‘Why do we still timetable classes as if students don’t have lives outside university?’

Eight years ago, I boarded a plane to North America as the sole academic in a four-person investigative team. Our mission? To determine whether an obscure, alternative educational model known as the block could work at Victoria University (VU) in Australia. At that time, block planning was mainly the preserve of boutique US liberal arts colleges. The prevailing view held that it was too complicated and too radical an approach to be employed at scale by large public universities without diluting academic rigour and causing organisational chaos.

Fast forward to today: VU has proved the block can work at scale. Other universities – including Southern Cross University, Sunway College, De Montfort University and the University of Suffolk – now run their own successful versions of the model. So, to capture perspectives and lessons gleaned from working with the block, my colleague Loretta Konjarski and I have reached out over the past two years to leading practitioners. 

The resulting book, Block Teaching Essentials: A Practical Guide, is intended to offer constructive advice to academics and administrators keen to learn more about the model and, importantly, to spur further research into the ways in which so-called alternative approaches, such as the block, question traditional approaches to higher education.

The questions we need to ask about curricula design

Higher education across the globe is under scrutiny. In Australia, the Universities Accord is challenging institutions to prove that their expensive degrees provide value for money for students. There’s a global cost-of-living crisis – 66 per cent of UK students are worried about whether they can afford to go to university. Universities in the US are facing declining enrolment as birth rates continue to fall. Even the bachelor’s degree itself is under threat from microcredentials and industry certificates.

• Resource collection: What is block teaching?
• Spotlight guide: Back to the basics of pedagogy
• Making space for innovation: a higher education challenge

A shift to the block will not be the answer for most global institutions, but the intensity and depth of self-questioning and examination that such a move would require could be. 

The block model – in which teaching is offered in short, intensive modules – raises fundamental questions about higher education. What evidence supports our traditional approaches to delivery, how we teach and the way we timetable? How might we reimagine university education for an era where knowledge is instantly accessible, but the wisdom required to use it well remains elusive? And, most importantly, how do we ensure we offer students education of real value?

Beyond structure 

The block is, at its simplest, a scheduling tool. It soon becomes more than that, however, as changes to timetabling, and the duration and frequency of classes cause us to reimagine how and what we teach, and how we engage and assess students.

The block asks a question that the HE sector as a whole should be ashamed that it needs to ask itself: why do we continue to timetable as if students don’t have lives outside of university? Scatter-gun timetables that require students to attend at random (to them) times on different days, regardless of how inconvenient that may be, make no concession to the reality that we live in a world where consumption is user- not producer-driven. When nine out of 10 new jobs created over the next decade will require tertiary-level education, surely the least we can do is make it easier for students to weave study into their lives. 

Reconceptualising timetabling and structure from a “How does this process work for us?” approach to “How does this work for our students?” is a step towards true student-centredness. (Block institutions are not perfect, either, but at least they’re thinking about this matter.) No amount of active and engaging classroom culture is going to work if students can’t get to the classroom.

It’s a process, not project

Talking to, and reading the work of, our book’s contributors leads me to the following conclusion: it is a mistake for institutions to see a move to the block as a project that will eventually lead to a BAU state where change has been managed and a new normal can begin. Sure, there will come a time when implementation is over, but this is no time to take the institutional eye off the ball.

Universities and academics alike are inherently conservative. They don’t like change and, even if they are willing to embrace it, they tend to revert to what they know and what feels comfortable when challenged. A move such as a shift to block should be viewed as an ongoing process, not a project. The price of educational reform is, it seems, eternal vigilance. This kind of thinking leads to perhaps the most important question: how do we do better by our students?

John Weldon is associate professor in the First Year College at Victoria University, Australia. Block Teaching Essentials: A Practical Guide, edited by John Weldon and Loretta Konjarski (Springer Nature), is published in February 2025.