Blended learning, itself, is a threshold concept: liminal, uncomfortable, uncertain and transforming Each person and context is a hybrid: utterly unique No cultural origin is privileged Learning occurs in the gaps: the spaces between Learning growth is non linear People only partly inhabit any space and do so on their own terms All learning spaces are co-created Social, learning, and transactional space are blending physically and digitally The spirit of the third space is “the teacher” Any enclosure of space requires force, power or violence

1. The new blended learning?
Dr George Roberts
Solstice conference
Edge Hill University
5 June 2014

2. Acknowledgements
• Richard Francis
– Francis, R & Roberts, G. 2014. “Where Is the New
Blended Learning? Whispering Corners of the
Forum.” Brookes Electronic Journal of Learning
and Teaching (BeJLT) 6 (1)
– http://bejlt.brookes.ac.uk/paper/where-is-the-
new-blended-learning-whispering-corners-of-the-
forum/
• Mary Dean
• Greg Benfield

6. Outline
• Introduction: the future is now
• What blended learning was
• The changing context
• The beginning of the new era
• Transforming teaching
• Conclusion: into unfamiliar territory
• Discussion: implications for teaching

7. Enhancement?

8. THE FUTURE IS NOW

9. More, Faster, Cheaper?
Quantitative measures
cluster around the idea
of “efficiency”
• Marks, numbers
enrolled and
completed, league
table position, fee
income, cost of
provision

10. “... an industrialised process, on
a truly massive scale, made
possible by new technology.”

12. I for one think they are pretty darn impressive
and deserve to be appreciated (Ives)
or
If Santa paid his elves the minimum wage while
pushing them to the limits, and sacking them if
they take three sick breaks in any three-month
period… and avoiding tax everywhere.
(Cadwalladr)

13. the role and place of
universities in the vast
virtualised spaces that we
have created

14. where is the new blended
learning?

15. WHAT BLENDED LEARNING WAS

16. flexible, active, collaborative and
professionally authentic
pedagogies

17. 1. the provision of supplementary resources for
courses that are conducted predominantly
along traditional lines ...
2. transformative course level practices
underpinned by radical course designs
3. students taking a holistic view of the
interaction of technology and their learning,
including the use of their own technologies,
(Sharpe et al 2006, 2-3).

18. distinctions become blurred
• between face-to-face and online
working,
• between ‘conventional’ and e-
learning

19. Social learning is aided by regular
intakes of drinks and snacks and
mobile phone conversations

23. It is difficult to argue that the
physical and virtual dimensions of
the learning experience are still
distinct, or in any way opposed.

24. THE CHANGING CONTEXT

25. Collaboration
• Estates Management
• Computer Services
• Library
• Student Support Services
• Staff developers
• Learning technologists
• Academics
• Students

26. Context
• Change of government
• Fundamental restructuring of the higher
education funding regime
• The place of private (principally corporate)
enterprise in the provision of higher
education.
• The role of employment

27. the
landscape of
the virtual
world has
altered
beyond
recognition

29. A fundamental concept in
computing, that hardware,
operating systems, applications
and data should be rigorously
demarcated has collapsed under
the iOS operating system, Google’s
Android and the virtualisation of
computing infrastructures

31. the University encourages
employees to make reasonable and
appropriate use of social media as
part of their work

32. In practice, the pedagogical models
have hardly changed at all

33. Where change has been most evident
• Blending the once largely distinct domains of
“learning” and “socialising”
• Foregrounding the transactional component
of the social learning space as a “one stop
shop” for student services

34. Have we failed?
Pedagogically

35. THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW ERA

36. A space between
• the ideal and the real
• now and then in both directions
• physical and digital
• paper and screen
• personal and social
• the curriculum and life-wide learning
• our selves and all others
• institution and teacher
• identity and communities

37. The physical and virtual spaces of
today mark the end of one era and
the beginning of another.

38. Underpinning
Heterotopia
–(Foucault 1984)
Third Space
–(Bhabha 2004)

39. We are in the epoch of
simultaneity: we are in the epoch
of juxtaposition, the epoch of the
near and far, of the side-by-side, of
the dispersed.
(Foucault 1984)

