Tower block perfect for block teaching, says Australian v-c

The Australian university pioneering small group teaching at an institutional scale is about to occupy the country’s loftiest campus, but the two moves are not contradictory, according to its vice-chancellor.

Victoria University’s Adam Shoemaker said that the 32-level “City Campus” had been designed around the “block model”, where subjects are taught sequentially in intensive four-week chunks. Students work collaboratively in groups of up to 32, retaining the same classmates as they move between blocks. Assessment is continuous, with no lectures or end-of-term exams.

While the idea originated overseas in small liberal arts colleges, Victoria was the first comprehensive university to embrace it – initially with first-year students and now throughout its degrees. After the university decided to consolidate its four city campuses into a single Melbourne precinct, staff schooled in block teaching helped shape the new building.

“[It was] designed by the academics [to be] optimal for teaching and learning,” Professor Shoemaker said. Half a dozen floors had been particularly crafted around block-style learning, with hexagonal or octagonal rooms configured for small groups. “Every wall has a screen and the ability to manoeuvre.”

He said a vertical campus suited block teaching, with similar disciplines corralled in adjacent floors. Three storeys with a single front desk had been dedicated to health and therapy students from Victoria’s dual-sector higher education and vocational arms. “It includes polytechnic offerings in things like dermal therapy and skincare, and another floor [for] osteopathy at university level. It’s like one entry point for students into two different levels of work.”

Professor Shoemaker said that Victoria had abandoned initial plans to reserve the building’s top four floors for corporate facilities such as a chancellery and conference centre. Instead, the plan was to sublet the upper storeys to “partner” businesses such as law firms, bringing practitioner teachers and internship opportunities into the bosom of the campus.

Partners’ staff could “teach into the law programme” and use Victoria’s boardroom or hold events on a common balcony. Students could “learn not just the profession but how to run the business – front office, back house, accounting, marketing. Unless there are industry partners of that sort in the campus, it isn’t a campus.”

When it officially opens on 26 April, the building will house Victoria’s business and law schools, research centres, health and polytechnic programmes, and accommodate some 3,300 staff and students. The campus is owned by Victoria’s partner in the project, property fund manager ISPT, which is leasing it back to the university.

The project was partly bankrolled by the sale of Victoria’s King Street campus. Professor Shoemaker said the move would prove costly in the initial stages, with the university shouldering multiple leases during a year-long relocation process, but would ultimately save money – thanks partly to reduced maintenance costs as Victoria vacated older sites.

“The total benefit is definitely on the positive side of the ledger, but it’s not just financial,” he said. “It’s pedagogic. It’s safety. It’s experiential. Even in terms of public transport, it’s better located.”

Vertical campuses are emerging in Australia and elsewhere, with university towers sprouting in places such as Sydney, Perth, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York and Madrid. They have attracted some criticism that students do not like them and that lifts consume too much floor space – not to mention people’s time.

But Professor Shoemaker said the 11-storey tower at the institution he previously led, Southern Cross University, had been “our most popular building by far”. And “clever” design could save staff and students spending hours in elevators. “We have two banks of lifts – one for the top area and one for the bottom. We have stairs that flow right through the student area to the library and up to the teaching area. Basically, for the first six floors, no one has to get in a lift.”

A new analysis of Victoria’s block model credits it for alleviating attrition among first-year science and engineering students. The study by Victoria researchers found that subject fail rates had almost halved from 22 to 13 per cent, with particular improvements among students from disadvantaged and migrant backgrounds.

Independent data tell a similar story. Newly released federal education department figures show that Victoria’s first-year dropout rate fell from above 20 per cent to below 18 per cent when the block model was initiated in 2018, and under 15 per cent the following year.

Professor Shoemaker, who introduced block teaching at Southern Cross before joining Victoria, said his university regularly fielded international enquiries about the model and was researching its introduction into secondary schools. “Making your day job a research project is no bad thing,” he said.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com