See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/228430065

TRAINING THE UNTRAINABLE. A BLENDED LEARNING APPROACH TO

UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC STAFF COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT.

Article · January 2011

CITATIONS READS

0 56

2 authors, including:

Lucian Ciolan
University of Bucharest
17 PUBLICATIONS   14 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Lucian Ciolan on 31 March 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 TRAINING THE UNTRAINABLE. A BLENDED LEARNING APPROACH TO
UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC STAFF COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT.

Lucian CIOLAN, Laura CIOLAN

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest, 90 Panduri str., Bucharest, Romania
lucian.ciolan@gmail.com, laurcupi@yahoo.com

Abstract: Higher education is currently facing a diversity of challenges, among which the evolution of
new learning environment and the characteristics of new learners are milestones. New competences
and roles are required from the academic staff in higher education, and in order to cope with them,
more structured, yet flexible training opportunities are needed. Giving a blended learning approach to
these training contexts would increase also capacity of university teachers to design and provide
themselves blended learning experiences to their students.

Keywords: blended learning, academic staff training, training needs, learning environment.

I. WHY BOTHER UNIVERSITY WITH BLENDED LEARNING?

1.1 New learning environment and new learners

Transformation of higher education policy and practice over the last years has multiple drivers
and forces and the adoption and embedding of new technologies in daily learning processes is certainly
one of them. Beyond any kind of rhetoric about the why, what and how to operate in the new learning
environment, is quite widely accepted lately that blended learning is transforming universities more
and more, as our perception of learning and learning environments is changing. Dziuban, Moskal and
Hartman [1], Rovai and Jordan [2], Gibbs and Coffey [3] are mentioning that one of the adaptive ways
university tries to keep up with the social, economic, technological and pedagogical challenges is to go
for blended learning approaches. But especially Garrison and Vaughan consider that ”It is beyond time
that higher education institutions recognize the untenable position of holding onto past practices that
are incongruent with the needs and demands of a knowledge society. Higher education leaders have
the challenge to position their institutions for the twenty-first century” [4], and one of the ways to go is
the blended learning.
A specific challenge in front of any institutional learning setting, including higher education, is
brought by the characteristics of New Millennium Learners [5] or Millennial Generation [6] how they
are called, in search of relevant, engaging and motivating learning experiences and pathways, where
the simple presence of technologies is not sufficient and not even the traditional e-learning approach.
”The Stanford research strongly suggests that linking self-paced material to live e-learning delivery
could have a profound effect on overall usage and completion rates - enabling organizations to
radically increase the return from their existing investments in self-paced content” [7].
The arguments of the already transformed learning environments in the university, but also the
challenges of a new generation of learners are clear. But how clear and how ready are university
academic professors to engage with this challenge?
1.1 Why blend and what is to be blended?
Without necessarily going into an academic form of a moral panic (12), as the unprecedented
speed of processing and operating with the information, but mainly the way it is transformed in
knowledge are clear facts, the challenge of learning process management and knowledge management
in universities should be addressed.
Rapid growth and instantaneous distribution of knowledge on a more crowded and
competitive market, on the one side, but also the evolving different learning requirements and
preferences of people demands from the organizations a more flexible approach to their degrees, now
bricolages being quite usual (building study path combining courses from 2-3 departments or even
more) and a blend of approaches to the learning process as a whole. These would come to meet the
needs of nowadays non-traditional students, attempting to balance jobs, family life and studies in the
same time. As they can have access to web almost at any time of the day, they would appreciate
increased flexibility and convenience. In a recent study ordered by Intel and delivered by Hermes
Advisors [8] we can see how the access to internet and spending time online is a very regular habit
among university students. Not less than 94% of the investigated university students declared they
have internet connection in home and this is the most frequent place to access the internet. Two
variables, in correlation, are interesting: average time per day spent in front of computer (Figure 1) and
time spent on internet, out of the time spent in front of computer (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Average time spent on computer per day

What is somehow surprising here is the fact that 35% of the respondents spend between 4-6
hours per day in front of the computer. Another significant group of 43% have an average situated
between 1-3 hours per day. Making a kind of ”forced average” of the two dominant groups in the
interpretation, then we can say that a young student in Romania, aged 18-24, spends more than 3 hours
in average per day in front of the computer. But what are they doing while in front of computer?
More than half of the students spend all their time in front of computer navigating on Internet,
and 22% more than half of that time. In correlation with the previous graph, we can state that the
Internet became a key partner for today university students, being important part of their personal and
professional life, benefiting of serious allocations of time and attention. While we are still waiting
them too much of the time in traditional classrooms and in the library, they are interacting, looking for
resources, exchanging and finally learning someplace else. And this should be an impetus for a
reconsideration of meeting places with our students.

