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Teachers in blended learning environments: Case studies of ICT-enhanced

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238

Chapter XIII
Case Studies of ICT:
Enhanced Blended Learning and
Implications for Professional
Development

Gail Wilson
Bond University, Australia

Abstract

This chapter draws on a collective case study of six faculty members working in ICT-enhanced blended
learning environments at a large regional university in Australia. The chapter identifies seven dimen-
sions of the blended learning environments created by each teacher, with a particular focus on four of
these dimensions – the teacher, the online, the resource-based learning and the institutional support
dimension. The research showed how individual faculty members worked to blend their courses through
their overall approaches to course planning, their focus on combining the strengths of both the face-to-
face and the online learning environments, and their eagerness to shift their pedagogical approaches
to accommodate the best features of both the face-to-face and the online environments. The chapter
makes recommendations for professional development for teachers that is effective in preparing them
for creating and working in blended learning environments and suggests areas for future research in
the area of blended learning.

INTRODUCTION case-based study examined how information and

This chapter focuses on a recent study (Wilson,
2007) of six faculty members working in blended
learning environments in campus-based contexts
in a large regional university in Australia. The
communications technology (ICT) was used by
each of these faculty members, all early adopt-
ers (Rogers, 2003), to enhance their face-to-face
teaching, and how this use contributed to an
understanding of blended learning within higher

Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Case Studies of ICT
education in Australia. This chapter begins by de-
fining key terms used in the study and throughout
the chapter. It examines ways of analysing and
defining blended learning environments (BLEs)
by focusing on the scope, nature, and purpose of
the blend adopted by individual teachers across
their courses. The study is located within a quali-
tative field of inquiry, and the rationale is given
for the choice of case study as both the product
of the research and the research strategy for the
study. The case study design is discussed and the
individual teachers who participated in the study
are introduced.
The chapter presents the findings from the
study within a framework of the distinctive dimen-
sions of the BLEs created by the faculty members.
It focuses on four of these dimensions —the
teacher, the online, the resource-based learning
(RBL), and the institutional support dimensions.
A portion of the chapter makes recommendations
regarding the professional development required
for faculty members to support their use of blended
learning. The chapter discusses some implications
arising from the study and makes recommenda-
tions for areas for future research in the area of
blended learning.
BACKGROUND
In this chapter blended learning is defined as a
mix of face-to-face and ICT components, united
through a carefully considered learning design,
combining a mix of formats, media and activities.
Implied in this definition is a need to blend the
strengths of both the face-to-face and the online
learning environments, including the pedagogical
approaches best suited to both, or, as Garrison
and Vaughan (2008, p. 6) stress, combining “the
properties and possibilities of both to go beyond
the capabilities of each separately.” Overall, the
dominant arguments for blended learning in
higher education resonate with the rationale for
the move towards flexible learning and flexible
delivery in the 1990s: improved pedagogy, en-
abling courses to become more student-centred
and less teacher-directed; increased access for
students and flexibility in terms of time that
students needed to be on-campus; responding to
the diversity of students needs; enhancement of
the campus experience; the demands of a global
education marketplace; and increased cost effec-
tiveness (Graham, Allen & Ure, 2003).
Institutional research on blended learning
conducted by Canada’s Collaboration for Online
Higher Education and Research (COHERE) group
concluded that faculty members blended their
courses to achieve “a more flexible, efficient, ac-
cessible, and varied learning experience for their
students” (Cook, Owston & Garrison, 2004, p.
348). This Canadian research found that institu-
tional success in the implementation of blended
learning required broad organisational support
and incentives for staff, such as workload alloca-
tion and recognition and reward schemes. In one
US research study (Christensen, 2003), while it
was found that blended learning was an effective
strategy when seeking to implement constructivist
pedagogy, it still presented significant challenges
in terms of time demands placed on individual
faculty members. A study published a year later
(Dziuban, Hartman & Moskai, 2004) affirmed that
faculty members adopting blending learning also
experienced more demands on their time, while
at the same time they became more facilitative
in terms of their teaching approach, and more
focused on course design.
The definition of ICT adopted throughout the
study is attributed to Mason and Rennie (2006,
p. 60) who used the term broadly to mean “any
hardware or software, or even any activity
that is related to the use of computers for the
generation, storage, transmission and retrieval
of information in an electronic format.” A key
focus of this chapter is on the blended learning
pedagogy adopted across the cases in the study.
Pedagogy is defined as “the manner in which
the teaching and learning processes and settings
239

