I have been following Blendkit for three years now, and have basically taken what I need and not completed. That has been primarily because I have been working solely in online course development. Now I am actively involved in reinventing a program from a purely classroom mode to one where the course takes place 50% online. This requires a different take on my current skill set. So Blendkit 2016 become much more directly relevant to my continued education. Over the next few weeks I will posting reflections here as part of the assignments for this MOOC, based upon the readings.
The reading for the first week is on the nature of blended learning and the differences between it and a standard face to face course. While I appreciate the theory and the approaches to hybridizing courses, I find that what works for me is a little different. I'm not a systems guy as much as I am about individualizing the experience of creation for the instructor, differentiated design for the strengths and weaknesses of the faculty member.
Much like anything else related to education, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to developing a blended/hybrid learning course. Based on the reading and my experience with faculty, the amount of blend and what is contained within it has a lot to do with instructor teaching style, what they find valuable in terms of the interaction that they want directly with students, and also their comfort level with moving content online in the first place.
The reading for the first week is on the nature of blended learning and the differences between it and a standard face to face course. While I appreciate the theory and the approaches to hybridizing courses, I find that what works for me is a little different. I'm not a systems guy as much as I am about individualizing the experience of creation for the instructor, differentiated design for the strengths and weaknesses of the faculty member.
Much like anything else related to education, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to developing a blended/hybrid learning course. Based on the reading and my experience with faculty, the amount of blend and what is contained within it has a lot to do with instructor teaching style, what they find valuable in terms of the interaction that they want directly with students, and also their comfort level with moving content online in the first place.
The type of course components that are best suited for a
blended approach are also dependent on the instructor, which is why I think that
a systems approach, while valuable if you can get buy in from your faculty on a
standard delivery method and look and feel, many times will not work. Some
faculty will see more value in a standard lecture approach, with the study
materials and some student to student interaction in the online component,
while others will wish to flip their course so that the majority of their time
will be spent reinforcing the content.
In our case, since we do not wish to deal with accreditation
issues in our courses, blended means less than 50% online. At the other end of
the spectrum one graduate course that I attended was entirely online with the
exception of being bookended with face to face courses that acted as an introduction
to the course at the beginning, and a wrap-up and in-person presentation of
class projects at the end. Again, it appears to me that the decisions is based
upon what works best for the subject matter, the curriculum, the faculty, and
student needs.
Design is an important aspect that ties back to everything I
have mentioned above. Leveraging what faculty do best in the classroom is
important, as is meeting student needs realistically. There are potentially a
huge number of factors that play into design. I suppose in the end I am more of a broad
conceptualization type of designer.
