Presenter: Dr. Alan Aycock, UW Milwaukee, Acting Director of Learning Technology Center
Blogger: Karen Franker, Instructional Designer, UW Colleges
Blended learning is a bit transgressive in terms of active rather than passive learning
Does blended learning work? Faculty wanting evidence that it works, esp. those in the sciences
U.S. Dept. of Ed 2009 meta-analysis of measurable outcomes of blended learning; findings were across all discplines
Findings:
Blended courses are far more likely to be student-centered
Students who took all or part of a course online did better than F2F
Students who took blended courses performed slightly better than those only online
Conclusions of study:
Active learning, student self-reflection and self-assessment important
Rich media not found significant
Variables too complex to be definitive
What is the status of blended learning on your campus?
Is blended seen as its own genre or as mainly transitional to online?
Audience member reports that blended seems to work better for shorter-length courses; can cover more material
Another audience member reports that he enjoys knowing about student thinking in advance before lectures
UW Colleges supports blended learning training for faculty at 9 of 11 campuses so far; faculty must go through training before teaching first blended course
When is a course blended? Seat time is reduced; partly f2f & partly online; not just Web-enhanced; course was explicity designed to be blended; needs to be interaction between f2f & onine parts of class
History of Blended Learning at UW-Milwaukee
University of Central Florida influence; driven by lack of classroom space; showed greater student satisfaction
Curricular Redesign Grant with 5 campuses in UW System; developed a hybrid teaching resource site; created first faculty hybrid course redesign program
As result of hybrid Web site, UWM now seen as expert in blended learning and highly recognized internationally; offer their faculty development program at other higher ed institutions both overseas and in U.S.
Alfred P. Sloan Grant: application of blended learning to the program level – in 9 degree programs; increase accessibility to baccalaureate degree for 7-county area surrounding Milwaukee
Now Sloan-C offers fully online version of blended certificate program; mostly small institutions are enrolling, esp. two-year colleges taking lead in blended learning development
How Does Blended Learning Work?
What are some key themes in course redesign for blended learning?
Students have more time to think and reflect on learning in blended courses
Clarity between what is expected to be done online vs. f2f on part of the students; helping students manage their time so they are committing time to doing their out-of-class assignments; no surprises
Challenge and opportunity for faculty to decide which activities work best f2f vs. online
Four Solutions in Search of a Paradigm:
Breaking up is hard to do; change old ways of thinking in support of new pedagogy; still in transition about what it all means; encourages faculty to really ponder their teaching methods
1. Break content into “slices” or “chunks”
Use rich media content for engagement, not only delivery of information
Ex: short voiceover introductions; use YouTube clips; provides a context for week’s work; not often done in f2f work; 4 to 5 slides for students to view online before they come to class; follow up with discussion in f2f session; also require students to find video clips to contribute to class
2. Hearing voices
Silence and passive learning
Finding your voice is a responsibility and an opportunity of each student
Ex: Application — have students talk about their own experience and apply it to class; Critical Viewing — not just sit and “veg out” — focus students’ thinking (What makes these scenes seem “real” to us?); Reflection — have students reflect on their learning; can be done through D2L’s ePortfolio tool; ask them reflective questions)
3. Closing the loop between online & f2f
Activities need to reinforce each other between f2f and online; students may question reason for online work; problem of “course and a half” syndrome where too much material is incorporated; usually this is caused by the “two parallel, unconnected courses” syndrome; 20% rule — list all learning activities of f2f class and cut out 20% of those activities for the blended course
Create peer community of learners in both environments
Ex: entrance and exit assignments; students hand in hard copy of a question that pertains to the day’s reading when they walk in the door of the f2f class; Exit assignments — students quicky scribble down what theyve learned that day in class (Ex: “What was your crappiest job?”) Questions like these evoke good responses from students; summarize students’ comments online.
Rehearsals — way to help students think about what they’re going to do before they do it; onine reading that students have to find themselves, then they take a quiz in D2L; another type of rehearsal has students viewing a video in class and take notes; then go home and post their answers to the discussion board.
4. You only live twice
Investigating online sites — have students find and evaluate sites
“Scaffolding” for group work and research– teach students how to work in groups; give them a structure; assign roles; percentage of grade to be determined by peer evaluation
Ex: Providing analytical rubrics — analyzing ads in YouTube
How Should We Invest in Blended Learning…and Should We?
59.5% increase in blended courses reports at UWM; online increased by 49.1%
Clearly a growing trend
Conclusions
Treat blended as a process rather than only a product
Excellent testing ground for lessons learned; begin with 15% of course Web-enhanced and see how it works
Blending is experimental and incremental
Blending fosters active learning — more responsibility on students
Blended can be transformational– faculty report it changed the way they thought about their teaching; would find it hard to go back to f2f teaching in same old way
Advice to faculty developers:
Be conservative — text-based only at first; learning to facilitate online discussions
Development of peer community using small groups and disc. forums
Investigation of online resources promotes active learning
Online and f2f must interact
Debriefings and self-reflections are critical
UWM’s blended (hybrid) site: http://hybrid.uwn.edu
Audience members reports that students flourish in online environment; then begin to speak up more in f2f sessions; students find their voice more easily in a blended course
Richer application of Universal Design is possible with blended courses
Blended teaching provides much better opportunity to know your students and their capabilities
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