Congratulations to our new BFL Course Symposium recipients!

We were offering three, but somehow we ended up with, wait for it, nine blended and flexible learning (BFL) course symposium grant winners for our second round of offers in 2011! If you haven't heard of the BFL course symposium grants yet, here's a quick background from Assoc Prof Merilyn Childs:

Each proposal was incredibly worthy, and offered insights into how a course-based BFL strategy might be used to provide insights and solutions to a wide range of risks and challenges. Let's take a look at just some:

• In the Faculty of Arts, Brett van Heekeren and his team of Advertising academics will be evaluating their current approaches to BFL in light of their industry's movement towards digital, social and mobile communication strategies. Their aim is to develop a 'future-driven' BFL strategy for the course that maintains currency and continues to develop leading edge students in this world of change. In the same school, Sharon Schoenmaker and her team of Public Relations academics will be looking at, among other things, how to create equivalent experiences in the highly practical components of their course for distance students. And on the Wagga campus, Bill Anscombe and his team in Social Work will be focusing on their residential school program, and how they can enhance their practice to ensure maximum equivalence and engagement for their students.
• In the Faculty of Business, Jason Howarth and his team have been busy with the STAR project, and will now be looking at how a blended and flexible learning strategy might fit with (and extend) work already completed in relation to the first year experience.
• In the Faculty of Education, Wendy De Luca will look at how she and her team can develop a more coherent and consistent course experience for their students despite increasing casualisation of staff. Margaret Torode and her team in Human Movement will be looking at how good practice can be maintained in the changing nature of their courses, with more flexible movement into and between courses in the near future.
• In the Faculty of Science, Gayle Smyth, Janelle Wheat and their teams will be looking and how they can best engage their distance students in authentic learning experience, especially in clinically based subjects;
• Finally, the Robin Wills and his Study Link team will be evaluating their current BFL approach, and explore how they may best foster multi-literacies in a world where the required literacies are moving and changing with developments in the digital age.

The full list of recipients is listed here:

At the moment, each of the Course Directors/Leaders are busy planning their symposiums, with some happening in a matter of weeks, and others involving a series of pre-symposium activities to prepare staff before a face-to-face strategy meeting early next year. Over the next few weeks, we'll be adding the teams to the BFL Course Symposium webfolio, so you'll be able to check in with their plans and progress. The outcomes from each symposium will be a BFL course strategy/plan, a series of sharable learning 'objects' or designs and a School-based presentation on the process and outcomes of their work.

Congratulations once again to all the successful teams! If you missed out, more symposiums will be on offer next year. :)