More universities are expected to consider adopting Sweden’s “block teaching” system after a pilot at an Australian institution exceeded expectations.

Melbourne’s Victoria University says that it will roll out across all undergraduate year groups the model of making students focus on one topic at a time for four weeks, rather than the traditional Australian approach of juggling four subjects at once, after first-year students who tried it recorded better pass and retention rates than their counterparts from earlier cohorts. At Victoria, full-time students complete eight intensive blocks per academic year, working in groups of about 30.

Vice chancellor Peter Dawkins says the approach has effectively halved failure rates among this year’s cohort of commencing students. Subject pass rates, which averaged 72 percent last year, increased to 90 percent for the first four-week block and 85 percent for the second. By the end of the third block, first-year retention stood at 89 percent compared with the usual level of about 80 percent.

Andrew Dempster, a higher education consultant at Canberra-based Proofpoint Advisory, says other institutions are watching closely. “Universities are genuinely interested in redesigning the way they offer education, to be more focused on how students want to learn,” he says.

But according to Dempster, a former head of corporate affairs at Swinburne University of Technology, the biggest challenge will be securing staff support. “Universities tend to be fairly conservative places. It’s difficult to get people to sign on and give something genuinely new a try,” he says.

The block system has long been favoured in Sweden, where many universities teach just one or two subjects at a time. Malmo University, for example, offers sequential units of five weeks each. Quest University, a small private institution in British Columbia, introduced the system more than a decade ago. Other colleges in Canada, as well as US institutions in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky and Tennessee, have followed suit, offering blocks of between three and a half and eight weeks.

Prof. Dawkins says the reform is well-suited to the institution’s base of disadvantaged and first-in-family students, easing what could be a “bewildering” transition from school and helping to alleviate doubts about university during the crucial first few months. Annabelle Goonasekera, a first-year psychology student at Victoria agrees. “If you’re studying multiple subjects, it’s easy to procrastinate and get lost or to drown in the content,” she says.

Goonasekera says block system rules also make it easier for students to catch up if they fall behind, or to switch to different disciplines if courses are not to their liking. A classmate has been able to transfer instantly into teaching — a shift that would normally require her to wait until at least the next semester.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)