Reinventing MLM course delivery at AMC

A $300,000 plan to reinvent the way AMC delivers courses to students is underway.

The Hybrid or Blended Delivery Project is developing new ways of teaching off-campus and face-to-face students studying Maritime and Logistics Management. The major undertaking will see 40 units from MLM redesigned to blend off campus and on campus approaches. It is hoped the outcome will be an enriched learning environment and a reduction in duplication of teaching across the two students cohorts.

According to joint project leader Kel Jackson, AMC’s Teaching and Learning fellow, the joint initiative between MLM staff and UTAS’s Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT), will see units under review and redevelopment until 2010.

“Blended or hybrid learning is a system where we combine different teaching strategies and delivery strategies to come up with a new mix that suits students whether they be on campus or off campus,” he said.

“So that means we are in a state of redesigning our current offerings for both on campus and off campus students and hopefully, from that, enrich the learning experiences for both groups. We also think we can achieve greater efficiencies in terms of reducing the parallel teaching of face-to face and distance students. And there are also efficiencies to be gained in materials production and distribution by relying more heavily on electronic means.

“We’re looking at working on four trailblazer units to get a feel for the time we’ll need to devote to individual unit development, to understand any barriers we may run into that we haven’t thought of and then really start to mainstream development over 2009 and 2010.”

He stated that total funding for the project was in excess of $300,000, with the bulk coming as a central grant from UTAS (largely to cover teaching staff relief) coupled with specialist staff provision from CALT. AMC is also supporting the project with a grant from its own Teaching and Learning Fund.

Head of the MLM department, and co-project leader, Dr Stephen Cahoon, said the scope of the task was vast, geographically as well as in terms of material to be reviewed.

“It’s a very big undertaking because it’s over 40 units from undergraduate and post graduate levels and with our distance learning students we’re looking at over 25 countries. We really want to make sure the delivery is most beneficial to them, whether or not they are seafarers or if they are sitting in an office somewhere, so that’s the real challenge for us because it’s very tempting to say ‘okay, let’s make it all electronic’ but that won’t suit all of our student base.”

The project leaders stated that the university is keen to see the outcomes of this project as a benchmark implementation model for sustainable expansion of more flexible course offerings across UTAS.

Information Released by:
Patrick Cranny
Australian Maritime College
Phone: 6335 4484
Mobile: 0429 117 000
Email: p.cranny@amc.edu.au