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Project Phoenix

Project Phoenix, a collaboration between Technology Enhanced Learning and Academic Development sections, supported academic staff in a rapid transition to "Blended and Connected Learning", the pedagogic framework adopted by the University in response to the emerging pandemic.
Year
2022
Institution
University of Portsmouth

In summer 2020, Project Phoenix – a collaboration between Technology Enhanced Learning and Academic Development sections – developed a number of mechanisms to support academic staff in a rapid transition to "Blended and Connected Learning", the pedagogic framework adopted by the University in response to the emerging pandemic.

The Project brought together a wide and varied team, both academics and professional services staff from across the University, to deliver against challenging deadlines. By adopting a truly collaborative approach the Project was successfully able to: promote guiding principles for blended and connected learning; develop course and module Moodle templates to ensure consistency for students and to assist staff who were unfamiliar with online teaching; create support websites for academic staff; provide a range of staff development sessions; organize online "blended and connected" festivals; and offer online courses.

To underpin this work the Project team identified and then rolled-out a number of technology platforms, such as Panopto and Padlet, which became essential elements of the University's blended learning approach. The team increased Moodle capacity and it optimised the Moodle user interface – including bespoke engagement statistics and analytics, to help academics understand and optimise the impact of their learning resources.

The core Project team operated in tandem with SDWG, a staff development working group consisting of academics, administrators and "third space" professionals, to provide two-way channels of communication. This relationship enabled the Project to disseminate, often at short notice, decisions on active blended learning design and methodology; equally, it offered an effective means for teaching staff to feed suggestions for enhancement back to the Project team.

The leadership provided by the team was warmly regarded and appreciated by academic staff during the pandemic. Most importantly, the team's ongoing work has fostered excellent teaching practices as we emerge from the pandemic into a ‘new normal’. This new normal, as requested by the University's students, is based on active blended learning (building on the lessons of the past 18 months) combined with maximum opportunities for face-to-face interaction.

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