SCALE-UP: 10 years on

Beichner, for example, trialled SCALE-UP in the context of a Physics programme, developing a credible alternative to the passivity and didacticism of some traditional university lectures. The aim was to create a technology rich environment in which students could deepen their conceptual understanding, enhance their problem solving, and apply their knowledge to real world situations. The result? Failure rates of female students halved; failure rates of ethnic minority students dropped by a factor of four; improved problem solving was exhibited; and students performed highly on conceptual tests (Beichner et al., 2000).

SCALE-UP’s adaptability and scalability, coupled with its impressive impact on student outcomes, proved to be beneficial for NTU, leading to the implementation of a multi-disciplinary pilot project in 2013/14. With a view to understanding how SCALE-UP could be adapted to meet the needs of multiple schools and courses, the pilot involved 33 modules across 7 schools at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Key to the project's success was practitioner experimentation. Module leaders were allowed to engage with the pedagogy to different degrees, thereby responding pragmatically to the needs of staff and students (McNeil, Borg, & Chickwa, 2014). Such experimentation allowed space for practitioner growth, empowering people to reflect on teaching and learning within their own contexts. The pilot project yielded promising results that were consistent with Beichner’s findings, and these results were solidified with the OfS funded project ‘Scaling Up Active Collaborative Learning for Student Success’ (McNeil et al., 2020). NTU’s adoption of SCALE-UP expanded to 249 modules in 2017/18 and, significantly, found that where students participated in three or more SCALE-UP modules, progression and attainment gaps all but disappeared.

The future looked bright for SCALE-UP, and in February 2020, NTU’s executive team set the strategy for SCALE-UP adoption to align directly with the Access and Participation Plan (2020-2025) and the primary and auxiliary goals for student success.  Then, the global pandemic hit and SCALE-UP was forced to adapt once again.

The pandemic stopped the delivery of in-person SCALE-UP and very quickly courses had to adjust to online ACL. This gave rise to the development of the SCALE-UP for Online or Blended delivery model, implemented through Microsoft Teams. This model utilises digital ‘channels’ to facilitate small group discussions and problem solving, replicating the activity that occurs when students learn face-to-face.

The opening of the Mansfield HE Hub in September 2020 threw up some further challenges for the delivery of SCALE-UP sessions. Student cohort numbers were, and still are, generally smaller than those on other sites and there are fewer teaching spaces that facilitate ACL. As such, SCALE-UP for small cohorts was born, backed by research that shows how ACL supports increased student progression and attainment irrespective of class size (Biggs and Tang, 2011). Adopting a practical, solutions-focused approach, SCALE-UP for small cohorts looks at how community and peer-to-peer interactions can be nurtured without over-dependence on the lecturer.

SCALE-UP is not only adaptable for atypical class sizes; it can also be adjusted for atypical rooms such as studios and laboratory settings. It has been a misconception for many years that without the circular tables traditionally available in SCALE-UP rooms, SCALE-UP cannot be used as a pedagogy. This is simply not true. SCALE-UP encompasses a series of components which can be used in any setting and with any desk configuration. While collaborative room layouts are preferable, SCALE-UP has been delivered very successfully within lecture theatres at NTU by using digital technology accessed by students through their smart phones or laptops (only one is required per group) and through students forming groups by turning around in their seats to work with those behind them. By sharing practical examples of how SCALE-UP can be used in non-SCALE-UP rooms, this model supports the many academics who are looking to increase ACL in their taught sessions, without the need of specialist facilities.

We have come far since SCALE-UP was first piloted at NTU in 2013. NTU’s practitioners have shown us how SCALE-UP’s core principles can be adapted to different pedagogical contexts— be-it online during the COVID-19 pandemic, in large lecture theatres with tiered seating, or in teaching rooms with small cohorts of students.

So how might SCALE-UP continue to respond to the ever-changing needs of the moment?

Currently, the hot topic within higher education is the advancement of generative AI and the implications that software such as ChatGPT and Midjourney have on the university landscape. The difficulties of regulating students’ use of generative AI in the context of assessment is a significant preoccupation amongst NTU staff, as we seek out new ways to navigate the complexities of academic originality, plagiarism, and ethics. One response to this challenge is the careful design of authentic assessment (Hack and Knight, 2023), which requires us to spot opportunities to test students’ critical thinking and deep conceptual understanding, as it applies and responds to real world situations, the workplace, and lifelong learning.

Centred around the creation of technology-rich learning environments, SCALE-UP’s compatibly with generative AI is not difficult to imagine. Tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney have the potential to become useful resources for students in a SCALE-UP setting, supporting flipped learning in independent pre-work, as well as becoming an important tool in application and enquiry-based activities in the classroom itself— functioning much like a virtual personal assistant who is at the table with students. More significantly still, SCALE-UP re-emphasises the importance of human-to-human interaction in the way that we learn and teach one another. As a social constructivist pedagogy, SCALE-UP reveals how knowledge and skills are formed (and learnt) through the social interactions that students have with one another (Vygotsky, 1978; Akpan et al. 2020). The communication skills, problem solving, and deep critical thinking that occurs in group work is not something that students can straightforwardly replicate while sat on their own in front of ChatGPT or other generative AI tools. The SCALE-UP modality offers us a chance to reconsider how we design authentic learning and assessment, so that we are not just testing surface-level knowledge gain, but also assessing the progressive development of these transferrable skills, lesson-by-lesson, week-by-week, and year-by-year.

In summary, reflection on a decade of SCALE-UP reveals that this is far from a static pedagogy, but one that can be adapted to the needs of a changing higher education landscape. As we celebrate ten years of SCALE-UP, we invite you to reflect on how you can incorporate ACL in your teaching, adapting to student needs, whilst building community and belonging in your own classroom.