Engineering Education: Journal of the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre, Vol 4, No 2 (2009)

Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication is a design college with a small school of broadcast engineering embedded within the creative Faculty of Communication Media. The broadcast engineering school offers a FdSc in Broadcast Media Technology and an associated BSc Broadcast Technology honours degree top-up. The vocational nature of these engineering courses is highly regarded by the industry they serve, and encourages a diverse student intake. Over the last three years a wide range of eTeaching and eLearning applications have been introduced to ensure maximum student engagement with the course and its content both while students are located both in the college and off site. A college-wide Laptop Project allows all of our students to purchase a laptop and course-related software at heavily discounted price. Students are actively encouraged to use their laptops during tutorials and seminars to reinforce and support their learning. The media-enriched Moodle Virtual Learning Environment is strongly integrated into the course delivery, assessment and feedback. Teaching staff all have an active on-line social networking presence, and use podcasting and vodcasting to support, blend and enhance teaching activities. This paper describes the tutor and student experiences with integrating these new eTeaching and eLearning methodologies into our pedagogy and reflects on how issues arising from a more diverse cohort of students can be addressed by making learning practical, involving and fun. The success of this blended approach has led to the development of a new cluster of related broadcast engineering courses to delineate the student options for our vocational Foundation and Honours engineering degree pathways.