The Open University's Approach to Blended Learning

The OU was founded in 1969 as a single-mode distance teaching university, of­fering a wide range of undergraduate degrees, master's degrees, and professional qualifications. The university is state funded and fully accredited in the United Kingdom. It maintains exceptionally high quality and is recognized as the pre­mier open university in the world, on which many others are modeled.

The learning support system still operates on the " industrial model." Phase One consists of developing high-quality and paced learning materials, origi­nally through print and broadcast. Over the years, more new learning technolo­gies such as CD-ROMs and Web sites have been included. The second phase is the delivery of group tutoring, feedback on individual assignments, and support

The Handbook of Blended Learning

by part-time tutors. Clearly, students' working together for knowledge sharing forms a critical part of the learning. Tutors have gradually learned to run their classes and groups in the online environments as well as face to face. Currently, around 220, 000 students study with the OU, most with some online element to their programs. Programs operate throughout the United Kingdom and main­land East and West Europe.

Business Schools and Learning Innovations

Business schools, since their inception, have sought to explore the nature of flexi­bility in learning and have rejected some of the traditional lecture-style pedagogies, which rely on the teacher as expert. Hence, the introduction of online ought to be a blessing within business schools. However, the transition from dependent-on-authority pedagogies to one where students take more responsibility for their own learning includes difficulty in their expectations and satisfaction, especially in rela­tionships with teaching staff (Felder & Brent, 1996). Costello, Brunner, and Hasty (2002) show that management students have difficulty wifh participative, cooperative, and collaborative learning and its responsibilities. However, on reflection at the end of the experience, many recognize the associated empowerment, new skill devel­opment, and benefits of persevering with self-directed learning.

Managers studying and working need a high level of flexibility to acquire, practice, and apply new concepts and skills. Successful and effective management education needs to go beyond the idea of traditional distance learning and embrace the much wider range of understandings required in the complex net­worked organizations of the twenty-first century. Business schools are under tremendous pressures to maintain relevance and authenticity in their programs, including their mode and approach of learning, as well as content (Hamlin, Griffy-Brown, & Goodrich, 2003; Reisel & Watson, 2003). Currently, all business schools face challenge from in-house corporate universities and work-related training.

Mass Management Education

The Open University Business School (OUBS) rapidly grew during the 1980s and now offers a range of programs leading to professional qualifications, as well as bachelor's and master's degrees. It uses collaborative online work extensively in its courses with more than thirty thousand students per year in over thirty countries. Collaboration online is increasingly a requisite of organizations sponsoring stu­dents with the OUBS.

Management Education for the Twenty-First Century

The Professional Certificate in Management Program is a recognized pro­fessional qualification based on all-around managerial competence, with open entry. Students do not need prior qualifications or tests in order to take part. It is truly open in the best traditions of open distance learning. It is available in two variants: as a general program for managers in any industry or sector or tailored to the needs of managers from the public and nonprofit sectors.

The main program involves a year of self-directed distance learning with tutor support and can be taken with either total online support (tutorials and other sup­port online) or face-to-face tutorials and an element of online tutor support. It has been offered in various forms since the late 1980s, always attracting thousands of students each year, mainly in the United Kingdom, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe. In addition to study in English, the program is offered in six European languages, through partners, but all supported directly by the course team at the Open University's Center at Milton Keynes in the United King­dom, including the transfer of quality procedures and recruitment, monitoring, and supervision of teaching and assessment.

The learning paradigms for the Certificate in Management are those of con­structive, collaborative learning through undertaking consensual activities in groups and reflection on action (Schon, 1987). A blend of printed and online ma­terials and resources framed within the OU's established and supported open learning method is offered. In addition, each student is allocated a personal tutor who communicates electronically. In terms of assessment, most assignments re­quire all students to work in problem-based learning groups online. Assessment of students is through assignments and examinations.

Students have a wide variety of choices, including a mix of online and off­line tutorial support. There is also a compulsory element of the certificate pro­gram where students either attend the group skills-based " Management Challenge" over a residential weekend or cover the equivalent ground online and asynchronously over eighteen days. " The Challenge" consists of a series of per­sonal creativity and team-building exercises followed by a consultancy-based team case study, with a focus on problem solving in a complex scenario and clearly pre­senting ideas for action. Regardless of the mix or the mode and whether they min­gle face-to-face or online, all students are expected to achieve the same learning outcomes and high standards of achievement, assessed through assignments and examinations.