in a course are organised and implemented by
an instructor” (Collis & Moonen, 2001, p. 19).
References are also made in the study to learning
resources, defined here as “those resources that
represent knowledge for the purpose of learning”
(Littlejohn & McGill, 2004, Section 2). Resources
for learning come in a wide range of representa-
tions: textbooks, lecture presentations, reading
lists, learning designs, tips and tricks for teach-
ing, glossaries, study guides, examinations and
tests, and case studies and toolkits (Littlejohn &
McGill, 2004). Resources are used in different
formats and delivered using different media. The
context in which they are used is important. A
typology of resources (Collis & Strijker, 2004)
emphasises three types of resources in relation to
faculty a member’s role in adapting resources to
particular contexts. Pure resources (articles, book
chapters, animations, course notes, PowerPoint™
slides) are unedited by the teacher. Pure, combined
resources are unedited resources combined with
other resources, as in a course reading combined
with a learning activity. Adapted resources are
those which have been edited or repurposed by
the teacher for a different context from the one
for which it was originally designed.
In this study, learning resources used across
the six cases were categorised as informational or
interactive (Oliver, 2002). Informational resources
support learners accessing information, while in-
teractive resources support learners’ engagement,
reflection and decision making processes as well
as providing feedback to learners. Resource use
in blended learning environments can further by
analysed using Mayes’s (2002) conceptualisation
framework which shows some similarities to
Laurillard’s (2002) conversational framework in
its emphasis on the importance of dialogue in the
development of learner understanding, but is based
on three broad stages of learning development
linked to the concept of courseware or learning
resources. In Mayes’s representation of a learn-
ing environment, courseware supports three
essential stages in student learning—concep-
240
Case Studies of ICT:
tualisation, construction and contextualisa-
tion—which the learner moves through until a
state of understanding and knowing has been
reached. Courseware should orient learners to
the content and support them through each of
these stages. The added value of technology
for learning is enhanced as faculty member
and student move from the conceptualisation,
to the construction, and then to the contextu-
alisation stages of learning (Mayes & Fowler,
1999, p. 495). The individual teacher’s role
is to provide support and coaching to learn-
ers as they progress through these stages of
development.
Reference is made in this chapter to ICT tools
used by faculty members, defined as “software
applications that can be used to undertake spe-
cific activities or sets of tasks” (Conole & Dyke,
2004, p. 5). The ICT tools commonly in use by
faculty members and students in this study were
online chat, discussion forum, email, listservs,
and the web. A recently-published media typology
(Beetham & Sharpe, 2007) was used to classify
the ICT tools used by staff in this study, based
on an earlier classification by Laurillard (2002)
of five media types—narrative, communicative,
adaptive, interactive and productive, to which has
been added a sixth type, integrative.
ANALYSING AND DEFINING
BLENDED LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS
Frameworks found in the literature on blended
learning (Graham, 2006; Graham & Robison,
2007; Osguthorpe & Graham, 2003) have sug-
gested ways of analysing teachers’ design and
use of BLEs: determining the scope of the blend,
or the impact of the blend on the context of the
course, the primary purpose or goal of the blend,
and the nature of the blend, or how the blend is
being used in particular circumstances.
The scope of the blend is determined by looking
at how blended learning has impacted on some,
Case Studies of ICT
or all, of the components of a course. A single
activity or a fixed number of activities within a
course can be blended. In one course, students
may be required to complete one online assess-
ment task in a course, while in another course all
tutorial presentations must be posted online and
critiqued by peers. Sometimes blended learning
activities may occur only once or twice during a
semester, for example, where a synchronous tuto-
rial is designed to precede a face-to-face discus-
sion of a specific topic. In other cases, they may
be regularly scheduled as asynchronous events
across a semester.
The purpose of the blend relates to an indi-
vidual faculty member’s reasons for introduc-
ing blended learning into a course. A range of
studies have directed attention to the motivation
behind teachers’ adoption of blended learning.
For some staff it enriched the learning experi-
ence of students and enhanced learning and
teaching effectiveness overall (Hodgson, 2005;
Lang, 2000, Roberts, 2004), broadened access
to essential course information, enhanced the
amount and quality of student interaction, and
increased student autonomy in using resources
and finding resources for themselves (Bates &
Poole, 2003; Bunker & Vardi, 2001). Faculty
members also used blended learning approaches to
achieve improvements in pedagogy, productivity,
and access and convenience; to keep pace with a
changing educational environment; and prepare
students for future work roles and lifelong learn-
ing (Graham & Robinson, 2007; Hodgson, 2005).
Research has also indicated that faculty members
adopted blended learning as a result of student
pressure to do so (Elgort, 2005).
A US research study reported on the outcomes
of a large course redesign project involving 30
institutions which produced five distinct course
redesign models, whose features were used to
establish categories that defined the nature of
blended courses (Twigg, 2003, p. 30) —supple-
mental, replacement, emporium, fully online, and
buffet. Two of these categories— supplemental
and replacement—were used in this study to
define the nature of the blend evidenced in the
courses taught by individual faculty members.
The supplemental model retains the traditional
course structure, but adds ICT-based activities
to enhance face-to-face and/or outside class
activities. The replacement model significantly
changes the original course profile, for example,
by reducing face-to-face meetings and replacing
them with online activities aimed at encouraging
interactivity amongst students.
UK researchers Littlejohn and Pegler (2007)
have suggested that the nature of blended learning
environments across courses could be determined
by examining the blend across the four compo-
nents of space (virtual, face-to-face), time (the
length of a course), media (tools and resources),
and activity (learning activities). These authors
defined activity blends as blends of online and
face-to-face learning activities, where one activity
is “wrapped around” another. An online activity
may be directly linked to a face-to-face activity,
such as an online discussion being linked to or
supported by a lecture which immediately fol-
lows. Or, a class tutorial or practical class can be
followed by student exploration of a set of web
resources, or a group task conducted in the online
environment.
CASE STUDY AS RESEARCH
STRATEGY
The research study that is the focus of this chapter
was located within a qualitative field of inquiry.
Several interpretive paradigms serve to guide
the qualitative researcher. These paradigms are
“interpretive” because they channel the actions of
the researcher and how they should be understood
and studied (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p. 26).
Four major interpretive paradigms for qualita-
tive research as defined by Denzin and Lincoln
(2000, pp. 19-20) are positivist and postpositiv-
ist, constructivist-interpretive, critical (Marxist,
emancipatory), and feminist-poststructural. Case
study lies within the constructivist-interpretive
241

