Revision of Curricula in Higher Education Service Provision: For Better Learning Engagement and Collaborative Learning

Abstract

The learning environment in the UK evolved over the years resulting in increased blended learning service consumption. However, the standard prescribed contact time for lecturers with students to a great extent remain unchanged for lecture and tutorial weekly sessions. In the instance of University of Greenwich, Business Faculty students and lecturers, as part of the efforts in taking a fresh approach to improve the HE learning service provision revisions of a few selected curricula were approved. Instead of separate lecture and tutorial sessions, classes are run in the form of three hour blocks of workshop style sessions each week. This paper examines the impact to innovative changes to curricula design where a rethink in embedding pedagogy for HE service provision has to happen because of a major change to the prescribed contact time. Feedback from an earlier trial of a post graduate curricula revision provided the push for an undergraduate curricula revision to follow. Data collected from the learning interactions, the students’ academic performance results, students’ and lecturers’ feedback form the basis for discourse analysis. The impacts of service value caused by these revisions in HE service provision affecting student learning engagement and collaborations are also discussed. The learning engagement as a service co-creation is assessed against this background for establishing further potential improvements to enhance service value in learning engagement and collaborations. Since this is a first formal assessment, the findings from this study will feedback to academia for sharing of good pedagogy practice.