What should be considered blended learning? Is there a more comprehensive way to define blended learning than Sloan C's use of "seat time?" Should an instructor's use of technology in course design contribute to the definition of blended learning? Click on the link below to view a short video commentary about blended learning and the discussion that I hope will develop.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO COMMENTARY ABOUT THE DISCUSSION GROUP
If you would like to participate in the discussion, please reply to this post or send me an email at rlillie@csusb.edu. I hope to hear from you soon.
Rick Lillie (California State University, San Bernardino)
Keywords: Blended learning, definition of blended learning
Comments
Either not many people are watching this thread or not many have a clue what blended learning actually is supposed to be. There's a wikipedia entry, with the following definition by Heinze and Procter:
Blended Learning is learning that is facilitated by the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning, and founded on transparent communication amongst all parties involved with a course.
Now what always puzzles me when people talk about blended learning is that this is what we have always done? Isn't finding the optimal mix in content and delivery models always at the heart of education? What is different this time?
Hi Misja. Thanks. I think you make a very good point. At my Uni the use of blended learning is a key part of our learning and teaching strategy but few of my colleagues are familiar with this term yet. We're working on this! As you say, this is what we have always done one way or another but at Leeds we have a particular take on blended learning as a blend of e-learning techniques (or 'technology enhanced learning' to use the JISC preferred term) and our traditional face-to-face techniques. I'm pretty sure this is what blended learning has come to mean in the current educational context, certainly in UK HE.
Rick has just started a community for this discussion: Blended Learning: Exploring the Evolving Nature of Blended Learning. I think it is open to self joining. So far there is one post suggesting some literature and on line resources to mug up on what blended learning is and stimulate the starting point of the discussion. I aim to start a new thread there sometime today (or as soon as I have finished an article for our learning and teaching bulletin - deadline yesterday!) on what our thinking is at Leeds on blended learning. I think Rick's thinking on spinning out a dedicated community from this thread in Spaces Central should be a good move. A thread here is really one post with comments. I think this will be ideal for many purposes, particular on issues that are very specific and tightly focused. With a topic that might spawn many related sub-threads I think they will be better served with a forum (community) of their own. It will be interesting to see how the relationship between Spaces Central and the development of other communities develops. Space Central may be a good place to test the waters for new potential communities before creating them. In the case of Rick's new Blended Learning Community it might be a good idea to use this thread to point to posts there for a while at least.
Terry, thanks for the pointer, I somehow missed that community. Perhaps what you describe best fits the current use and purpose of the term 'blended learning': as a concept to introduce staff to ways of combining different content and delivery techniques. "a blend of e-learning techniques [...] and our traditional face-to-face techniques", as you describe will be the most common interpretation nowadays, I agree, but still is not much differerent from the early days when computers were first introduced: finding best ways to enhance or innovate current practices with the use of technology - and in my opinion this implies always having it as an optimal mix, or blend.
I look forward talking more about this (and other issues for that matter :), and as you say we'll need to see how the different communities will best relate. I can certainly see SpacesCentral as a central hub for this.
Hi Misja
Yes, I'm someone who read the initial post, and have been meaning to comment, but wanted time to think of an answer, but hadn't had time.
I agree that "blended" learning has many definitions, as you say, the definition encompasses what we should be doing anyway, and what good teachers have always done - a blend of theory & practical; classwork & fieldwork; art apprection & art creation; or whatever subject you happen to be teaching.
Like Terry, I've found that many staff don't really understand the concept of "blended" learning; and many would see it as "using the PC" ... without thinking about *why* they're bringing in the PC - it might be that actually it's not really adding anything to the course....
To me; I'd personally really only see it as "blended" delivery when you're meaning that face to face contact time is reduced. If you're using electronic resources in a classroom, to me, that's not "blended" learning; it's just using resources that aid the students understanding - and you might have a video/ image to assist.
However, if those activities are selected so that students and teacher no longer have to be in the same places at the same time - then *that*, to me is blended learning. Note: This doesn't mean that either have to do less work ... nor should it mean that they have to do more. It's the same hours in a different way.
