Innovations in university student learning research into blended course designs: incorporating self-report and observational data

Ensuring the quality of student learning is a fundamental challenge for leaders at all levels of universities. Ongoing change in the higher education sector over the last decade continues to challenge an understanding of how to ensure quality and enhance learning. This chapter reviews key methodological developments in research into university student learning from a series of closely related investigations by the authors and colleagues and offers ideas that can account for change in contemporary experiences in ways that reveal qualitative variation. These methodological developments include combining sources of self-report and observational data within strong theoretical concepts such as materiality, entanglement and emergence. By revealing how to investigate the qualitatively different ways students conceive of, and approach, their learning, this chapter offers sound methodological strategies to provide actionable knowledge that can be used to ensure quality and enhance learning.