Institutionalizing Blended and Distance Learning in Language Teaching at a Research University

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly exploring innovative strategies to adapt to the 21st century changing institutional context and to respond to the students’ needs and expectations. Given that technology in all its forms is ubiquitous in Education, one of HEIs’ strategical responses is the implementation of blended learning (BL) and distance learning (DL) as new pedagogies in all faculties. This organizational improvement plan (OIP) examines how a language department, part of the Faculty of Arts in a large research-focused University, can integrate BL and DL in language teaching. As this change is a significant departure from the current traditional lecture-based pedagogy and to ensure that the department, as well as its faculty members, feel supported and motivated, servant and transformational leadership alongside a distributive leadership style are deployed. Moreover, Cawsey et al.’s, (2016) change path model in conjunction with Kotter’s (1996) change model are used as change frameworks to focus on the organizational structure. There are key changes involved in this OIP, namely a departmental and individual cultural change since teaching a language rests on a long history of face-to-face interactions. The main challenge is to deal with limited resources and faculty resistance as well as the complexity of technological teacher training. As this implementation is done incrementally over four years, data is collected from various stakeholders, examined and reviewed to allow leaders to adjust according to feedback. As University X’s language teachers gain knowledge and power lead by a guiding coalition, it is anticipated that the institutionalization of BL and DL in language teaching will be reached in time