The blended learning partnership
Partnerships that deliver higher quality blended learning resources for less cost.
What is a Blended Learning Partnership?
We know education providers want engaging and interactive e-learning material but do not have the skills nor the capacity to build it themselves and don’t want to pay a lot of money for them.
A Blended Learning Partnership (BLP) is a managed collaboration between a number of educational providers who co-fund and co-develop online learning resources.
Blended Learning Partnerships are innovative and cost-effective ways to provide institutions with access to high quality online learning.
Members of a Blended Learning Partnership (BLP) have access to all the content, including source files, and can repurpose and adapt any of the resources.
The BLP leverages expertise from partners/members that might otherwise duplicate the effort at a fraction of the cost, enabling greater impact.
The Development Process
Democratic voting process
Each member pays an annual membership fee to be part of the partnership. The annual subscription fees are then pooled for management of the partnership and resource development.
Every academic year, partners vote on the resources to be developed through a democratic process.
Following the vote, and once the subject areas and levels have been identified, a consultation process will take place, where partners will decide what topics to cover for each subject. Teachers across the partnership are then selected to write the content as subject matter experts.
The provider can also choose to be involved in developing and writing the content. These activities will be funded by the memberships fees. This will help build skills in the organisation and foster relationships with the partners.
Rigorous quality assurance process
The teachers are trained and supported so they can create the content. After the written content is complete, it goes through an editing process to prepare it for eLearning production.
Once the content has been developed into interactive resources by a team of digital learning specialists, a quality assurance process commences with rigorous user testing. Once we are satisfied that it has met all requirements and standards, the resources are then published for community use.
As a result of the democratic model of choosing content, the sector receives the content it wants instead of the content a commercial company believes it wants.
What kind of content is produced?
Interactive and engaging
The content is built by skilled and experienced eLearning developers. It includes text, images, videos, assessments, and interactive elements. This content is developed in HTML5 and SCORM formats. It can therefore be delivered using any platform and be used on any device.
Track progress and collate results
Through a Learning Management System (LMS), students’ progress is tracked, and the results of the assessments can be recorded in the gradebook.
What are the benefits of a blended learning partnership?
Benefits for learning Provider:
- Extend and enhance learning experience
- Improved learning outcomes
- Flexible methods of delivering curriculum
- Absence cover
- Agility in a crisis (e.g., COVID-19, etc)
- Collaboration across the partnership
- Group discounts
- Cost savings
- Sharing best practice through partnership events
- and more…
Benefits for teachers
Teachers benefit by having access to engaging, high quality, and interactive online learning resources that they can use in flexible ways with their learners. As a result, their confidence in using technology to support teaching, learning, and assessment increases.
Benefits for students
Students benefit from more online and blended learning in several ways. They develop their digital literacy, which is critical to their future employability. It helps them develop their own independent learning abilities through online learning.
It is something they will be doing more of in the future, whether it is in higher education or the workplace. It also provides students with flexibility, as well as the opportunity to revisit learning, which meets their diverse needs.
Do you have a working model?
50% of all colleges in the UK
The UK Blended Learning Consortium (BLC) was developed by Transform Education Director, Peter Kilcoyne while working at HOW college, and currently has over 150 members. This is over 50% of all UK colleges.
Each college pays its annual subscription fee and receives in return hundreds of hours of e-learning content, in more than 50 subjects, reducing costs dramatically.
As a result of the democratic model of choosing content, the sector receives the content it wants instead of the content a commercial company believes it wants.
Hundreds of hours in over 50 subjects
Additionally, blended learning can help learning providers save a lot of money through its more flexible methods of delivering curriculum.
The provider can also choose to be involved in developing and writing the content. These activities will be funded by the pooled funds.
This will help build skills in the organisation and foster relationships with the partners.
Partner with us
Using our expertise and knowledge, Transform Education can set up and manage a successful blended learning partnership across any sector, including schools, vocational education, colleges, and universities. We are looking for partners who are willing to work with us and who have the local connections and networks necessary to help us build these partnerships.