4. Adult Learners’ Experiences of Blended Learning

Learners’ sense-making is complex. They do not make sense of their learning experience in isolation, but with others in a context where they interact with various affordances of technology, artefacts and tools. Within the context, learners need to sensemake to develop better understanding and know how they can put this understanding into action. Hence, it is important to recognise the possible factors that may influence or mediate learners’ sense-making experiences.

Analysis of the transcripts suggested that the quality of learners’ sense-making was influenced by the curriculum design and pedagogy developed and adopted in BL, resulting in limited, strong, deep or the deepest sense-making. Furthermore, our data analysis highlighted that the structuring of the “blend” and the design of learning result in either fragmented or seamless experiences for learners (as shown in Figure 6 on the next page). Limited sensemaking was associated with fragmented design and learning experiences; deep sense-making was associated with design of BL that is seamless, creating a “joined-up” sense-making experience for learners.

For example, the fragmented sense-making experience reflected curriculum dominated by administrative decision-making; usually shaped by business decisions rather than a focus on enhancing sense-making and meeting learners’ needs. A fragmented curriculum may:

• lack a coherent narrative across the different learning environments; • focus on content as reproduction of knowledge, rather than critique and coproduction of knowledge; • contain learning activities that lack authenticity (i.e. that do not reflect the complexities of the work and work settings) • have limited scaffolding of learning, contributing to disrupted authentic experience, e.g. when the workplace experience is not well integrated with classroom learning; • have theory separated from practice; and • fail to develop deep understanding.

In contrast, a seamless curriculum may include:

• learning activities that present learners with authentic tasks, settings, interactions, etc, and a degree of choice in their learning opportunities for dialogue; • consistency and alignment between aims, outcomes, learning activities and assessment (Bound et al., 2016); • a coherent and clear narrative to facilitate effective sense-making with provision of appropriate scaffolding and authentic scenarios and tasks; • opportunities for dialogue and co-construction of knowledge that are fundamental to the curriculum design and to facilitation (Bound et al., 2019); • supportive technology for sense-making in and across the classroom and workplace and back again; • iterative movement between classrooms, online platforms and workplaces with related and authentic activities; and