• University of Leeds
  • UCL Institute of Education logo

Blended Learning Essentials: Embedding Practice

This is the second part of a course for the Vocational Education and Training sector to promote effective use of blended learning.

24,993 enrolled on this course

  • Duration

    3 weeks
  • Weekly study

    4 hours
  • Accreditation

    AvailableMore info

This is the second of the Blended Learning Essentials courses, which builds on the content of the ‘Getting Started’ course.

This ‘Embedding Practice’ course covers issues such as learning from experience, tackling difficult challenges with the help of blended learning, and making blended learning affordable.

If you are working in further education, skills training, vocational education, workplace learning, lifelong learning or adult education, the course is designed to support you as a professional who wants to use blended learning to make more effective use of technology to support your learners.

Over 15,000 VET leaders, teachers, trainers and educators have participated in the Blended Learning Essentials courses so far. The courses have been well received by the sector, with 90% of surveyed participants commenting that they:

  • were excellent or good;
  • gave them a greater awareness of tools and technologies to support blended learning;
  • helped them improve their skills and practice.

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

  • integrate new technologies into courses, and learning and training opportunities;
  • propose ways in which new technology can help to address key challenges in the VET sector;
  • develop your own skills further and contribute to the sector’s community knowledge of the optimal uses of blended learning.

This course has been created with the generous funding of the Ufi Charitable Trust.

Learn together with your colleagues in the vocational education and training sector

This online course will be supported by a group of dedicated Digital Champions. They will help you connect with teaching and training professionals who understand the practical, everyday challenges of using blended learning in your sector. This way you will have access to colleagues with the experience to answer questions, to discuss ideas and share problems.

Start learning with part 1: Getting Started

This course is run in two parts. Ideally, to take the Embedding Practice course, you will have previously taken the Getting Started course, although it is not essential.

Accreditation

The course offers peer assessment of assignments and the curriculum is mapped to accreditation frameworks including CMALT.

As a course participant you have a number of ways to gain professional recognition and accreditation for participating in the course and as a next step in your professional development including:

  • FutureLearn Statement of Participation and certified CPD hours for all participants who complete the course;
  • Accreditation via professional bodies for participants who seek wider recognition of their professional practice;
  • Paths to post-graduate qualifications for participants whom the course inspires to further study. For full information, please see the guide for participants.
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Skip to 0 minutes and 9 seconds These are all examples of learning in action. These young people are engaged in problem solving, making decisions, being creative, learning from mistakes. This is what learning should be like, and all these examples are triggered by digital technologies. Of course, not all learning can be done with technology. Sometimes learners need to be working with teachers, with each other, practicing their manual skills, or social skills, or business skills, and sometimes, just quietly reading and thinking. That’s why using technologies is called blended learning. In this course, we will look at the optimal blend of technology-based and conventional methods. Many practitioners in the vocational education and training sector now use blended learning, but it’s not easy.

Skip to 1 minute and 3 seconds The technology keeps changing, strategies and policies change, employers want a more responsive curriculum, and VET practitioners are having to learn these new digital skills whilst also carrying on doing the teaching and the training. The focus all through the course is on how technology can help with meeting the challenges you face as a professional. Can it offer more flexibility? Does it encourage independent learning? Is it cost effective? Can we improve assessment and feedback? Does it increase workload? How can we use it to be more responsive to learner’s needs and employer’s demands? During the course, you’ll be watching and interacting with other professionals in the sector to find out what they do.

Skip to 1 minute and 53 seconds That’s the best way to keep pace with all the exciting opportunities the digital world can offer to educators. You can study the course in around four hours a week using your desktop computer or mobile device. So please join us, and discover what it takes for blended learning to be embedded in your everyday practice.

What topics will you cover?

  • Using data from learners to help design more effective blended learning. Examples of how to identify evidence of learning with technology, and how to enhance conventional learning designs with digital technology methods.
  • The use of digital tools for sharing learning design ideas and contributing to a community of practice in blended learning design. How to use the online Learning Designer tool to view and edit a shareable learning design.
  • The role new technology can play in addressing the key challenges of the VET sector. The extent to which technology can help teachers give learners more and better learning support, while not increasing their workload overall.
  • The use of technology to promote independent learning. How to develop and share a blended learning design in Moodle.
  • Strategies for reducing the costs of innovation, including through the sharing and re-use of teaching ideas and by means of cross-institutional collaboration.
  • How innovative solutions can be developed to match an organisation’s needs and ambitions. The importance of collecting evidence that demonstrates the value of blending learning and considering the views of learners.
  • Approaches to analysing the costs and benefits of investing in blended learning. How to use an interactive planning tool, the Course Resource Appraisal Modeller (CRAM), to understand the relationship between the benefits of bringing in new digital pedagogies and the costs of developing and running them.
  • Techniques and approaches that can be used to support a culture change towards blended learning within an institution. Examples of good practice in implementing effective change management.
  • How to work with colleagues and external organisations to support professional development and embed blended learning practice.

Who is this accredited by?

The CPD Certification Service
The CPD Certification Service:

This course has been accredited by the CPD Certification Service, which means it can be used to provide evidence of your continuing professional development.

When would you like to start?

Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.

  • Available now

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Apply new technologies in courses and learning opportunities to improve learner outcomes.
  • Identify ways in which new technology can contribute to solve key challenges in your learning context.
  • Develop your own skills further and contribute to the VET sector’s community knowledge of the optimal uses of blended learning.

Who is the course for?

The course is free to attend and open to all. It is particularly aimed at anyone working in the Vocational Education and Training sector. Whether you are directly supporting learners or delivering training, or managing courses, this course will help you use blended learning more effectively.

Time commitment

The course is designed to be completed in around 4 hours per week. All activities have recommended times and there are plenty of resources and activities for you to explore further if you’d like to do more on a particular topic. You can join the course at any time as the resources are always available.

Who will you learn with?

Chair of Learning with Digital Technology, Knowledge Lab, UCL IOE.
Developing a global community of teachers around the Learning Designer

Twitter: @thinksitthrough
https://twitter.com/thinksitthrough

Dean of Digital Education and Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Leeds. For more information see: https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/education/staff/156/professor-neil-morris

Promoted by

Association for Learning Technology

Who developed the course?

University of Leeds

As one of the UK’s largest research-based universities, the University of Leeds is a member of the prestigious Russell Group and a centre of excellence for teaching.

UCL Institute of Education

Founded in 1902, as a teacher training college in London, the IOE is now a world-class research and teaching institution.

Endorsers and supporters

funded by

Ufi logo

Learning on FutureLearn

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  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
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Join a global classroom

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