. 5254-5262. (Intervento presentato al convegno EDULEARN19 tenutosi a Palma de Majorca nel 1st-5th July 2019) [10.21125/edulearn.2019.1291].
Blended Learning: quality framework for a pan-European universities network
G. Guri;G. Pisoni;M. Marchese;M. Vendel;
2019-01-01
Abstract
Blended Learning (BL) offers advantages for all the stakeholders involved in the educational process (students, teachers, management), and has a positive impact on the quality of students’ learning and degree of knowledge acquisition [1] [2]. It is an institutionalized methodology with respective implementation policy and learning approach implications, although assessing the quality of BL (QBL) remains a complex task [3] [4]. Developed in a partnership of currently 18 European universities (EIT Digital Network), the EIT Digital Master School offers education not only in the technical major components of its master programmes in ICT but also in an Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) minor, which counts for 30 ECTS (European Credits Transfer System) in the 120 ECTS master programmes. To harmonize the I&E education across the network of universities, enhance pedagogical cooperation and enable distribution of pedagogical material among partner universities, the best teaching materials, co-designed and co-produced by partners, constitute a data-base of online contents made available through a common repository [5]. In a BL approach, the shared contents constitute the online component of the I&E courses taught by each partner university and is combined with face-to-face (F2F) pedagogic activities, employing different BL models (flipped class, online pre-packaged content, independent learning, etc.). Online contents are organized in sets of around 5-10 min videos, which teachers can select, combine and package in various ways, in accordance with the needs to structure and deploy their I&E courses. The same online content is available for all universities, but their combination and the blending models applied depend on the courses, allowing for a level of differentiation on top of the harmonized online contents. This context of networked partners using shared online contents, with the opportunity to employ different BL models, has led EIT Digital to conduct a set of experiments and define a quality framework to assess the learning impact of BL models implemented in I&E education and provide insights on how to select and/or improve these models. To have comparable results and share lessons learned, the EIT Digital partner universities have conducted experiments based on a common frame for setting them up and for reporting the experiments’ results. Drawing upon this methodology, the paper describes an approach to define a framework - based on four components efficiency, effectiveness, impact and scalability - to assess the courses QBL in a pan-European network of universities. Moreover, the paper explores how to valorize the collected results for improving the quality of BL models and methods used in the courses. Such findings may be relevant in the context of other European Universities networks - sharing similar characteristics - as an approach to leverage the value of such networks for increasing the education quality.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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