Teaching in Transition: STEM Perspectives on Flexibility and Student Success Across Diverse Learning and Teaching Delivery Modes

Format: Birds of a Feather
The topic for discussion: STEM perspectives on flexibility and student success across diverse delivery modes of learning and teaching.
Context/background: Teaching in STEM is increasingly being delivered through flexible teaching modes including a mix of on-campus, online, blended, flipped, and fully self-paced. These approaches expanded flexibility to students but presented challenges in student experience (engagement, motivation), learning and teaching outcomes (assessments, progression), and educator and student responsibilities (equity, accountability, and level of structured support). Existing research provides insights into online and blended pedagogy (Bower, 2019; Rapanta et al., 2020), however, the most practical understanding often emerges from the lived experiences of educators navigating through these modes and facing the challenges to students’ success.
Description: Educators teaching a range of STEM units will come together to share experiences from implementing flexible delivery modes to explore patterns in the student experience, learning outcomes, and educator and student responsibilities. Educators will share what has worked and what hasn’t, and how different delivery modes influence learner engagement, experience and outcomes.
Intended outcome and contribution to scholarship/practice: The session aims to generate collective insight into how various modes for delivering learning and teaching intersect in shaping student engagement and success. Contributions include identifying practical strategies for designing learning environments that maintain equitable and sustainable student experience and outcomes. The session also aims to derive an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of self-paced learning to inform institutional conversations about supporting diverse student cohorts and contribute to sector-wide understandings of flexible pedagogy.
Engagement: Participants will be invited to reflect on prompts such as:
• What types of flexibility support student learning in your discipline?
• How do different delivery modes affect student engagement?
• What strategies help sustain delivery mode structure while accommodating diverse learner needs and consistency in access to support?

References:
1. Bower, M. (2019). Technology-mediated learning theory. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(3), 1035–1048. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12771

2. Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., & Koole, M. (2020). Online university teaching during and after the COVID-19 crisis: Refocusing teacher presence and learning activity. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 923–945. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00155-y