Arena Blended Curriculum (ABC) is a learning design methodology underpinned by Prof Diana Laurillard’s 6 learning types which run as a high-energy, hands-on curriculum design workshop. This practice can be adapted for entire course design, module planning or developing engaging teaching sessions.

ABC was developed by Clive Young and Nataša Perović in 2014 as part of an Erasmus+ funded project at UCL. It builds on the six learning types concept from Prof Diana Laurillard’s hugely respected model of how students learn, ‘Conversational Framework’, described in Teaching as a Design Science (2012).

What's in the name?

Arena Blended Curriculum (ABC) is the local name from UCL but we feel that ABC has a nice ring to it and is used across the globe for designing curriculum's so thought it would be easier to keep it.

What happens in a workshop?

Your team (course/module or teaching) would be lead through a 90-minute rapid workshop which consists of the below:

Introduction to ABC presentation
Tweet and Shape activity - how you currently see your learning experience fro the students
Story-boarding by planning out how you want your new learning experience to be formed made up of the 6 learning types.
- thinking about a mix of the 6 learning types
- different activities you require your students to do
- a blending of self-directed and face to face or wholly online
- discussing the different educational tools available at SGUL
- spreading out appropriate assessment
Action plan - rounding up the session with key points to take away and ensuring everyone is aware of how to put the storyboard into action.

How can I use it for my teaching?

You may want to consider how your learning content is currently formed and incorporate other learning types other than just acquisition. Acquisition is extremely important for taking on new knowledge and learning new concepts but you can strengthen the student's deeper understanding by incorporating other forms of learning types.

How do I get started?

Give lts@sgul.ac.uk an email and a workshop can be arranged. You can work through this unit and explore Acquisition , Collaboration , Collaboration , Inquiry , Practice and Production

If you wanted to hear more about a general introduction, you can give this short lecture a watch below.