There is a success rate of around 80 percent completion and pass for all versions of the program from the five thousand or so enrollments annually. Successful completion of the program results in the award of a Certificate in Management and leads completers to the Professional Diploma in Management and the M.B.A. Alternatively, credit can be used toward undergraduate degrees.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

In addition, many managers study individual modules for professional develop­ment purposes.

At the end of 2001, an internal university survey of students provided by the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU showed that the overall satisfac­tion with the program is very high, with a slight edge to the version deploying on­line collaboration (Table 28.1).

All Open University courses are subject to scrutiny by a peer assessor. The Certificate in Management, despite its huge scale and complexity, consistently is much valued. For example, the following is an extract from the External Exam­iner's Report in January 2004: " Tutoring, as shown by monitoring, continues to be of a very high standard and the course materials, structure and content ap­propriate. The assessment strategy continues most appropriate and the balance between elements excellent."

Rethinking Approaches for the Twenty-First Century

In autumn 2002, we undertook a study of the need for flexible approaches in the OUBS Certificate in Management program. In order to address improvements in the slight variations in the responses to differing mixes and to continue to position the program better for the twenty-first-century manager, a random sam­ple of five hundred students was conducted with usable results from nearly two hundred. The results showed that flexibility in studying for both personal and vocational development was of critical importance to our students, along with flex­ible pace and a choice of study methods. In addition, there was evidence that stu­dents felt there was variable quality in tutoring. Some acknowledged truly-outstanding tutors that they had, while others were less so, especially in the online environment. As we engaged in reviewing and revamping the program, we focused on tutors and study options.

We also addressed issues of problem-based learning (PBL) in and through the online environment. The Certificate in Management has always used authentic tasks and assignments for teaching and assessment. However, with the revision of the pedagogy, we adopted a more explicit approach to problem-based assess­ment in both assignments and exams (Jonassen, 2002). PBL encourages open-minded, reflective, critical, and active learning and reflects that nature of knowledge as complex and changing since problems are always part of a problem situation or what is problematic about a situation. PBL tries to close the gap be­tween theory and practice. We think that the use of the term problem suggests no­tions of problem identification, deconstruction, seeking and using knowledge and experience, understanding, thinking, choosing a strategy, acting, and then critically

The Handbook of Blended Learning

evaluating (reflecting on) the action and strategy. This includes metacognitive knowing about knowing, which does not determine how a person uses a strategy but whether he or she will use it in other situations.

We chose to create a range of online activities, which we call e-tivities. E-tivities acknowledge the importance in Web-based education of offering access to information and communicating with others, not merely one or the other, within a structured and viable framework (Gallagher, 2003). E-tivities require the design of an authentic task that can foster engagement with a small spark of content, in­dividual response, an example from one's own experience, and a collaborative dis­cussion or product (Salmon, 2002). Although authentic tasks had previously been offered in face-to-face tutorials, using the online environment in this explicit way was introduced in 2004. Tutors are trained to facilitate these approaches.

Choices for Certificate in Management Students

Many of the OUBS courses contain a residential element. This is an opportunity for students who have been studying remotely to meet and interact with their peers, learning with and through others. Our students are usually already working as managers in some type of workplace setting. It is our intention to help them relate course theory to their own workplace through reflection on action (Schon, 1983, 1987), whHe also enabling them to become self-directed learners.

The format of the residential school is designed to promote the advantages of peer collaboration (Vygotsky, 1979) where students work in self-directed groups, rather than listen to lectures or have someone teach content to them. Although students espouse their enthusiasm for working in face-to-face groups, they often find it dissatisfying (Bruffee, 1999). Some scholars argue that this dissatisfaction may be directly related to their lack of teamwork and group processing skills (Dirk & Smith, 2004). For this reason, the main theme of the Certificate in Man­agement residential school (the Management Challenge) is that of teamwork, with reflection directed at process issues more than the results of activities.

As part of its open access policy, the OUBS needs to ensure that there is an equivalent experience available to students who cannot attend the residential Man­agement Challenge, whether they have been studying the online-only version or not. In addition, we planned to use the online version of the Management Chal­lenge to expose managers to the key business skill of working in remote groups. The equivalent course for the certificate residential school is an online learning experi­ence, the " Online Management Challenge" (OMC). Most students prefer the residential option, but a significant percentage opt for the online experience. Of the students studying the main course online, 78 percent go on to study the OMC, making their studies completely online; the rest blend their studies through attending

Management Education for the Twenty-First Century

the residential Management Challenge. Conversely, there is an element of students (one-third of those taking the OMC) who have thus far attended face-to-face tutorials but opt for the online experience, again choosing to blend their learning.

