Pedagogical principles and practice driving stakeholder added value in multi-disciplinary leadership and management learning.

Developing a postgraduate programme suitable for graduates from any academic discipline presents many pedagogical, practical and process challenges. These challenges are amplified when the programme is architected around a ‘Blended’ delivery model developed and deployed within a compressed time scale and in the context of a rapidly changing landscape for Higher Education (HE) in the UK. The paper explores the challenges encountered in high expectation, high pressure, high visibility, multi-disciplinary programme development. It focuses on the lessons learned from the development and deployment of two similar postgraduate courses designed to meet the needs of heterogeneous graduate students from two geographically disparate UK universities serving similar demographics. These issues are placed within the context of an increasingly dynamic and turbulent landscape for UK HE, driven and shaped by market forces and the notion of students as customers rather than consumers (see BIS 2011, BIS 2016, McAreavey 2015). The paper explores key themes and issues emerging from a ‘marketised’ UK HE landscape, highlighting the drivers shaping HE Institutions (HEI) to consider new forms of provision and approaches to delivery. This is followed by an outline of two initiatives designed by HEI operating towards the vocational end of the HE continuum, but in geographically separate catchment areas / target markets. These ‘case studies’ illustrate areas of commonality and similarities in responding to perceived challenges emanating from competitive pressure and student demand. The paper concludes with a short assessment of the potential for further development along the lines established by these HEI, and identifies areas for additional exploration and study