paradigm (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). This study
drew on the definition of a case study determined
by Creswell (1998, p. 61) as:
an exploration of a bounded system or a case
over time through detailed, in-depth data collec-
tion involving multiple sources of information,
rich in context. This bounded system is bounded by
time and place, and it is the case being studied – a
program, an event, an activity, or individuals.
The study also used case study as a research
strategy, an approach favoured by Yin (2003),
who argues that “how” and “why” questions in
research are more likely to be answered by case
studies, histories, and experiments. This study was
designed as an instrumental case study (Stake,
1995), focused on ICT-enhanced blended learn-
ing in on-campus contexts in one university. It is
also an example of both a collective case study,
with its focus on the use of blended learning by
six academic teachers, and a holistic case study,
given its focus on the use of blended learning
within a single institution.
Case studies were used extensively in the
literature to explore the “how” and “why” of
faculty members’ early use of ICT in universities:
(Bain, McNaught, Mills & Lueckenhausen, 1998;
Fox & Hermann, 2000; Housego & Freeman,
2000; Tearle, Davis & Birbeck, 1998; Thomson
& Holt, 1996). Case study has also been used to
explore the scholarly dimensions of academics’
educational beliefs in relation to their discipline
(Quinlan, 1997), and, within a scholarship of
teaching framework (Boyer, 1999), to document
and reflect upon four university faculty members’
early experiences with web-based instruction
(Daugherty, Grubb, Hirsch & Gillis, 2000). In
both studies, case study enabled the researchers
to explore a wide range of themes and dimensions
of teachers’ pedagogical practices.
RESEARCH SETTING
The setting for this study was a large regional
university in Australia, one of several major higher
242
Case Studies of ICT:
education providers of off-campus education,
geographically spread across several campuses,
with total undergraduate and postgraduate course
enrolments of close to 35,000 students. Many
of the university’s courses were offered in both
off-campus and on-campus mode. Most faculty
members at the university taught courses within
degree programs offered in both modes across a
thirteen-week semester punctuated by assessment
due dates and a final examination period. Current
assessment practice at the university favoured
final examinations as a summative assessment
process, with some exceptions to this practice
across faculties and within courses.
Institutions around the globe in the late 1990s
had responded to the “technological imperative”
(Holt & Thompson, 1995) of ICT by introducing
plans and policies to guide the introduction and
use of the new technologies. This university’s early
response to the challenges of the new technologies
had resulted in a blueprint being developed for
fully online off-campus and blended on-campus
courses which specified a default online presence
for all courses known as “online supported.” This
descriptor equated to the “supplementary” level of
web use that had been found to be the dominant
level in an early survey of Australian universities
(Bell, Bush, Nicholson, O’Brien & Tran, 2002).
Each online supported course provided students
access to an online course outline, web links and
resources relevant to the course, direct links to the
Library, and for students enrolled in off-campus
mode, access to the university’s electronic as-
signment submission system. Faculty members
in this study had extended this online supported
model to what the university called an “online
facilitated” one, where teachers actively used the
tools provided in the online course websites to
enrich and add variety to the face-to-face class-
room environment and provide opportunities
for communication and collaboration amongst
students.
Professional development support for faculty
members working in blended learning environ-
Case Studies of ICT
ments across the university was provided by a
centralised teaching and learning unit, which had
within it educational designers who were located
within specific schools on its major campuses. The
university had earlier introduced a peer support
program for embedding ICT usage across the
institution, and the Library had pioneered support
for students’ use of its catalogues, databases and
search engines through an online interactive tuto-
rial accessible from the online course websites.
As the university’s adoption of ICT grew, the role
of the educational designer staff was increasingly
focused on offering pedagogical advice and sup-
port to individual faculty members to prepare
their online-supported courses for off-campus
students, and, increasingly, using ICT to enhance
on-campus teaching and learning.
CASE STUDY DESIGN
The case study design for this study consisted
of four major stages, adapted from Stake (1995)
and Creswell (1998)—focusing the study, col-
lecting the data, analysing and interpreting the
data, and constructing and presenting the case.
Within each stage were smaller, iterative steps
and processes. A purposeful sampling approach
was used (also referred to in the literature as
purposive sampling), where the researcher selects
participants for inclusion in a study “on the basis
of knowledge of the population and the purpose of
the research” (Kayrooz & Trevitt, 2005, p. 157).
Purposeful sampling is aimed at choosing par-
ticipants to study who illuminate the issues raised
in the research questions (Creswell, 1998; Patton,
2002). The study sample consisted of six faculty
members, five of whom were female, from four
of the five faculties of the university, and located
across four of its campuses. The sixth participant
in the study was located at the university’s tech-
nology-enhanced campus, part of an educational
precinct which included a senior high school and
a vocational education institution.
All faculty members in the sample were early
adopters (Rogers, 2003) of ICT, that is, they had
incorporated the online environment into their
face-to-face teaching at an early stage in the
university’s adoption of ICT-based blended learn-
ing. The choice of sample was determined by the
need to provide a spread of representative teachers
across multiple campuses and disciplines who
used ICT with on-campus students, rather than a
design to achieve a gender balance. There was no
intent to sample all disciplines represented at the
university, or to have an even number of teachers
from each faculty. Two of the faculty members in
the study were Science teachers teaching the same
courses. They taught on different campuses and
were recognised within the university as being
innovative in their approaches to blended learn-
ing within their respective campuses. There were
sufficient differences in the types of ICT tools
and the ways in which they used these tools to
include both in the sample. In accordance with the
ethical agreement made with each teacher prior
to starting the study, individuals were given a
pseudonym to protect their identity and maintain
anonymity.
Data collection for the study spanned a one-
year period. The data collected included tran-
scripts of interviews, analysis of course documen-
tation, multi-media resources and websites, and
extensive field notes compiled for each teacher.
An individual case record described by Stenhouse
(1978, p. 37) as “a parsimonious condensation of
the case data” was constructed for each case.
TEACHER PROFILES
A brief synopsis of each of the participants in the
study is provided below:
Joanne was an award-winning health sciences
academic who used ICT in her teaching on a daily
basis, and found in the use of the online chat
tool a way of fostering peer support amongst her
students while on clinical placements.
243

