7 Barriers to scaling up Active Collaborative Learning
7 Barriers to scaling up Active Collaborative Learning
Rachel Berkson and Uwe Richter
Introduction
After a successful pilot of Active Collaborative Learning (ACL) in 2015/16, Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) joined with two other Higher Education Institutions (HEI), the University of Bradford (UoB) and the lead institution, Nottingham Trent University (NTU), in a national project aimed at scaling up our ACL offerings to institutional level. Like all UK HEIs, ARU needs to ensure that all students fully benefit from their education, which necessitated making the transition from best practice to common practice; from pilots to an institution-wide culture of learning and teaching using proven approaches.
In this chapter we discuss some of the barriers we identified which hinder widespread adoption of ACL. We discuss the solutions we have started to implement at ARU, and compare some of the approaches taken at UoB and NTU.
Scaling up to institutional adoption
There is a strong evidence base for the effectiveness of ACL, including improving student engagement and outcomes in a wide variety of contexts (Freeman et al., 2014). Most literature refers to educational innovations where ACL is introduced in a context where it was not previously being used (Haidet et al., 2014). There is usually a strong motivation to change the learning and teaching approach, championed by enthusiasts. Initial proof of concept studies may apply a quasi-experimental design where cohorts are split, with one group taught using traditional methods, and another group taught using the new method (Deslauriers et al., 2011). In these contexts, the change to ACL produces a clear improvement compared to the previous approach.
However, there are inevitable biases in this kind of educational research. Novelty in its own right can contribute to initially measurable improvements. There is also an element of publication bias where studies that show a marked improvement are more likely to be submitted to and accepted by journals than interventions with limited effects (Franco et al., 2014). We must therefore question whether studies of innovations are representative of the efficacy of a learning and teaching approach in more general use, particularly if the original data comes from an intentionally experimental setting.
Institutions may encounter significant barriers in making the transition from innovations by pioneers to adoption at scale, and must commit to solving these barriers in order to scale up. Following a phase of institutional investment in an innovation, once the new method has been in place for some years, there are likely to be fewer targeted resources available. To be sustainable, the approach needs to be adapted to more constrained circumstances. In addition to overcoming practical barriers, scaling up a method requires a widespread change of organizational learning culture. This change needs to permeate to all levels of an institution, including the students who need to embra