Reference is made in Flexible Pedagogies: part-time learners and learning in higher education to a selection of case studies that illustrate how flexible pedagogies have been developed to support the needs of part-time learners.
This case study illustrates opportunities afforded by recent developments in technology for students to learn through this type of social practice without needing to attend campus or indeed even meet during their studies.
University of Huddersfield
This Masters programme (eight taught modules and a dissertation) is currently under development with recruitment due to start in Jan 2014. Although there is a full-time version it is envisaged that most students will be part-time and take select modules to give them a Post Graduate Certificate in Social Research. The modules will be taught entirely online using the ‘flipped classroom’ principle. A number of video resources are already available in the area of social research methods and more will be produced over the next 12 months. Students will watch videos and read chapters and papers to prepare for online sessions. The latter will use the various activities available in Adobe Connect webinars (group discussion whiteboard software sharing etc.) to enable staff and students to discuss the issues from the videos and practice some the key research skills. A key component is that most of the video and other resources will be open education resources published under the Creative Commons license. This will give students the opportunity to try out the course materials before signing up for teaching. The webinars individual support and assessment will only be available to registered students.