Gillian was an enthusiastic science teacher
with a wealth of experience in teaching hospitals
and a strong computer background, who made ex-
tensive use of CD-ROMs to enhance the learning
experiences of mature-age nursing students.
Stephanie was a young career academic, re-
cently acknowledged for her teaching excellence
at the university, who had been exposed early in
her teaching to the use of technologies in science
teaching at one of Australia’s largest research
universities. She used ICT to support nursing
students learning about science.
Helen was an experienced teacher with a strong
drive to explore new territory in her teaching
who saw it as her role to ensure that her young
pre-service teachers were well prepared to use
technologies in 21st century classrooms.
James was an experienced academic with
a strong research interest in the area of com-
puter-supported collaborative work (CSCW)
who used the new technologies to bring on- and
off-campus students studying the same course
closer together.
Elizabeth was a practising textile artist and an
experienced teacher in secondary, adult education,
and higher education contexts for whom the use
of ICT had breathed new life into the teaching of
her discipline, art history.
FINDINGS
Dimensions of Blended Learning
Environments
The study’s findings were framed as seven dimen-
sions of blended learning environments (Figure
10.1) found across the six cases: the teacher, on-
line, face-to-face and self study dimensions, the
resource-based learning dimension, the institu-
244
Case Studies of ICT:
tional support dimension, and the organisational
context dimension.
The teacher dimension occupied a central
position in the findings in relation to the other
dimensions. The five elements in this dimension
included the faculty member’s reasons for moving
to blended learning, the blended learning pedago-
gies they adopted, the nature of the blend across
their courses, how the faculty members saw their
role, and the challenges they encountered as they
embraced blended learning.
The online dimension featured four elements:
the types of media used, the range of activity
blends across the courses, the use of online as-
sessment, and the scaffolding support each faculty
member http://www.flinders.edu.au/teach/foun-
dations provided to support students’ use of the
online environment.
The self-study dimension is defined as the
time students spent working independently out-
side of scheduled class times, supported by both
informational and interactive resources which
were found in use by all the cases.
The face-to-face dimension included three
elements: teaching spaces, face-to-face classes
and work placements. Faculty members used a
range of lecture, tutorial, computer laboratory
and practical laboratory face-to-face teaching
spaces. Scheduled face-to-face classes were a
mix of lectures, tutorials, seminars, workshops,
meetings, practical classes and computer labs.
Four of the teachers taught in courses with sched-
uled work placements, with locations in schools,
hospitals and health services clinics in Australia
and overseas.
The resource-based learning (RBL) dimen-
sion is a dominant feature of all the blended learn-
ing environments found across the cases. RBL
supported teaching and learning in the online,
face-to-face and self-study dimensions.
The institutional support dimension refers
to the IT, professional development, and library
support available to teachers at the university.
Professional development of faculty members
Case Studies of ICT
Figure 1. Dimensions of blended learning environments
for blended learning is explored in more detail
later in this chapter.
The organisational context dimension is the
university where the study was located, described
earlier in this chapter.
This chapter focuses on the findings from the
study that relate specifically to the teacher, online,
RBL, and institutional support dimensions. The
teacher and online dimensions are combined in
a discussion of the nature of the blended learning
pedagogy adopted across the six cases.
Blended Learning Pedagogy
The features of the blended learning pedagogy
evidenced across the cases in the study included
the use of different types of media, a range of
activity blends, a continuum of use of online as-
sessment, types of scaffolding support provided
by faculty, the nature of the blend found across the
teachers’ courses, and the motivation of faculty
members to embrace blended learning.
Media Blends
Based on a typology of media types (Beetham
& Sharpe, 2007), five media types were found
in use across the cases—narrative, interactive,
communicative, adaptive, and integrative. Three
of these—narrative, interactive, and communi-
cative—were used by all teachers in the study.
Narrative media were evidenced through the use
of digital images, the digital camera, PowerPoint™
slides, CD-ROMs, video files, and web pages.
Interactive media used included search engines,
online databases, portal websites, and an online
quiz tool. Communicative media included the use
of online chat, course forums, listservs, group-
ware, and the synchronous chat capability of the
LC_MOO. Use of adaptive media was limited to
the science-related simulations, games and models
contained in CD-ROMs used by two teachers,
and phonetic transcription and electropalatograph
tools used by another. Three teachers had made
use of integrative media—two combined tradi-
245

