You may be aware of a recently published article across student media about what future studies will look like at the University. Hopefully, you’ve also seen our response on Student News with further details about what blended learning really is. Most importantly, please be assured that blended learning is not online teaching, but about augmenting in-person lectures, seminars, labs, Q&As and discussions, and workshops with high quality online materials for self-study. This is very different to the emergency move to online learning that students experienced during the pandemic.
As a University, we are only at the start of our blended learning journey, and we want to work together with all students to make sure that anything we put in place for the future adds value to their studies.
We know that our PGR community makes an invaluable contribution to the learning experiences of our undergraduate students as Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). If you are interested in finding out more about our plans for flexible learning at Manchester, please sign up to attend one of our upcoming online Q&A meetings with Professor Dan George (Associate Vice President of Blended and Flexible Learning) and Professor Steve Pettifer (Deputy Programme Director for Flexible Learning). They will be held on 9 July (12-1pm) and 15 July (12-1pm) and are your chance to ask any questions you may have around the move to blended and flexible learning.
And as we look towards progressing this area of work, we will continue to engage staff, PGRs and students through a series of workshops over the summer and into autumn, to help shape our future approach. We hope you will get involved and contribute to these. Further information will appear on student news as dates become available.
If you wish to contact Dan, Steve and the Flexible Learning programme team in the meantime, you can get in touch via: avp-bl@manchester.ac.uk