Blended Learning in Support of Life-long Learning for Surveyors

“Blended” or “hybrid” learning is a significant trend in professional surveying education. It involves a mix of face-to-face learning and online learning. While blended learning is challenging to implement it offers many benefits and, when carefully developed, provides a range of learning options that suit many student learning styles and approaches. A key characteristic is that digital learning or training materials can be shared and easily adapted for use in many contexts. The benefits in blended learning for life-long learning is enhanced if education institutions, government, industry and professional institutions work together to develop online learning opportunities. It all starts with quality online learning materials that can be used in many ways by many stakeholders to provide options for life-long learning pathways that are then incorporated into traditional face-to-face approaches suited to the context.

In this paper we discuss the development of blended learning in academia, training institutions and professional institutions. The paper draws on the experiences of the authors and existing literature to review and discuss the trends in blended learning and consider how this may be of benefits to learners in academic institutions, as well as for training within the surveyor sector, and the benefits for professional development programs. Finally, we consider ways that academic institutions, training organisations, industry and professional bodies can work together to derive efficiencies and combined benefits of blended learning resources.