tional print and ICT based tools in two of their
respective assessment tasks, and a third teacher
made extensive use of community-building open
source, web-based learning environments and the
MOO (Multi-user Object Oriented), a text-based
virtual space that allows users to create characters,
objects, and rooms and where learners can interact
synchronously (Haughey & Anderson, 1998) in
addition to the university’s in-house system to
manage the student learning environment.
Activity Blends
As found by Littlejohn & Pegler (2007), activity
blends designed by teachers combined online and
face-to-face classroom activities. In this study
these blends included:
• Synchronous debates in the course forum,
followed by face-to-face discussion in the
lecture; using the web and course forums
to facilitate completion of a paper-based
assessment task;
• Working in face-to-face classes on col-
laborative group tasks and posting related
information and reports on the course fo-
rums; presenting in tutorials and posting
summaries on the course forum; exploring
resources contained in web-based study
guides linked to weekly campus-based
tutorials;
• Using online interactive quizzes to self-test
understanding prior to practical classes; us-
ing quizzes, games and interactive models
from CD-ROMs in face-to-face science
classes;
• Accessing resources on a teacher-devel-
oped website to facilitate understanding of
concepts discussed in lectures or practical
classes; researching websites for a face-to-
face debate; listening to and identifying
chest sounds on a website, then answering
questions and discussing answers questions
in a practical lab class.
246
Case Studies of ICT:
Online Assessment
Two participants in the study who taught science
subjects made no use of online assessment in
their courses and continued to maintain the mid-
semester tests and formal examinations traditional
to teaching in their discipline. One restricted her
use of online assessment to a first-year course she
taught, and another required that students use the
course forum and undertake other computer-based
tasks to satisfy the assessment requirements in
both her courses. Moderate use of online assess-
ments was evidenced in one of the cases where the
faculty member required use of the course forums
to post tutorial summaries and to participate in
discussions, provided an option of submitting
an essay online, and required the inclusion in a
portfolio assessment of evidence of forum par-
ticipation and web-based research. A fully online
assessment approach was evident in the case of
another teacher, where all the assessment tasks
were developed by all students within the online
environment and submitted electronically, and
there was no formal examination.
Scaffolding Support for Learners
All teachers in the study supported student learn-
ing by using the type of scaffolds, or support and
assistance, which McLoughlin (2004) had found
in her research and termed orientation, task sup-
port, and procedural scaffolds to support student
learning. Coaching support was provided by one
teacher (McLoughlin, 2002, 2004). Table 10.1
shows details of the range of scaffolding support
across the cases.
The Nature of the Blend Across the
Cases
The study also showed evidence of enrichment
(Twigg, 2003) and transforming (Graham & Ro-
bison, 2007) blends involving changes to what
Collis (1997) called the “pedagogical profile” of
Case Studies of ICT
the teachers’ courses. Enrichment blends used
ICT to enhance student learning, widen access
to resources and increase opportunities for com-
munication, but did not involve significant changes
to the original course structure. Examples from
the cases included providing a single course
website for on-and off-campus students studying
Table 1. Types and Examples of Scaffolding Support Across Cases
Scaffold types and explanation
Orientation and communication of expectations—Inform-
ing students about the requirements of the course
Coaching—A teacher, peer or learning resource that helps
perform a task
Task support—Providing a series of questions or headings
guiding students in performance of a task
Procedural scaffolds—(a)Supporting learners in using
tools and resources and providing support for learning and
resource sharing; and (b)Providing support for learning
and resource sharing
Collaborative group work and assessments provided as examples for
future cohorts.
the same course; teacher-developed websites to
provide resources for students; the use of ICT
tools to promote interaction between students,
explain difficult language within a course, en-
hance engagement with processes and content,
appeal to different student learning styles, and
to facilitate communication between students,
and with the teacher.
Examples
All teachers provided online course outlines describing learning
outcomes, content, assessment tasks.
Peer coaching provided for mature age students in computer skills.
A faculty member is present when students are working in computer
labs; structured set of questions provided weekly in online course
outlines for (a)learning journal development and (b)tasks to perform
to prepare for clinical practice;
Key questions in online website to guide students to explore web
materials;
Weekly topics in online course outlines guided students to move
from reading, to exploring web links, to answering questions relevant
to assessment tasks;
Practical lab handbook questions using websites guided students’
weekly lab preparation;
Moving from structured lecture notes on course forums in first year
to less structure in second year to promote student note-taking skills.
Mandatory online library database tutorial;
Demonstration of use of course forums, chat, listserv, email and of
forums;
Computer training for first year students;
Assisting students to use digital camera and make digital images.
Organising availability of CD-ROMs for after-class access;
Organising collaborative learning activities using discussion forum
and online chat;
Requiring students to post tutorial work on discussion forum;
247