For most, though I suspect that this is a rather narrow definition of blended learning. Most would, I think, see it as how to best use new techniques in a course.
What I do think is important is to ensure that staff don't feel compelled to take on extra work. Discussion boards don't work without staff input. Unfortunately, as is often the case, staff seem to be required to monitor discussion boards/ answer questions etc., on top of the teaching / tutoring/ office hours etc., they would have done anyway. That's not going to endear it to most staff, with the result that it either won't be done at all, or it won't be done effectively - then few see the point.
Misja. I think you are right in the early days when computers were seen as an opportunity to create 'teaching machines' - program the machine to program the student, a one-to-one transmission model of teaching. Things have moved on a bit I think thanks mainly to the human networks and interaction and the many-to-many communication that is now possible. However, there is still a tendency to see how technology can be used to replicate traditional teaching techniques (on-line lectures, on-line tutorials, Powerpoint instead of over head acetates). As George Siemens says somewhere, the tendency is to force new technologies into old boxes until, one day, possibley provoked by wider contextual and social changes, we realise that they also make new things possible. I think it is these 'new' things that can make technology based blended learning different in kind to the old type of blended learning we have always done in one form or another.
We hope to exploit blended learning to help us with a number of important educational agendas. Part of the answer to Emma's very valid concern that blended learning does not simply add to already heavy workloads for academic staff is the skilling of students to become independent and self motivated learners. As someone else said (you can see I'm not much good at referencing!) if you go home at the end of a day's teaching more tired than your students you're getting it wrong. They should be doing the work. We want to use blended teaching to induct students into the research and learning culture and processes we are all involved in, staff and students. Staff aid students learning not by doing lots of different things but by exemplifying what they are doing anyway – research and scholarship. We want students to learn the research and evaluation skills, the communication, collaboration and presentation skills and the problem solving skills that will make them their own continuing teachers, individually and collectively. This means we want to help them to develop their own personal learning ecologies, to blend and exploit their most effective learning techniques and strategies, formal and informal, active and passive, and situate themselves proactively in a network of people, objects and resources with a view to develop their knowledge and practice. I have increasingly come to believe that learning is social, through and through, that formal education has tended to over emphasise quite a small subset of learning skills and strategies, and even reflective learning is best achieved in dialogue with others. So, hopefully, we are developing a notion of blended learning that is more than a set of varied teaching techniques and more work for teachers. The blend is of learning strategies, learning contexts, formal and informal, structured and vicarious, and increasingly constructed and maintained by the students as developing ‘expert’ learners in their own right.
How this rather high blown rhetoric translates into actual teaching practice on a day to day basis is another story we are still trying to write!
I like the vision you are developing at Leeds, key of course is how to translate this to everyday practice without bumping into issues like Emma mentioned, e.g. teacher bandwidth is limited :) I look forward hearing more about how things develop at Leeds, looks like you're really trying to make blended learning more than just a buzzword.
Rick has posted a diagram and a short commentary video on it in the Blended Learning: Exploring the Evolving Nature of Blended Learning community - http://eduspaces.net/relbl2008/weblog/309020.html - to which I have made a response, still couched in farily general terms as is the discussion here so far. We are hoping that blended learning will address 2 main issues one being the development of students as independent and expert learners as I outlined above. The other issue is how to structure, guide and give timely feedback so that students get the maximum benefit from the very large amount of independent study time they have in between fairly small amounts of face-to-face teaching time. I outlined this issue in more detail in the blended learning community. I think it will be useful to come up with some concrete examples of blended learning activities and match them to concrete learning objectives and outcomes. For me the objectives and aimed for outcomes would be related to the two issues mentioned above but there may be other objectives and outcomes as well. So, examples but with a notion of 'why' and 'what for'.
I'd be interested to hear the rationales and objectives behind others' interest and use of blended learning. As Misja says, it is a bit of a buzzword at the moment but it is interesting to look at what issues and problems it is supposed to address. Or is it just fashionable at the moment?