BLENDED LEARNING ARRANGEMENTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE CHANGING KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

This paper presents an advanced - international blended learning arrangement. It has been developed, implemented and reviewed regularly in the last 4 years at the authors' institution. Instead of referring solely to traditional classroom teaching, we use and continually refine this arrangement in our every-day formal teaching and learning processes at Technische Universitaet Dresden. By this we take into regard the changes induced by the Bologna Roadmap and try better to support its "new" didactical objectives: more interactive and interdisciplinary modules with focus upon the (practical) integration of professional and methodical responsibility, decision-making and soft skills. Additionally, this paper analyses the capability of our blended learning arrangement to answer the surfacing demands of the European changing (knowledge) environment, especially taking into account the developing gap between formal standardised learning processes in higher education and informal knowledge sharing behaviour of individuals embedded in their private and business social networks. It starts with a short analyse of the actual changing environment and then illustrates the different issues to be derived for formal learning and informal knowledge sharing processes. Next, it focuses on the design, repeated use, evaluation & refinement of a complex international blended learning arrangement following the formal learning paradigm. Concluding, the paper indicates what further changes have to be made to the current design to improve its suitability (also) for informal knowledge sharing.