Blended learning innovations to support postgraduate dissertation students

Since October 2005 the University of Glamorgan's Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) has supported initiatives to embed blended learning across all faculties. Staff who wished to engage in blended learning could gain advice and support from the CELT Blended Learning Team, the eSupport Team, and from their faculty Blended Learning Champion. CELT also introduced a bidding process for internal resources to develop innovative blended learning initiatives. This paper discusses an innovation that was the first to successfully bid for these resources and see the initiative through to successful completion. The bid to CELT was for resources to assist the development of common material that would lead to the completion of a full research proposal in readiness for one-to-one supervision, and which would be available to support the dissertation process for all Business School students enrolled on the final stage of their Masters degree. Innovation was to be evidenced in both the new process by which the dissertation was to be managed, and also in the nature of the module materials that were to be designed and developed. This then also offered a template that could form the basis for a University-wide approach to postgraduate dissertation support.