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Students taking part-time, distance or blended learning units who are also in employment face high commitment demands of work, life and family in addition to their study. They do not have time to face the additional challenge of making sense of difficult to access learning materials. These students are also often highly discerning, and will talk with their feet – failing to complete units that don’t engage. At Southampton Solent University, we recognise the need to make online or blended units accessible and supportive. In order to engage students on these, we have developed a set of institutional standards for online course development that aim to make materials intuitive, easy access, clearly introduced and well signposted. The standards also identify levels of support and collaboration in order for students to feel both engaged in and to gain maximum benefit from the learning processes. At the same time we have established a Flexible Delivery Development and Support Team which collaborates with academic staff in course planning, writing and delivery. This team works with tutors to achieve the standards while aligning learning outcomes and assessment with online and blended learning activity. This workshop explores the stages that led to establishing our institutional standards for online course development and the scope of activities for the FDDST. We shall explore ways in which the activities of the team have been responsive and adaptive to student experiences, and illustrate some of the impact of these developments on both actual an anticipated student engagement, achievement and retention.

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This latest edition of JLDHE provides further evidence of the extent to which learning development as a field of practice has evolved during more than a decade of scholarly and practical investigation which has established a firm evidence base for our work. Issue five in March 2013 reflected on 'Learning Development 10 years on', and the tenth anniversary conference held in Plymouth confirmed the sense of growing maturity within our community. As Stella Cottrell remarks in her guest editorial, the concept 'has come of age, or at least new ways of thinking are becoming established in the collective psyche'.

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