Blended Learning

I've had some experience with blended learning in a community college setting where I was an adjunct professor of American History.  We used an online platform called elearn.  Our AE program tried several types of programs in the past with little success.  However, recently, we are implemented a new type of program that seems to be working very well.  To answer your questions:

1) The teacher needs some plan before she simply throws out an online component.  You need to structure it, set some guidelines, expectations and make them clear to the learners.

2) The successful blended learning is one that meets regularly face-to-face and has the learners go to the online component to discuss, practice, reinforce, or extend the topic/content of the face to face class. The online aspect needs a discussion board that allows everyone to see questions, answers, expamples, etc. It should also be on that allows those students who were unable to attend the class, catch up so to speak.  There should be a place in the online delivery that allows the student to follow what was presented in class, the results and the classwork/homework assignments.  All blended learning needs a clear, timely line of communication between teacher and learners as well as other learners. This communication is the strongest and most important part of blended learning

3) time to keep up with it on the part of the teacher.  motivation to stay with it and participate on the part of the learner.

Hmmm... first, an adult educator needs time to find or develop the resources for blended learning and figure out how to use them and keep up with the training when the technology changes, as in always...   Teacher also needs skepticism -- Khan Academy videos just might not be what your class needs (I was reminded of this yesterday by a student who said they made her feel 'even stupider'...)   ... or they might be! 

Successful blended learning means students aren't spending  e time figuring out the technology at the expense of learning what they're wanting/needing to learn. The tech should make it an *easier* path, not a steeper one. 

I think the biggest challenges are developing materials and methods that work for students, instead of working for administrators and sales reps. Dont' even ask me about the data obsession... 

Thanks David for your definition of Blended Learning.  In my recent studies of online learning I have noted that 'blended' learning can also mean "online learning with a blend of face-to-face (synchronous) and independent (asynchronous) work.  This makes finding research studies on 'blended learning' something of a challenge.

As a big proponent of the flipped learning approach, I would strongly encourage anyone thinking about blended learning to consider starting small. Often our adult learners have little or no habit of doing 'out of class' work and this can be a barrier to a blended approach. In addition, often our instructors have little or no experience blending or are not comfortable with the tech tools recommended for blending.  So I encourage those new to the blended approach to start with something simple like:

• Start a Wordpress blog and post writing prompts for your students - have them respond in the comments with...a brainstorm, a sentence, a thesis statement, a paragraph. 
• Same kind of idea, but with Instagram, or post images to a blog.
• Post online (tool of your choice) or e-mail students links to a pdf file, or powerpoint or video that you created with key ccncepts or vocabulary to review/think about outside of class.
• Send out a link to a Google Form (or other survey tool) to collect questions or reflections on current content, concepts or learning activities. 

Students can do this work during, before or after class,  - although the idea is that you want to eventually shift it to "homework" outside of classtime, and off site for most learners.  Also, maybe you start by doing this once a week, or for one topic, or one subject to start.  Then refine your processes, and do more of it as you get more comfortable, and learners adjust to new expectations.

So often what folks talk about are the "finished products" of a new technique like blended learning - what it looks like after all the kinks are worked out.  It would be great to hear not only about great models for blended learning in AE, but also about how folks got there, their *own* learning processes...

David,

I really like the approach you are taking to gather feedback and input from those in the field. I hope it will be productive for your writing, but I know it will be helpful for those who are considering this approach. I agree with all the posts so far, very nice summary Duren, and the comments about planning, starting small, and considering the time needed are right on.

I support teachers as a curriculum developer/publisher and as I talk to educators around the country and within our own development team (which includes teachers from the field), a blended approach seems to be a very effective teaching and learning strategy.

Among many examples I have come across, I am familiar with a teacher in Iowa who has found success in a hybrid approach, and sets very clear guidelines/goals for her students using a distance-learning curriculum; some work is done outside the classroom online and some face-to-face in class. She creates a learning plan for her students based upon their individual needs (she does an assessment via the curriculum’s pre-survey in each content area), works with the students to create achievable timelines to work through the learning plan, and then creates a contract with the students for them to strive to achieve their goal.

She uses those learning plans and works her schedule such that students meet twice a week face-to-face, and then have assigned activities that need to be completed before coming to class the next week. The students agree to attempt a given amount of curriculum each week; the learning timeline is adjusted as needed based upon their understanding/progress through the curriculum. She said this has worked well and gave the students a very clear roadmap and a way to estimate when they would meet their learning goals. The combination of face-to-face time and working with curriculum online provided the opportunity to remediate and provide direct instruction in class, while giving students the flexibility to work outside the classroom as their schedules permitted.

Developing the individual learning plans, working on the “contracts” with students, and preparing and coordinating the instructional activities takes time, likely more time than she took in her traditional approach. Plus, she needed to know the distance-learning curriculum she was using very well in order to keep up with the students and know where to point them when they needed additional resources. Having a structured distance-learning curriculum to use as a framework likely assisted her in her prep time, plus it contains communication and tracking tools so she knows what students are working on and when they are stuck in a particular content area. She doesn’t need to wait for the face-to-face time to remediate; she can do that via the tools in the curriculum.

The idea of homework may be a shift in thinking, but with the availability and use of mobile devices, many/most have smart phones. We developed our online curriculum to mobile friendly; it works the same on a smart phone, tablet or desktop. I think we need to meet the students with the technologies they are using, and allow them an instructional moment when they have time and interest, both in the classroom and out.

Richard

David,

I will reach out to the teacher I referenced, it’s been a while since I saw her, but I will follow up. I am traveling quite a bit this week, so it may be next week before I can make a connection.

I think I can answer some of your questions, but I not all without follow-up.

I believe that she sets individual goals for each student using the pre-survey that comes with the curriculum. It flags areas that students need work on, and areas where they show understanding. That is an online resource that is part of/tied to the curriculum.

I believe the tracking tools are important as they show progress through the curriculum and can track where students are.

All the teachers who use our curriculum are provided training, both up front training on how to navigate, etc., but more importantly, follow-up with email, webinars trainings, etc. This follow–up training is not on how to navigate, but how to use the curriculum in the classroom, best instructional practices, etc.

The curriculum she is using is the i-Pathways project (www.i-pathways.org/2014). I am going to invite the i-Pathways Curriculum Director to participate in this discussion; I think she will be able to bring more to the table as she connects directly with educators across the country on a weekly basis.

I don’t currently have answers to questions about mobile tech use, not yet. But that is something we are starting to track. I made the comment about mobile tech based upon trends I am seeing in web utilization. More and more users are connecting to web resources using mobile devices versus laptops or desktops. I spoke with an ESL teacher this past summer that was developing a web-based activity for use in class, she said that the class didn’t need to go to the computer lab, everyone in the class had a smart phone, and they just used those.

Richard