Figure 2. Average time spent on Internet out of the time in front of computer

A blended learning approach would make use of that time and allow hopefully for a more
effective and learning-oriented time on students on the internet, as quite vast number of hours is
currently spent on loisir purposes. ”Blended courses have the potential to facilitate a community of
inquiry. By forcing students to be independent and have control over their learning, blended formats
can help foster critical thinking and facilitate collaborative learning [9].
When bringing in a blended approach to learning, we have to closer look to what exactly is to
be blended, namely the dimensions of the blend, as long as most of the time discussions stops at the
(superficial) level of blending delivery methods and media. Starting from the above mentioned
analysis of Singh [7], we can identify the following:
- blending face to face and distance learning, meaning that part of the activities remain in
the direct interaction with the professor / trainer, in a more or less typical classroom or
laboratory setting, while the other part is mediated by technology and takes place at
distance;
- blending online and offline learning, with the online taking place regularly on Intra- or
Internet, and the offline either in classrooms or in home, doing individual work and
reflection;
- blending self-paced and live, collaborative learning in the way that allows for both
individually managed and controlled process, in own pace, being it mediated by
technology or not, and interactive, collaborative communication engaged in knowledge
sharing and debates;
- blending structured and unstructured learning, taking advantage of the carefully and
previously designed learning experiences, but also the of direct and ad-hoc learning at
workplace or use of knowledge repositories available everywhere;
- blending custom content with off-the-shelf content, meaning that knowledge is not only a
defined and ready-made product (like in textbooks), but also allows for customization and
adaptation; the generic content, basically unaware of contextual factors, can be today
subject of intervention through technologies which already have some specific standards
(i.e. SCORM - Shareable Content Object Reference Model);
- blending designed learning, practice simulations and on-the-job performance support, in
the sense that content and competences can be accessed through organized learning, in
what we normally call learning settings, but also through practice, using relevant
simulation of real processes or through a range of just-in-time support tools in the
workplace.
All these blends and combinations are aiming at extending the reach of higher education
programs, optimizing the program deployment costs and time, but especially being more responsive to
a tremendous diversity of learning needs and preferences of a diversity of learners. Certainly, sound
and tested methodologies are needed, as the risks to fail in building a sense of community and creating
a meaningful social presence are quite high.

II. BLENDED LEARNING FOR ACADEMIC STAFF COMPETENCE

DEVELOPMENT

2.1 Training the untrainable... The challenge

When teacher training is under debate, most of the time the reference is made to pre-university
pre-service or in-service teacher training. But what about university academic staff? There is no doubt,
the need for professional development and should be at least same high as for the others. But if we
look in the university arena, in Romania or elsewhere, we will notice a much lower level of concern
and activity for what is generally called training. University academic staff is almost all the time
trainers, but who trains them and how are they trained? Organizing and delivering structured training
for university academic staff may look as a risky, if not inappropriate initiative. Professional
development for university staff happens, no doubt, but it falls almost completely under the initiative,
willingness, motivation and ability of each individual to construct it.
Besides individual interest and commitment to improve and learn, organizational reforms
demand for common views, shared meanings and practices and mutual support, and in these cased
learning cannot be conceived as a solely individual initiative, based exclusively on own interest,
priorities and career ambitions. For various reasons, the individualistic type of approach included
(embedded in a certain tradition of self-sufficiency and self-determination very visible among
academics). This situation is also somehow encouraged by the fact that the formal requirements for
training and professional development of teaching staff in university are not clearly stated and specific,
and they are mainly derived from the promotion criteria. All these factors leaded to the situation that
structured training and professional development opportunities/offers for academic staff in higher
education are very limited in quantity and, when in place, treated with some degree of reluctance and
suspicion.
Form the hidden myths of organizational culture and from a metaphorical perspective,
academics are untrainable, as they are the knowledge creators and distributors to others, they are The
trainers… Nevertheless, the current dynamic and profound changes in higher education brought them
a series of challenges, by new demands of students and learning environment, by new organizational
policies and by the international influence and competition. All the new roles and competences
required, being part of articulation of a new professional profile, need serious and sometimes common
learning opportunities and possibility to socially exchange and distribute own knowledge.
In spite of these facts and contextual factors, there is interest among academic staff in higher
education for structured training opportunities and for creating social learning networks to enhance
relevance and effectiveness of own activity. One example and argument could be considered the
project below, which assumed all the risks and hopes to mobilize university teachers in three regions
of Romanian to take part in a blended learning experience, with three main aims:
• Competence development in three main areas of interest, identified through needs analysis
research: quality assurance, student centered learning and skills development in practical
training settings;
• Competence and motivation development to participate social learning networks and
platforms and to contribute to knowledge sharing in communities of practice, built on a
combination of communication channels;
• Competence and trust development to design and engage students in blended-learning
activities as a tool to increase participation, coverage and flexibility of studies and to allow
for more ownership on the process, as well as to integrate cognitive, social, emotional and
action-oriented experiences in the learning processes [11].
2.2 An example of (ongoing) relevant practice: the BLU Project
An example of particular relevance for this discussion is one of the recent projects of the
University of Bucharest, initiated by the faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, in
partnership with two other main universities in Romania and a private company in the IT sector. The
project is called BLU: Blended Learning for University Academic Staff (http://blu.cc.unibuc.ro). The
project builds on the idea to create a structured, but flexible learning opportunity for different
categories of university academic staff as support for the new roles and responsibilities they have in
the higher education environment. A comprehensive need analysis research was undertaken [10] and
some of the results are highly relevant for the initiative.
When asked Which of the training and professional development methods you consider most
appropriate to your objectives?, we can see in the figure 3 below what was the tendency: a strong
preference for blended learning and participation in seminars, workshops and scientific events (both
with 49,10%).
 Figure 3. Preference for training and professional development methods