Such experiences show a real need for offering a blended learning approach to suit student needs. The main reasons given for opting for the online experience are those of wanting flexibility and not being able to attend the schools that offer the needed courses. Students work in groups of around ten with a tutor to facili­tate the learning and answer queries; the main learning material is provided either in their course books or on the dedicated Web site. Each year, around 350 students take part in the OMC, which runs four times during that period.

The OMC has to have equal teaching and learning hours to the residential school, so it is only twenty-one hours long. It cannot be spread over too long a time period as it runs concurrently with the course, which can lead to a conflict with other course work demands; these dual commitments can make it difficult for stu­dents to prioritize their time. In the early days of the OMC, this resulted in a loss of motivation and a tail-off in activity during the last few days. For this rea­son, the original twenty-one-day OMC was compressed to eighteen days, ensur­ing that it covered only two weekends, a key drop-off time for activities, while maintaining the same learning content and outcomes.

Students are given introductory activities in order to start to get to know their tutor and other group members. These social icebreakers are followed by more complex group activities aimed at getting them to practice using management the­ory as well as learn about working in online teams. The format is such that the tutor introduces the activity, the students break into subgroups to work in their own conference area to complete the activity, and then the tutor and group of ten students meet again in their group conference area, where the tutor facilitates a discussion of their findings and their reflection on what has been learned about management theory and work environments.

Completing such a rigorous and important program in less than three weeks is expecting a lot from people who have not met each other before, especially given the demands that they perform and learn together. For this reason, we are re­searching the factors that can aid the success of a group working together on­line. The intent is to identify actions that can be taken to speed up the time taken for the group to begin performing and learning.

Having already carried out group work in their tutorials or as part of their course work online, the majority of the students taking the OMC (80 percent) expect to learn in groups; however, they are fairly evenly split as to whether they prefer to learn in a group or on their own (52 percent prefer group learning and 48 percent self-directed study). Although some researchers relate that students find that online " consensus decision-making and the production of a common product [are] much less satisfying" than when this occurs face-to-face (Dirk & Smith, 2004),

The Handbook of Blended Learning

on the whole, many OMG students value the experience. The following comment by an OMC student in March 2004 reflects students' general satisfaction with this program: " Everyone in the group [felt] motivated by the experience and the support of all involved made it not only educational but fun."

One of the advantages of having the course spread over a few days and using text for communication is that this enhances more reflective interaction, a key­stone of the OUBS approach to learning. However, the students are aware of a number of difficulties that they feel they would not encounter face-to-face, such as planning and coordinating activities under tight time lines (Kitchen & McDougall, 1999). The time pressures arise because of the delays inherent in asyn­chronous conversation. Students may concentrate on the task and avoid discus­sion and constructive criticism (Kitchen & McDougall, 1999), so it is important for the tutor to maintain a role that encourages individual and group reflection. The individual student reflection is aided by the learning diary students are en­couraged to keep, where they note and reflect on activities on a daily basis, referring back to it when it is time for group discussion.

One of the key differences when compared to the residential school is the lack of social presence experienced online (Walther, 1992). While some scholars cau­tion that this can significantly retard the development of group relationships (Walther, 1992; Yoo & Alavi, 2001), we find that by the end of the eighteen days in the OMC, some students prove to be extremely loyal and supportive of each other. The key to developing group cohesion is the development of trust (Lawless, 2004). Like Haywood (1998), we have found that a sense of trust in online envi­ronments can be established fairly quickly if students feel that they can predict the behavior of others and that there is a commitment to the team.

Students on the OMC recognize the importance of team commitment. Of the thirty-one students asked whether they felt that the " online group's success depends on members wanting the group to succeed, " 16 percent felt that this was important and 84 percent felt that this was very important (no one felt that it was quite important or not important). Furthermore, these students reported that they had experienced team commitment during the OMC, with 39 percent feeling that their group members had wanted the group to succeed quite a lot and 61 per­cent very much indeed (Lawless, 2003).

