Crafting a Rich and Personal Blending Learning Environment - An Institutional Case Study from a STEM Perspective

Institutional pressures to make optimal use of lecture halls and classrooms can be powerful motivators to identify resources to develop technology enhanced learning approaches to traditional curricula. From the academic’s perspective, engaging students in active learning and reducing the academic workload are important and complementary drivers. This paper presents a case study of a curriculum development exercise undertaken in a STEM subject area at a research-intensive UK university. A multi-skilled team of academics and learning designers have worked collaboratively to build this module which will be realised as a mix of online and face to face activities. Since the module addresses professional issues, a strong emphasis is being placed on establishing authentic learning activities and realistic use of prominent social tools. The learning designers are working for a cross-institutional initiative to support educational innovations; therefore it is important to carefully document the development process and to identify reusable design patterns which can be easily explained to other academics.