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Forget blended, are you ready for buffet learning?

The Observatory of Borderless Higher Education represents 122 higher education institutions in the UK, including all the UK universities. It tracks developments in private and corporate education, developing markets, international collaboration and e-learning.

Its recent conference on 'Using ICT to Redesign Teaching and Learning' was commended by John Harris, Epic's Director of Education Services for 'its mix of speaker input, unstructured discussion and organised debate - a mix that organisers of such events rarely seem to get quite right.

'Keynote was by Dr Diana Laurillard, Head of e-Learning strategy at the DfES, who presented a vision of cradle-to-grave e-learning that would take us from nursery, through school, college and adult life, into the workplace and beyond (we eagerly await the DfES e-learning strategy to be published in July).

'Main course for the event, however, was a presentation by Dr Carol Twigg, from the US Centre for Academic Transformation based at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State, of findings from a $6.8M program to help universities make best use of e-learning. Among other tasty nuggets, this presentation introduced us to the concept of 'Buffet Learning'.

'The serious aim of the programme was to discover whether e-learning can deliver higher education at lower cost, while replicating (and perhaps exceeding) the quality of the face-to-face experience.

'Thirty Universities were selected for the study according to "readiness criteria" that included understanding of learning theory, systems in place for measuring learning outcomes and willingness to incorporate existing e-learning materials into the course redesign. Perhaps most significantly, the institutions had to manifest a desire to control costs and increase academic productivity. The prize for scoring highly against the criteria was a grant of $200,000 and guidance on how to go about redesigning the courses to balance quality, access and cost.

'The choice of courses to redesign was necessarily influenced by the size of enrolments, as cost savings would be multiplied by high student numbers. This was often a simple choice to make: in one community college, 25 courses out of a total of 2,000 were responsible for 51% of total enrolments. Much of the redesign work was around instructional task analysis and financial planning. That is, finding out the true cost of developing and running a course, in order to identify cost saving through e-learning.

'There was little uniformity in the design approaches adapted by the colleges, but analysis identified five basic models:

• Supplemental: adding e-learning to the current existing course
• Replacement: blending face-to-face activities with online activities
• Emporium: moving all classes to the computer lab
• Fully online: conducting (almost) all activities online
• Buffet: mixing and matching online and offline components, depending on the students' preferences

'The Buffet approach was probably the one that created most interest. However, this could be an ideal worth moving towards rather than a practical reality at present: it was easy to see the logistical difficulties in creating learning experiences to suit every situation and learning style.

'Over all, the results of the study were impressive. Costs were reduced by using less staff and having larger student numbers: at the same time, retention and exam results also improved. One of the major benefits brought by e-learning was increased flexibility. In the case of a Spanish course, the use of e-learning for core elements of the course freed up more time for conversation practice in face-to-face session, leading to a significant improvement in oral skills, while maintaining the level of results in other aspects of language proficiency.

'Given the all-to-common stories about the failure of e-learning, the message here was refreshingly upbeat. And with the requirement for UK universities to increase student numbers, widen access and maintain and improve learning quality, the event provided a great deal of food for thought for its audience of HEIs, education agencies and civil servants.

'The University of Surrey has now taken on a similar study for the UK. The results of that will be fascinating to see!'