From Diffusion to Explosion: Accelerating Blended Learning at the University of Western Australia

This case study describes how blended learning has been adopted, supported and accelerated at The Universityof Western Australia (UWA), a research-intensive institution considered as the leading university in Western Australia for over 100 years. Attention is paid to institutional-level structures, strategies and supports that have been changed or initiated to enable and encourage transformation in learning and teaching and enhance the student experience. Technology must be integrated into learning and teaching through course redesign processes to achieve real transformation, and course redesign has recently been given greater emphasis at UWA. This case study also reveals how the university has attempted to transition from implementing a diffusion model of pedagogical change to a more concentrated institutional level strategy aimed at ‘exploding’ the traditional lecture and encouraging the rapid transformation of learning and teaching.