Transforming blends involved changes made to
the original course structure, resulting in a reduc-
tion of face-to-face time on campus and making
significant use of the online environment as part
of the learning design of the course. In this study,
one faculty member made significant structural
chances to the course resulting which reduced
face-to-face meetings and enhanced interaction
between students and between students with the
course content. Another case highlighted how one
teacher provided a virtual learning environment in
addition to the online supported website provided
by the university, where most of the learning for
on-campus students occurred.
Motivation to Adopt Blended Learning
The study revealed that the affordances of ICT as
described by Conole & Dyke (2004) were strong
motivators for teachers in this study to adopt
blended learning across their courses. These staff
appreciated the new technologies:
• for dissemination of information about
course aims, outcomes, assessment, and
resources for learning;
• for enhancing understanding of complex
concepts associated with their discipline;
• for bringing authenticity to the learning
environment through modelling processes
associated with professional practice in the
discipline or through using tools commonly
in use in the work environment;
• for extending the classroom beyond the walls
of the university or a textbook that would
not have been possible earlier; and
• for communication and collaboration pur-
poses, which involved storing of student
work and student discussions as archival
material for current and future students,
and for research and self-study purposes.
Moving to blended learning had enabled
teachers to provide access for students to virtual
248
Case Studies of ICT:
spaces to acquire information and resources,
perform tasks, and collaborate with each other.
They created blended learning environments to
prepare students for future work roles and to equip
them with the technological literacy skills they
would need as lifelong learners, promote social
interaction among their students, either between
on-campus and off-campus students, or to enhance
interaction amongst on-campus students as they
engaged in learning tasks or were isolated from
each other while on work placements. In three
instances in this study, there was evidence that
ICT use facilitated the convergence, or bringing
together of on-campus and off-campus students,
supporting an example of another type of blended
learning described by Osguthorpe and Graham
(2003) when students working in different modes
of study come together in the online environ-
ment.
Faculty members also favoured a move to
blended learning because it expanded choice of
content for students and facilitated the integra-
tion of computer-based activities with traditional
classroom tasks. There was also a high degree of
motivation amongst the teachers in this study to
use technology to enhance learner independence,
by promoting student research of particular top-
ics and providing students with different tools
to access information for developing their own
content as they progressed through the semester.
Several teachers modelled their use of ICT in
class to show students how to find information
for themselves and promote student use of these
media in self-study time. These findings are
consistent with the individual and institutional
studies in the literature focused on reasons for
adoption of blended learning (Bates & Poole,
2003; Bunker & Vardi, 2001; Cook, Owston &
Garrison, 2004; Elgort, 2005; Hodgson, 2005,
Lang, 2000, Roberts, 2004).
Only two teachers in the study spoke of any
pressure within their school or faculty to embrace
ICT, an issue on which the literature reviewed
for this research is silent. One individual spoke
Case Studies of ICT
of student pressure to create a single learning
environment for his on-campus and off-cam-
pus students, an issue mentioned earlier in this
chapter. Unlike the US research into blended
learning of Osguthorpe and Graham (2003), in
this study cost-effectiveness and ease of revision
did not feature as motivators for teachers to adopt
blended learning.
Teacher Role
The study provided insights into how each of the
faculty members perceived their role as a teacher.
Their perceptions of their roles underlined the
importance of their commitment to their learners.
Some saw themselves as facilitators or guides of
student learning, helping to make students more
knowledgeable, more able to find information,
and more self sufficient as learners. Others saw
themselves in a nurturing role, supporting their
students’ journey through a course and support-
ing the professional socialisation process. Several
teachers were moving away from what Oliver and
Herrington (2001) called content-based learning
to task-based learning, experiencing a shift from
their discipline’s traditional approach to teaching
which had favoured a transmission style of deliv-
ery, to an approach that used ICT to encourage
and facilitate understanding.
While this study did not try to explain indi-
vidual attributes that made these teachers early
adopters of ICT in their university, it identified in
each individual an enthusiasm and a willingness
to push the boundaries of their ICT use further.
Such attitudes are consistent with Rogers’s (2003)
descriptions of early adopters of an innovation.
This study showed how teachers actively worked
to blend their courses through their overall ap-
proaches to course planning, their focus on
combining the strengths of both the face-to-face
and the online learning environments, and their
eagerness to shift their pedagogical approaches
to accommodate the best features of both envi-
ronments.
The findings of the study showed faculty
members adopting both acquisition and con-
tribution approaches to learning (Sfard, 1998).
The acquisition metaphor equates learning with
individual enrichment through the acquisition of
facts, representations and content. The role of the
teacher is to deliver, convey, facilitate and medi-
ate. The contribution metaphor is conceived of as
the idea of knowing or learning as participation,
particularly within a community of learners. The
teacher’s dominant role is one of expert participant,
facilitator and mentor. Sfard (1998) argued that
both acquisition and contribution are necessary
for learning to occur – students have to acquire
knowledge before they can apply and adapt it
(Meredith & Newton, 2004, p. 46).
Resource-Based Learning
Resource-based learning (RBL) approaches un-
derpinned the teaching and learning processes
in evidence across all the cases in this study.
Resources provided opportunities for students
to engage in what Laurillard (2002) described as
“mediated learning”. Student use of resources was
encouraged by faculty members demonstrating
their use in class, designing learning activities
which focused on their use, and providing supple-
mental lists of resources in course outlines and
study guides. Collis and Strijker’s (2004) analysis
of the role played by teachers in adapting resources
to a particular learning context was supported by
this study’s findings; that most resources used by
staff were pure (unchanged), while some were in-
tegrated with a learning activity (pure, combined),
and some were adapted by individual teachers for
use in class and in learning activities.
Table 10.2 shows a list of informational and
interactive resources (Oliver, 2002) used across
the cases. Informational resources were a mix of
pre-digital (print) and digital resources (Hill &
Hannafin, 2001), used in class and as self-study
resources by the students. Interactive resources
were used primarily in class time, but those avail-
249
 Case Studies of ICT:

