Abstract:

In the School of Health Sciences at City University London we have adopted a blended learning approach for the delivery of the new nursing curriculum (2012/13). It is intended to enhance and extend the learning opportunities for students who have full access to learning resources and activities on a 24h basis.

This approach makes full use of available learning technologies whilst recognising the value of face to face interaction and facilitation. It also fosters supportive and collaborative learning networks amongst students and encourages deep rather than surface learning by engaging students in incremental learning tasks and student directed learning. It also enables students to manage their learning at a time and place best suited to their needs.

As our nursing programme is being implemented we have engaged both academics and students in a systematic and iterative evaluation of the blended aspects of the programme.
Our aims were to:
a) Investigate how students experience the current balance between their classroom and online activities
b) Evaluate the effectiveness of the range of activities, both online and face to face
c) Co-construct new approaches to curriculum delivery based on a review of existing literature in blended learning for the Health Sciences

In this paper we share the results of our evaluation and highlight key messages for further development and improvement of designing the ‘blend’. Our recommendations may be beneficial for design teams who may need to engage in similar projects in the future.

Keywords:

Blended learning, evaluation, technology.