The Role of the Tutor Online

Although the groups are self-managing, there is also an opportunity for their tutor to facilitate the group-forming process. We offer specific advice to tutors to assist with the formation of self-managing student groups based on our research on the OMC:

Management Education for the Twenty-First Century

E-moderating large groups can be time consuming and participants benefit from becoming self-managing. The basic process includes:

• Divide larger groups into smaller work teams. Give them ample time to complete an e-tivity and then report back to the larger group.

• Where necessary, offer clarification about the task, the timescale, and the form of presentation.

• Leave the group to get on with the task, only intervening if they fail to post their contribution to the plenary on time.

• Start a discussion on the results of the plenary contributions but do not dominate it. Summarize the discussion or ask an experienced participant to do this.

However there are some specific actions shown in Table 28.2 for the moder­ator to take that will help groups to self-manage online.

TABLE 28.2. MODERATOR ACTIONS FOR PROMOTING SELF-MANAGING GROUPS.

1. Ask individuals to confirm when they have joined in.

2. State the purpose of the task.

3. Describe how groups will be formed.

4. Set up a thread for each group, and let the group know where to locate the thread.

5. Describe the form and type of content that the group should produce and where they should post it.

6. Set out the plenary process in the plenary thread.

7. Ask the participants to review both content (their main focus) and the process.

A simple joining activity in the thread will leave a trace to indicate that participants arrived. A cross-check against a list of participants will reveal who is late. Designate a participant from each work team to follow up less visible contributors.

The task will motivate the participants. Offer clarification, if necessary, but allow opportunities for flexible interpretations.

An element of self-selection helps to maintain interest, but ensure that the method is simply described and incapable of being misunderstood.

Otherwise they will ask you!

Aim to be prescriptive without being too restrictive. Indicate the main issues that must be addressed.

This can be part of your welcoming message.

Include setting up the group, the degree to which they found the task motivating, how they collaborated, and their approach to feeding back as part of the learning points—so it becomes natural and normal to reflect on, not just their outputs but how they worked together.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

Authentic Blend for Tutor Development

As we built newly mixed opportunities for our students, we realized that we must use a blended approach for our tutors' professional development. In addition, since they are more used to the inclusion of face-to-face tutorials in the blend, there is a need to enhance their experience and skills of working online. Work by Hodgkinson (2000) identifies barriers to universities' becoming learning organi­zations due to cultural problems, a lack of teamwork and sharing ethos, imposi­tion of programs and ideas rather than emergence, and no roll-out of knowledge gained through tutors' own learning. We wished to avoid falling into such a trap. We recognized that tutors need considerable support in their change of approach (Arbaugh & Steizer, 2003; Jonassen, 2002; Salmon, 2004; Walker, 2002). In addition, we wanted to ensure that the OU's spirit of openness and support transferred successfully to the increased use of online work in the distance mix.

Our tutors need to develop the ability to " recognize communication styles and learning patterns from other cultures" (Simons, 2002, p. 126). Knight's sum­mary (2002) of the move toward online facilitation is instructive: " It is ironic that what some take to be dehumanising technology may actually need tutors in order to be more empathetic and considerate" (p. 12.).

The latest version of the Certificate in Management, which started in May 2004, focuses especially on solving real-world management problems through its online student groups, which it calls Webgroups. As a rehearsal for supporting their students, the tutors work through a two-week, five-hour online staff development program instead of the usual face-to-face one-day briefing. The course develop­ment team offers a Webcast, a dedicated Web site, and also a set of e-tivities and discussion forums on the OU's collaborative online environment, FirstClass. Spe­cially trained tutor-peers act as e-convenors for the forums and e-tivities, all of whom (willingly) went through the online briefing first.

The e-tivities focus on the use of management concepts and application in practice. Here, critically important online skills are emphasized, such as encour­aging participation and achievement (especially from reluctant busy managers), weaving together contributions, and adding value through summaries. The nature of online time management and the different rhythms of e-learning spark a great deal of interest. The discussion topics are wide ranging but always focus on the kev management skills that certificate students will need and involve much dialogue between remote tutors and the central course development team.

Sixty OUBS tutors took part in the Certificate in Management program between January and April and another fifty in August and September 2004, working together in groups of ten to twelve. Nearly all successfully completed the program, developed their personal development plans, and received their

Management Education for the Twenty-First Century

I97

Certificates of Participation. The main comment from tutors is that they are very happy to have made space to " have a go" for themselves. They feel an increased confidence in their abilities and empathy with their students. They recognize that much of the knowledge and skill they already have can be used, but that the online environment puts new and rather different demands on everyone taking part. In particular, they mention the nature of online time and " communicating without the usual signals." One of the experienced tutors wrote, " I now realize how daunting, confusing and 'loud' the online environ­ment can be." Another said, " This is a fantastic reality check for me.... I really need to focus on what matters to promote a great online experience for man­agers... and forget what doesn't. I believe I've started to distinguish between the two."

