Professor Alejandro Armellini@alejandroaAle.Armellini@northampton.ac.uk

Pedagogic innovation for teaching excellence: a strategic approach to enhancing teaching quality in higher education

Plan

1. Principles2. Quality enhancement3. Raising the VLE bar4. Pedagogic innovation (or absence of it)

a. Flipping right!b. MOOCs

5. Conclusions

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Principles

• Quality of teaching central to the quality of the student experience

• Transformational learning experiences can be achieved through inspirational teaching

• Knowledge and learning are open, mobile, connected and scalable

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Quality enhancement

Deliberate steps at provider level to improve the quality of students' learning opportunities.

Quality assurance generates information for quality enhancement to take place. Enhancement is a routine part of the way that higher education is managed.

(QAA, 2014)

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Gathering of robust

information for systematic QA

Systematic analysis at

strategic level

Identification of good practice and areas for improvement

Deployment of enhancement

initiatives

Initiatives result in

actions that impact on the

quality of learning

opportunities

Enhancement process

monitored

5(Adapted from QAA, 2014)

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Level Focus Key features

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VLE design benchmarks

VLE design benchmarksLevel Focus Key features

Foundation Delivery Absolute minimum expected Course information, handbook and guides Learning materials

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Level Focus Key features

Foundation Delivery Absolute minimum expected Course information, handbook and guides Learning materials

Intermediate

Essential in all ‘blended’ courses

Participation In addition to ‘Delivery’: Online participation designed into the course. Tasks provide meaningful formative scaffold. Online participation encouraged and moderated, but not

assessed.

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VLE design benchmarks

Level Focus Key features

Foundation Delivery Absolute minimum expected Course information, handbook and guides Learning materials

Intermediate

Essential in all ‘blended’ courses

Participation In addition to ‘Delivery’: Online participation designed into the course. Tasks provide meaningful formative scaffold. Online participation encouraged and moderated, but not

assessed.

Advanced

Essential in all fully online courses

Collaboration In addition to ‘Delivery’: Regular learner input designed into course & essential

throughout. Online tasks provide meaningful scaffold to formative and

summative assessment. Collaborative knowledge construction central to a productive

learning environment & part of assessment.

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VLE design benchmarks

Level Focus Objective

Foundation DeliveryCOMPLIANCE (or REPOSITORY!)

Intermediate Participation ENGAGEMENT

Advanced Collaboration ACTIVE LEARNING

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VLE design benchmarks

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The resource is not the course

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Content dump vs learning pathway

Trawl through stuff vs use a scaffold

Hidden learning outcomes vs explicit alignment

Push content vs engage

Upload vs design

Resource vs course

Deliver vs teach19@alejandroa

Task 1What do these four concepts have in common?

1. Over-promises and under-delivery

2. Relentless optimism

3. Innovation

4. Potential

Innovation

“A new idea or a further development of an existing product, process or method that is applied in a specific context with the intention to create a value added”.

(Kirkland and Sutch, 2009)

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What exactly is pedagogic innovation?

Definitions in the literature are:

– Lacking: people write about innovation without ever stating what it is

– Vague or recursive

– Mistaken. For example, using technologies in learning and teaching activities is not per se a pedagogic innovation

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Task 2

With a friendly neighbour, define “pedagogic innovation”.

Note: avoid using the terms you’re defining in the definition itself.

Pedagogic innovation

“Adapting to characteristics of students and responding to their development is an inherent aspect of pedagogy. […] These adaptations can be considered innovations if are based [sic] on a new idea and when they have the potential to improve student learning, or when they are linked with other outcomes […]”

(Vieluf, Kaplan, Klieeme & Bayer, 2012)

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Pedagogic innovation

“What is an innovation in one education system may be well-established practice in another; what is appreciated as an improvement may be rejected elsewhere.”

(Vieluf et al., 2012)

Task 3With your friendly neighbour (or with a different one!) consider whether or not “the flipped classroom” constitutes “pedagogic innovation”.

If it does, indicate one pedagogic innovation criterion the flipped classroom meets.

If it does not, indicate your reasons.

To flip or not to flip?

Pre-session cognitive

exposure – multimedia resources

F2F session: analysis,

discussion, reflection & goal

setting

Post-session online work:

consolidation & evaluation

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Pre-session cognitive

exposure – multimedia resources

?

F2F session: analysis,

discussion, reflection & goal setting

Post-session

online work: consolidatio

n & evaluation

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Digital resources

Tasks for sense-making

Analysis, discussion, reflection & goal setting

Consolidation & action planning

ONLINE & F2F ONLINE & F2F

FACE TO FACE

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Task 4Now consider whether or not MOOCs are “pedagogically innovative”.

If they are, indicate what pedagogic innovation criteria MOOCs meet.

If they are not, indicate your reasons.

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Are MOOCs pedagogically innovative?

Survey of 106 education professionals involved in MOOCs:

Armellini & Padilla (JIOL, forthcoming)

Armellini & Padilla (JIOL, forthcoming)

Key features of MOOCs

Armellini & Padilla (JIOL, forthcoming)

MOOCs are pedagogically innovative (15.1%)

• Failed to justify, define pedagogic innovation or identify criteria

• Confused innovation with novelty or enthusiasm

• Identified other forms of innovation in MOOCs (e.g. scope, scale) but couldn’t make claims of a pedagogic nature

• “Potential”

Armellini & Padilla (JIOL, forthcoming)

MOOCs are not pedagogically innovative (84.9%) - part 1

• Traditional• Content-centric: “shovelware”• Glorified resources: MOORs• Technologically flamboyant (when things work)• “MOOCs in themselves are not pedagogically

innovative, but with some imagination they could be helpful”

Armellini & Padilla (JIOL, forthcoming)

• An innovation in marketing, not in pedagogy• Regressive, anachronistic, chaotic• Cost-cutting devices, masqueraded as

‘democratic’, ‘open’ and ‘free’ courses• Over-hyped, low completion, low value,

disposable, no recognition, quality assurance or rigour

• cMOOCs seen more positively than xMOOCs

Armellini & Padilla (JIOL, forthcoming)

MOOCs are not pedagogically innovative (84.9%) - part 2

Task 5Find your friendly neighbour again and consider these two questions:a. Think of your autobiography as a student. Share an example of pedagogic innovation, which you experienced as a learner.

b. Share one criterion that, in your view, innovative pedagogic practice in HE should meet or exceed.

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Old wine in new bottles? Task 6

Old wine

Learners generate content as homework, which is used creatively in the following seminarCourse in a (digital) box

Talk to your classmates

New bottles

Flipped classroom

xMOOC

Social learning

Learners bring their books and pencil cases (among many other technologies)Loops of personalised assessment for learning & feedbackStudy on the bus or train, on campus or at homeTeaching methods

Bring your own device (BYOD)

Dynamic assessment

Mobile learning

Pedagogies

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Task 7: next steps

What will your next pedagogic innovation be?

(be very specific!)

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“Now please redesign your course _____”:

…For employability…For WBL…To include more technology-enhanced learning…For Team-based learning…For blended learning…So we have an online version of it…To meet the new institutional challenges and priorities

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Redesign as a habit

• Pedagogic innovation is the exception, not the rule.

• There’s far less innovation than meets the eye.

• Pedagogic innovation keeps us refreshed, motivated and engaged with what we do.

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Conclusions: innovation and excellence

Pedagogic innovation is important in excellent teaching, but not a prerequisite for it.

Conclusions: innovation and excellence

Thank you

Professor Alejandro ArmelliniUniversity of Northampton

@alejandroa | Ale.Armellini@northampton.ac.uk