The investigated sample included 222 respondents covering all types of higher education
institutons and all regionos of the country. All of them, acording to the interests of the project, were
having responsibilities in thier institution related to quality assurance process. Worth mentioning that
more than 76% of them are full professors or associate professors (conferentiar), so not necessarily
among the young academic staff population. Another sample of practical tranining coordinators scored
even higher the preference for bleanded learning, making from their 51% mentions the preffered
approach, followed by exchange of experiences with peers (42,96%), seminars and workshops
(40,74%) and scientific conferences (39,26%).
In the following stage, the project will recruit and train a number of 300 university teachers, in
three centers/regions: Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara, coming from three interest groups or
categories: staff involved in the implementation of quality assurance system and mechanisms
(managers, internal auditors, member in QA commissions etc.), senior and junior staff teaching in
higher education interested on student-centered learning methodologies and finally professional
practice coordinators. A blended learning methodology was developed and will be tested, and it
includes a friendly and easy-to-use learning platform, initially constructed and resourced for these
three categories of staff and interest topics, but flexible and permissive for further extension and
development for both students and academic staff training and professional development.

III. CONCLUSIONS

Not to conclude yet on the BLU project, while we are only half-way there, there are several
directions to be noted as driving forces for a blended learning approach to university academic staff
competence development:
• The openly expressed preference for a mix of learning experiences and delivery methods
coming from the needs analysis report;
• The high interest in developing competences and sharing knowledge on three main area of
interest: quality assurance, student centered learning and professional practice of students,
correlated with the tendency for independence/individual approach and the need to
effectively use time;
• The challenging generations and categories of new learners to which university should
address using “their way” to make learning interesting and attractive.
Romanian higher education should pay more attention and resources to develop blended
learning opportunities, on one hand, and to contribute to professional development and training of
 academic staff, on the other hand, as both directions could support in coping with the pressures and
challenges of the current times.

References

[1] Dziuban, C., Moskal, P., and J.Hartman, 2005. Higher Education, Blended Learning and the Generations:
Knowledge is Power-No More. In J. Bourne & J.C. Moore (Eds.), Elements of Quality Online Education: Engaging
Communities. Needham, MA: Sloan Center for Online Education.
[2] Rovai, A.P., Jordan, H.M., 2004. Blended learning and sense of community: A comparative analysis with
traditional and fully online graduate courses. In International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
Available at http://www.irrodl.org/content/v5.2/rovai-jordan.html
[3] Gibbs, G., Coffey, M., 2004. The Impact of Training of University Teachers on their Teaching Skills, their
Approach to Teaching and the Approach to Learning of their Students. In Active Learning in Higher Education,
Vol.5, no.1, Pag 87-100.
[4] Garrison, R.D., Vaughan, N.D., 2008. Blended Learning in Higher Education. Framework, Principles, and
Guidelines. Jossey Bass. San Francisco.
[5] Pedro, F. 2006. The New Millennium Learners. Challenging our Views on ICT and Learning. OECD-CERI, May.
Available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/1/38358359.pdf
[6] Howe, N., Strauss, V., 2000. Millennials Rising. The Next Great Generation. Vintage Original. New York. 1st
edition.
[7] Singh, H., 2003. Building Effective Blended Learning Programs. In Educational Technology. Vol. 43, No.6, Pag.
51-54.
[8] Hermes Advisors (Ed.: L.Ciolan), 2009. Tendinte in utilizarea IT la studenti. Raport final pentru Intel România.
Bucuresti.
[9] Garrison, R.D., Kanuka, H., 2004. Blended Learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education.
In: The Internet and Higher Education. Vol. 7, pag. 95-105.
[10] ***, 2010. „Analiza nevoilor de formare ale cadrelor didactice universitare”. Working paper from the Project
,,Formarea continua de tip ,,blended learning” pentru cadrele didactice universitare”, POS DRU ID 26646.
Universitatea din Bucureşti, Bucureşti.
[11] Ciolan, L., 2008. Invatarea integrata. Fundamente pentru un curriculum transdisciplinar. Polirom, Iasi.
[12] Atkinson, K., Fluker, G., Ngo, L., Dracup, M., McCormick, P., 2009. Introducing a learning repository with a
blended professional development approach. In ASCILITE 2009 Proceedings.
[13] Cowan, J., 2006. On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher: Reflection in Action. Open University Press, The
Society for Research into Higher Education. New York.
[14] Chew, E.; Jones, N. and D.Turner, 2008. Critical Review of the Blended Learning Models Based on Maslow and
Vygotskys Educational Theory. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 5169, pag. 40-53.
[15] Bennett, S.; Maton, K.; Kervin, L. (2008). "The „digital natives‟ debate: A critical review of the evidence". British
Journal of Educational Technology 39 (5): 775–786.

View publication stats