The feedback questionnaires and their personal development plans demon­strated that all participants felt they had developed skills of direct use in working with their students, including how to entice full participation online, be inclu­sive, encourage independent learning, enable successful student interaction and groups, use sparks of information to promote dialogue and knowledge sharing, and use archiving, weaving, and summarizing. This program will be rolled out to further cohorts of tutors. Costs are tiny compared with bringing tutors together for a face-to-face briefing.

Overall, the development has proved effective, efficient, acceptable, and coherent. Such " attendance" and acceptability are almost impossible to achieve when asking tutors to drive or fly to a physical meeting. One online staff development participant wrote: " I have learnt a great deal about myself and my continuing development needs. It was really valuable being able to network like this with such a stimulating and professional group. It has transformed my approach to working online with my management students—I'm sure for the better! "

Conclusions

By addressing the blend of online and more traditional approaches to learning within the supported open learning paradigm of the OU, we can enhance student choice, satisfaction, and, most important, learning. We have demonstrated the po­tential of encouraging wider student participation through offering alternative learning experiences, such as online equivalents of some components of courses. This has been achieved through improved understanding of online practice for self-managed groups and through the provision of targeted tutor training. These two aspects, along with exploration of online assessment, will be the focus of our attention over the next two years.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

At the OU Business School, we ensure that a range of blends is available in order to maximize flexibility. An essential part of the blend is carrying the choices through the human development of staff along with the readdressing of peda­gogical approaches and technologies. Without the associated staff development, the success of the blend cannot be assumed. In this way, management education arrives not in one shape but many good shapes, for the huge challenges of edu­cating managers in networked organizations of the twenty-first century.

References

Arbaugh, J. В., & Steizer, L. (2003). Learning and teaching management on the Web: What do we know? In C. Wankel & R. DeFillippi (Eds.), Educating managers with tomorrow's technologies (pp. 17-51). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Bruffee, K. A. (1999). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge (2nd ed.) Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Costello, M. L., Brunner, R W, & Hasty, K. (2002, July). Preparing students for the empow­ered workplace: The risks and rewards in a management classroom. Active Learning in Higher Education, 3(2), 117-127

Dirk, J. M., & Smith, R. O. (2004). Thinking out of a bowl of spaghetti: Learning to learn in online collaborative groups. In T. S. Roberts (Ed.), Online collaborative learning: Theory and practice (pp. 132-159). London: Information Science Publishing.

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (1996). Navigating the bumpy road to student centered-instruction. College Teaching, 44, 43-47.

Gallagher, J. (2003). The place and space model of distributed learning: Enriching the corporate e-learning model. In C. Wankel & R. DeFillippi (Eds.), Educating managers with tomorrow's technologies. Greenwich: Information Age Publishing.

Hamlin, M. D., Griffy-Brown, C., & Goodrich, J. (2003). From vision to reality: A model for bringing real world technology to the management education classroom. In C. Wankel & R. DeFillippi (Eds.), Educating managers with tomorrow's technologies. Greenwich, GT: Informa­tion Age Publishing.

Haywood, M. (1998). Managing virtual teams: Practical techniques for high technology project managers. Norwood, MA: Artech House.

Hodgkinson, M. (2000). Managerial perceptions of barriers to becoming a " learning organization." Learning Organization, 7(3), 156.

Jonassen, D. H. (2002). Learning to solve problems online distance education and distributed learning. In C. Vrasidas & G. V Glass (Eds.), Current perspectives in applied information technolo­gies: Distance education and distributed learning. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Kitchen, D., & McDougall, D. (1999). Collaborative learning on the Internet. Journal of Edu­cational Technology Systems, 27(3), 245-258.

Knight, E T. (2002J. Being a teacher in higher education. Buckingham: SRHE and Open Univer­sity Press

Lawless, N.J. (2003, December). Leadership and team roles for online learning. Paper presented at Online Educa Conference, Berlin, Germany.

Lawless, N. J. (2004, November). Managing student expectations in order to fast-track online group learning Paper presented at European Conference on E-Learning (ECEL), Paris, France.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE