University of Leicester

The University of Leicester has more than 20 years' experience of offering flexible, high-quality distance learning courses focused on students and their needs. Eighteen thousand students have graduated from its distance learning programmes and more than 8,000 are currently studying. The university encourages the formation of networks of students as a vital source of peer support.

Leicester is committed to learning innovation for distance learning and campus-based students. Its current Learning Innovation Strategy is based on the principles of:

Specifically, the three complementary objectives of the project are to:

• establishing evidence and evaluating the benefits of enabling innovation for student learning across the institution;
• collaboration across the institution within strategic frameworks and through funded research and development projects;
• raising the capability of all students and staff to exploit and benefit from learning technologies of the 21st Century, exploring 'beyond the obvious' to prepare for the future of learning and teaching.

The strategy is underpinned by sector-wide policies, informed by latest evidence for the deployment of learning technology and by current and future learners' expectations and needs. It leads on approaches to developing institution-wide capabilities and capacities for learning design and delivery, and promotes institution-wide engagement and collaboration. It offers a framework that develops and extends the range of services and approaches already in place, and also helps to deepen understanding and deployment of learning technologies throughout the university so that departments can make informed choices.

The strategy is implemented through engagement with staff and students in 'media zoos'. These were developed to communicate the university's first e-learning strategy to staff. They provide ongoing opportunities to experiment and hear about research evidence that might impact on teaching. The staff media zoo has four modes – virtual worlds, web and creative physical space and mobile zoo. There is also a media zoo for graduate students in the main library. The web-based media zoo and all research projects can be found at: www.le.ac.uk/mediazoo.

Research projects associated with the media zoos include better use of the virtual learning environment (VLE) through curriculum redesign and development; podcasting for pedagogical purposes; projects for student and staff engagement; e book readers for distance learning; use of virtual worlds; development of open educational resources (OERs); and knowledge transfer within the sector and to other educational sectors. The media zoos underpin high-level dissemination of 'research to practice, innovation to mainstream' at the university and throughout the sector.

Evaluation takes into account a range of factors including:

• evidence for improvements in the students' learning experience;
• evidence for retention of students throughout;
• evidence for improved achievement;
• saving of academic time, costs and resources;
• modernising of learning pedagogy;
• use of low-cost, high-value technologies in purposeful ways;
• recognition of learning innovation in the sector and throughout the world;
• benchmarking and worldwide positioning.

The university has identified a number of benefits and lessons to be learnt from its experience. The main ones include the importance of basing the innovation strategy on university strengths relevant in the current market and the need to drive change from researched evidence of impact on staff time and student learning. It is important to focus on adapting and deploying existing technologies for learning use. This can be done either by using the VLE better, to enhance return on investment, or adapting for pedagogical use technologies developed for leisure entertainment, networking or communication. Examples of these technologies are web 2.0 applications, e-book readers, podcasting and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers.

Leicester has found it is rarely necessary to develop further new software or platforms in the current technological environment. Instead effort should be put into learning design, research and evaluation of pedagogical outcomes, using low-cost, high learning value approaches. Experience at the university also highlights the importance of ensuring that successful pedagogical experiments have a route to become mainstream, normal and embedded in practice, such as designing for OERs.