able on CD-ROM and through websites could Institutional Support Challenges

be accessed outside of class by the students. The
context of individual’s resource use varied across
the cases. Teachers encouraged student use of
these resources through their demonstrated use of
them in face-to-face classes, in designing learn-
ing activities which focused on their use, and in
recommended lists of resources they provided in
online course outlines and study guides.
Resources used by staff in this study were
further examined using Mayes’s (2002) concep-
tualisation framework explained earlier in this
chapter. Table 10.3 illustrates that all teachers in
this study used all three types of courseware to
support the three stages of learning as promoted
by Mayes.
Teachers in this study created resource-based
learning environments (RBLEs) to widen infor-
mation access, enhance student understanding,
enrich the mix of resources available to students,
enable flexibility in access in terms of location
and time, provide opportunities for students for
practice and revision, appeal to different learning
styles of students, and to promote self-study and
independent learning skills. For some faculty
members the use of RBLEs offered a way of
shifting their teaching approach from a focus on
content, to a focus on enrichment of the learning
processes. For three teachers, RBLEs achieved
economies of scale when their students studying in
on- and off-campus contexts made use of them.
The study showed that all participants had expe-
rienced challenges as early adopters of ICT-en-
hanced blended learning. One of these challenges
was a lack of consistency in the level of support
for teachers for blended learning at the faculty
and school levels. Some staff drew attention to the
lack of Information Technology (IT) and computer
infrastructure support at their particular campus.
For some individuals in this study workload pres-
sures were recognised as a by-product of their
adoption of blended learning. Course websites
which were additional to the university’s online
facilitated sites were maintained by three teach-
ers and required regular updating. One faculty
member spoke of the many hours spent setting up
the structures for her courses and organising the
resources and library support that framed them
both. By building in computer-based learning
activities and reducing the face-to-face time spent
with her students, she found herself spending a lot
of time answering student emails and little time
to monitor student work on the course forums.
What was clear across all the cases in this study,
as teachers faced challenges such as these, they
were motivated to seek new ways to adapt to them
and to look for solutions as to how they could
improve their practice in using ICT.

Table 2. Resources Used Across Cases

Informational resources

Online course outlines, textbooks, journals, reading (print and electronic); study guides, teacher developed websites,
external websites, students’ assignments and group work; learning journals, handouts, tutorial summaries, student presen-
tation summaries, publishers’ online learning centres, guest lecturers, lecture notes, CD-ROMs for self study.
Interactive resources
Computerised phonetic transcription programs, websites, electro-palatograph, CD-ROMS (animations, images, games,
video clips, quizzes), publishers online learning centres, online quizzes, specimens, LC_MOO, community building
software, library databases, course-specific websites with questions, activities, interactive websites.

250
Case Studies of ICT

Table 3. Use of Courseware to Support Learning Stages

Learning stage/ Courseware type Examples

Conceptualisation stage/ Online outlines (all teachers);

Primary courseware Specially designed websites and web-based topic notes;
PowerPoint™ summaries of lectures;
Summaries of tutorial notes placed on course forums; CD-ROMs

Construction stage/ Online tutorial on use of library databases;

Secondary courseware Research of websites;
Links to websites providing instructions on using software for CSCW work;
Phonetics transcription CD-ROM;
Online quiz to reinforce concepts and prepare for practical classes

Contextualisation stage/
Tertiary courseware
Group work discussions and summaries posted to course forums;
Community education websites made by students available to all;
Previous student work and student discussion logs archived in virtual learning
environment;
Course forums discussions and online chat available to on- and off-campus
students;
Questions from students and teacher responses available to all students on course
forums;
Online chat facilitates discussion between students

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR and institutional workload policies and reward

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Institutional responses to the challenges of blended
learning are frequently addressed by re-examining
the nature and scope of professional development
provided for teachers. If this professional develop-
ment is to be effective, a range of approaches must
be canvassed and adopted, and the professional
development function within institutions must be
capable of providing sustainable, ongoing, and
targeted support to its staff. In planning profes-
sional development for blended learning, there
is a need to consider the local context in which
faculty members work, their beliefs about teaching
and learning, their current teaching approaches,
systems in place to support them as they engage
with blended learning. There is a greater likelihood
of successful adoption of blended learning in an
institution if an environment is created that sup-
ports opportunities for these teachers to trial new
teaching and learning methods, and encourages
them to support each other and share knowledge
and skills. Institutional support for campus-wide
and even inter-institutional projects that allow for
cross-fertilisation of ideas and for staff to learn
from each other in supportive environments is
essential. Teachers need opportunities to share
ideas, experiences, and reflections with others
as they engage with the principles and practices
of blended learning. As they practice their newly

