Building faculty participation in blended learning: Scaffolding the experience to create more interest.

Right now, as I go through BlendKit2014, I am thinking about how one entices faculty into using the LMS and then eventually teaching regularly in it. I actually started thinking about this a few weeks ago when a friend of mine, who is an instructional designer/other duties as assigned type, told me that her university required all faculty to upload their syllabi into the LMS for student access. It initially didn’t kick in as to what that might accomplish. It occurred to me that doing so requires that all faculty have at least the basic training to be able to accomplish that task.

It was sort of an AHA!! moment for me. The first step toward acquainting faculty to the LMS had been accomplished.

This week in the readings for BlendKit2014, I am faced with the same idea. To get faculty to start looking at blended learning as an opportunity, you can simply start with the syllabus. Let’s think about that for a moment. As a teacher, I have always put my course syllabi in a prominent place in the course online. The benefit there is that no student can claim to have not had access to the syllabus. I make it available in Word and PDF formats for download, and also an HTML version to read online. It is actual a bit freeing knowing that you will not get the excuse that the student did not see the assignment or deadline in the syllabus. If they have access to the LMS, they have access to the syllabi.

So making faculty put syllabi on the LMS, even if they use it for nothing else, provides a great perk. It also potentially opens the way for other time saving additions such as posting class materials and other content that insures that students can get to the assignments and lecture materials anywhere, again creating a situation where the responsibility for providing the content is moved from the instructor.

So now we have a very positive slippery slope. As instructors rely more and more on the LMS, they may be more and more tempted to see how it can not only simplify their teaching but also provide different means of teaching. At that point we begin to leave the realm of web-based course supplement into the realm of blended learning.