40. The third space
the uniqueness of each person, actor or
context is a blend, or hybrid,
resisting normalisation or cultural inscription,
generating a position against all identity politics
by denying privilege to any originary culture

41. It is the ‘inter’ … the inbetween space
– that carries the burden of the
meaning of culture...
And by exploring this Third Space, we
may elude the politics of polarity and
emerge as the others of our selves.
(Bhabha 2004)

42. • As soon as a space becomes formalised
as a plan, a VLE or a building, a third
space will be opened by, to and for the
people who inhabit the space, the very
people whom the space seeks to direct,
to channel, to normalise.
• People will only ever partially inhabit any
space and they will always occupy it to
some extent on their own terms.

43. Viceroy’s Palace
Tavern of
revolution

44. the space of both
community and
identity

45. TRANSFORMING TEACHING

46. a place
between the
virtual and the
real, whose
genius loci is
the teacher

47. In this sense of liminality,
discomfort and uncertainty,
blended learning might be seen as
a threshold concept

48. Transformation
• Social model of identity development and
activity-based learning
• People experience a disorienting dilemma
which leads to a deep structural shift in their
world-view
• A person’s susceptibility to transformation
depends on where they are prepared to take
themselves

49. The blended learning debate has
been locked in an antagonism

50. How is authentic experience to
permeate the controlled
institutional environments?

51. Where once the Internet seemed a
vast third space, a vast “whispering
corner”, it now appears
hegemonised by corporate
interests.

52. CONCLUSION: INTO UNFAMILIAR
TERRITORY

53. the main functions of
teaching is to inspire
learners to venture into
unfamiliar territory

54. a contingent
hegemony of
global corporate
interests, where
international
competition is
normalised and
consumer debt a
virtue

55. Digital literacy as an
attribute of individual
competence - is giving way
to digital responsibility

56. Learners create their own
learning environment outside,
inside and in-despite of the
intentions of the institution

57. Moves to more
open forms of
education have
opened the
sluice gates
Physical spaces as a central
element of learning appear
ever more fluid

58. Reclaiming space for teaching
through blended learning includes
reclaiming technologies as
intermediate tools

59. DISCUSSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR
TEACHING

60. Summarise
• Blended learning, itself, is a threshold concept: liminal,
uncomfortable, uncertain and transforming
• Each person and context is a hybrid: utterly unique
• No cultural origin is privileged
• Learning occurs in the gaps: the spaces between
• Learning growth is non linear
• People only partly inhabit any space and do so on their
own terms
• All learning spaces are co-created
• Social, learning, and transactional space are blending
physically and digitally
• The spirit of the third space is “the teacher”
• Any enclosure of space requires force, power or
violence

61. Therefore
• If all learning IS blended learning
• AND neither the physical NOR the digital has
primacy
• AND each person and place is unique
• How do we respond?

62. What are the implications for the new
blended learning
• Adding value to large group teaching using
technology
• Creative use of technologies in the classroom
• The role and use of online classrooms
• MOOCS and developments in online course
structures
• Approaches to enhancement of learning,
teaching and assessment

63. Each, choose one (or more?) off
that list and make a quick note on
paper, or Twitter, or …
What are the implications for your
particular context?

64. For me, these follow
• Acknowledge the tension in all teaching
• Avoid totalising syntheses of either content or
process – even this!
• Practice “bounded openness”: provide
multiple ways in and out
• Respect the uniqueness of each and every
person

65. Blended learning design
• Activity-based
– we do or make things
• Experiential
– self-evaluative, practitioner-centred, pragmatic
• Dialogic
• Reflective
– Bringing experience into scholarly evidence
• Participatory
– The teacher is also a learner
• Community-located
• Outcomes-led

66. Thank you
Dr George Roberts
OCSLD, Oxford Brookes University
June 2014
groberts@brookes.ac.uk

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