Universities have long been wrestling with the internet. On the one hand it represents a huge opportunity, in the shape of an enormous resource and new methods of delivery; on the other it represents a huge threat, in the shape of an enormous resource and new methods of delivery.
But a pilot program at one of the world’s top universities is providing evidence that blended learning could be the future of higher education.
Starting last semester, undergraduates in the engineering faculty at Imperial College London have been taking online business courses.
While online courses are nothing new, the idea of delivering them to students who are physically present in the university is unusual.
Engineering students may be more amenable to business courses than undergraduates in other faculties, although even so a previous attempt to interest them in online business courses five years ago “failed miserably”, according to David Lefevre, head of Imperial’s education technology unit.
Then, the technology was not quite ready and buy-in from senior management not as wholehearted as it could have been, but this time it is looking different, he says.
“[The students] have been very positive and enthusiastic and they’re rating the course highly,” says Lefevre. “They have taken to it quite readily.”
While the pilot has been confined to engineering students, if it works it will be expanded across Imperial’s other three faculties, of science, business and medicine, he says.
“It means that all students at Imperial will have access to business education, which is something they want and gives them an enormous flexibility,” he adds.
“I don’t know of any other universities that are going down this route.”
Imperial, eighth in the world in the Times Higher Education university rankings, may be fertile ground for this type of experiment. But if it proves successful, variations on this approach could be swiftly adopted elsewhere.
“My guess is that on-campus teaching will slowly move to this type of hybrid model,” says Lefevre. “It has a lot of flexibility and it fits in with the way we all study.”
Another issue first time around at Imperial was that the students were not quite ready for it, he adds. Many saw it as a way of saving money, while in fact it is an additional cost.
The MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) movement, while not always popular among academics, has given some credibility to online learning.
“Research institutions like Imperial are taking online learning much more seriously,” Lefevre adds.
Some see online learning and MOOCs in particular as a possible Doomsday scenario for universities, but just as the printed book is making a comeback, so the demand for a physical presence in education will prove resilient.
This blended model, where students still go to lectures but take part of their course online, has an obvious appeal. It satisfies the need many students have for face-to-face interaction with their tutors, as well as with their peers, at the same time as allowing them to take some of their course at in their own time and at their own pace.
And if universities seize the opportunity technology offers, blended learning could well shape higher education for some time to come.