251

learned skills, and seek expert or experienced
pedagogical advice when they require it, there is
a greater likelihood of them successfully adopting
blended learning into their everyday teaching and
learning practices.
A framework for professional development
can be devised that emphasises the advantages of
blended learning for teachers, students, and the
institution. Part of this framework would include
a program for faculty members that is structured
and developmental and scaffolds a set of skills in
a range of ICT plus an understanding of pedagogy
in blended learning environments. Included in this
program would be a focus on the shift in the role
of the individual teacher from a teacher-centred
perspective to a more facilitative and collaborative
role; skills in working in course teams to design
whole programs of study for blended learning
environments; working with digital resources and
repurposing them for blended environments; and
the ability to adapt to changes to work practices
associated with the use of ICT-enhanced blended
learning. As teachers themselves become more
expert in blended learning and the use of ICT
as affordances for blended learning, they can
provide support and mentoring to others seeking
these same skills.
The web is a major source of professional
development for teachers for blended learning.
Institutions use websites in several ways: impart-
ing information and providing resource-based
support; providing pre and post activities that
wrap around a face-to-face event on campus about
blended learning; and providing a space where
faculty members’s innovative use of blended
learning approaches can be shared with other
teachers in the institution and communication
between them about these practices is enabled
(Kandlebinder, 2001, 2003). A note of caution
about providing web-based workshops for aca-
demic staff is given in a recent review of research
related to professional online development for
the professions (Maor & Volet, 2007) which
challenged the extent to which online workshops
252
Case Studies of ICT:
provided interactivity and other forms of social
learning that promote sharing of knowledge and
creation of learning communities amongst the
teachers it was targeting. New Canadian research
(Garrison & Vaughan, 2008, p. 52) recommends a
blended community of inquiry (CoI) approach to
professional development combining face-to-face,
web-based, and independent activities, which
collectively provide “the necessary flexibility,
structure, and organization to support and sustain
the [blended learning] course redesign process.”
When planning a website to support academics’
adoption of blended learning, these “good prac-
tice” approaches (O’Reilly, Ellis & Newton, 2000)
can help to enhance faculty use of the site:
• showcase through the use of exemplars or
case studies evidence of effective blended
and online teaching and learning from a
range of disciplines;
• make information available about ICT and
its affordances for blended learning; and
• publish staff and student evaluations of the
effectiveness of blended learning innova-
tions in the institution.
Recent research (Sharpe & Oliver 2007, p. 120)
about the relationship of resource-based learning
approaches such as the use of exemplars or case
studies located on a website to the professional
learning experiences of teaching staff stressed
the importance of concentrating on the design of
resources that can best facilitate the mediating of
teachers’ practices, or “moving from representa-
tions to interventions.” A small Australian study
(Wilson, Thomson & Malfroy, 2006; Thomson &
Wilson, 2007) based on the use and evaluation of
web-based resources for professional development
of teachers in the area of assessment indicated
that the biggest challenge was how to integrate
and contextualise these digital resources with
individual faculty member’s everyday teaching
practices.
Case Studies of ICT
IMPLICATIONS
This chapter has identified seven dimensions of
blended learning environments arising from the
cases in this study and has focused on several
of these in detail. Attention has been placed on
the pedagogical approaches of individual faculty
members through detailed analyses of the media
and activity blends they achieved using ICT tools
in use at the time, and the changes to their role
that they experienced as a result of their adop-
tion of ICT-enhanced blended learning. The sig-
nificance of RBL to blended learning approaches
has also been shown in this research. The study
provided evidence that teachers actively sought
to maximise the affordances of ICT to improve
the quality of education, widen student access,
and enhance interaction between students and
staff and students with their peers.
The research showed how individual faculty
members worked to blend their courses through
their overall approaches to course planning, their
focus on combining the strengths of both the face-
to-face and the online learning environments,
and their eagerness to shift their pedagogical ap-
proaches to accommodate the best features of both
the face-to-face and the online environments.
While this study was not a focus on an whole-
of-institution response to the adoption of blended
learning across the university, it did show how
teachers in one institution had responded to the
“technological imperative” of the new technolo-
gies and were adapting currently available ICT
tools to their individual circumstances. Each
individual case showed evidence of early use
of blended learning practices which was char-
acterised by the use of ICT tools and resources
whose affordances enhanced student access to
information and broadened their opportunities
for learning. Evidence of converged learning
environments in this study is an inevitable result
of the decline of historical boundaries between
on-campus and off-campus students that use of
ICT has facilitated in higher education institu-
tions generally.
The university in this study was at the stage of
what Mitchell, Dipetta and Kerr (2001) labelled the
“Wagon Train” when a whole institution begins
to move towards the adoption of ICT. The pro-
fessional development function for teaching and
learning at the university, along with IT and the
library, supported this move. The university faced
a challenge not unfamiliar to any other university
that had a centralised structure to support teach-
ing and learning – to provide a consistent level of
support for blended learning across all faculties,
schools, and in this university’s case, its distrib-
uted campuses. Since this study was conducted,
the university has developed more sophisticated
teaching and learning policies which emphasise
continued enhancement of online learning envi-
ronments. The ICT tools used by teachers in this
study have been further enhanced by a suite of
communication tools and resources available to
students through a new virtual learning environ-
ment, more sophisticated than its predecessor, and
designed to strengthen learning communities to
link on-campus and off-campus students.
CONCLUSION
Teachers in this study were introducing blended
learning approaches within traditional learning
spaces such as lecture theatres, tutorial rooms,
and laboratories. Only one of them was work-
ing within a more technology-enhanced campus
whose design was intended to promote the use
of ICT. For several of these teachers these spaces
were less than adequate in terms of basic equip-
ment such as data projection and internet access.
For blended learning practices to become more
mainstreamed within the instutution, strong and
robust technological infrastructure is required
and learning spaces designed that actively sup-
port the use of the new technologies. In this study,
there was a clear disciplinary focus to individual
253

faculty member’s explorations of blended learn-
ing approaches with their on-campus students,
supported by their backgrounds and previous
experiences at other universities. Further studies
of blended learning could investigate specific
changes to course profiles as a result of teachers
redesigning their courses for blended learning;
advance current understanding of the relation-
ship between learning stages and the uses of
different type of courseware in blended learning
environments; and focus specifically on teacher
planning for blended learning either within a
single faculty or across faculties working with
single or multiple courses.
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