[tt] IHE: Learning 2.0

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Learning 2.0
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/13/blended
7.11.13

As online tools become more ubiquitous inside and outside the
classroom, and the growth of distance learning continues, education
researchers have begun to focus on how best to harness new
technologies. Advocates for the classical lecture experience still
exist, of course, but the general trend has been toward
incorporating various technologies into the classroom, from course
management software to digital photography. One approach, called
"blended learning," mixes traditional "face to face" techniques
with cutting-edge developments in theory and technology.


A new book, Blended Learning in Higher Education: Framework,
Principles, and Guidelines (Wiley, 2008), summarizes the
current theory behind blended learning but offers practical
guidelines (with examples) on how to transform existing courses
into the new framework. The authors, D. Randy Garrison and
Norman D. Vaughan, of the University of Calgary, discuss the
ideal conditions for a blended learning experience, how a blog
and a wiki can enhance a class and how exclusively face-to-face
encounters can lead to short attention spans.
Q: In a time of increased attention to a results-driven focus
on assessment, does blended learning offer more accountability
of the learning that's actually occurring both online and
offline?
A: Blended learning has an inherent accountability focus
considering the core of a blended learning design is to
fundamentally rethink the goals and activities of a course of
studies. For this reason, there are well-defined goals and a
more open desire to assess and refine design changes.
Q: Skeptics of the increased use of technology to supplant more
traditional teaching methods might wonder how to achieve what
you call "active engagement" in a blended learning environment.
That is, what is "presence," and how can instructors engage
students who are spending part of their time for the course
online? Can online tools replace the classical lecturer -- or
is that besides the point?
A: Considering the large lecture classes and financial
constraints of higher education, the use of innovative designs
that include technology are the only way to provide more
engaged learning opportunities. We talk in the book about
communities of inquiry to enhance student engagement. It is
virtually impossible to engage students in purposeful and
meaningful inquiry without the Internet and communication
technologies to precipitate and sustain discourse that is
central to higher order learning. Well-designed blended
learning can be a much more engaged and meaningful learning
experience than sitting passively in a lecture hall. It is
interesting that of the three presences in the Community of
Inquiry framework, there may well be enhanced cognitive and
even teaching presence online. While there may be some
advantages of a face-to-face context for social presence at the
start of a course, online interpersonal communication offers
possibilities not possible in an online context. In short, we
believe the lecture should be largely replaced by more engaged
face-to-face and online learning experiences. This is the
potential and goal of blended learning.
Q: Online learning tends to be more widely embraced on the
community college level where cost-effective means of educating
as many students as possible are emphasized. Is blended
learning better suited for certain levels of attainment?
A: It is true that from a cost-effectiveness perspective,
blended learning may well have the greatest impact on large
introductory classes. However, we have found that combining the
best and distinctive aspects of face-to-face and online
learning can greatly enhance the learning experience regardless
of class size or level of study.
Q: Even proponents of technology in the classroom warn against
using the latest breakthroughs for the sake of it. How does one
differentiate between "innovative" and "substitutive" uses of
technology? On a related note, where does Second Life fall on
that spectrum?
A: We concur that technology must not be the driver of blended
learning. Our efforts at course redesign always start with what
are the intended and worthwhile educational goals. Certainly
there is a place to experiment with innovative technologies but
great care must be taken that they serve a useful purpose, are
not a distraction, and are reliable. Technology should never be
used simply to substitute for face-to-face. It must clearly
offer an improved educational benefit. Thus, the use of Second
Life would be appropriate if a virtual reality environment
directly contributed to the learning outcomes and corresponding
assessment activities for a blended learning course.
Q: Most people, when they think of online courses, imagine
classes with large enrollments with students working from a
distance. How can blended learning be incorporated into smaller
classes with students on campus?
A: We have argued that blended learning offers an opportunity
to embrace the traditional values of higher education. That is,
to create and sustain communities of inquiry that would simply
not be possible in a face-to-face environment, even with small
classes. For this reason, blended learning has a place in large
and small classes. The reality is that it is being incorporated
in smaller classes for these reasons, although it has not been
labeled as such.
Q: What are some concrete ways that a professor can adapt
blended learning techniques to more traditional material? How
can Wikipedia or online portfolios supplement a class on Plato
or a remedial math course?
A: The evidence shows that the interest in blended learning is
very high and that it is being adopted in a variety of formats.
This adoption is often accompanied by student use of social
networking tools such as wikis and weblogs. For example, wikis
can be used to collaboratively summarize weekly online
discussion forum sessions that students self-select to
moderate. The activity can be designed as follows:

  1. A series of online discussion forums are created in a learning
management system, such as Blackboard. These forums are
directly related to the key modules/topics for the course.
  2. Groups of students (2 to 3) choose a module based on course
readings, previous experience and/or interest in the topic.
  3. Each student group is responsible for moderating and
summarizing their selected online discussion for a specified
time period.
  4. The groups then use a wiki application (i.e.,
http://pbwiki.com ) to make draft notes and a final summary of
the online discussion based on guidelines co-created by the
students and the course instructor.

Weblogs can be used to facilitate student self-reflection and peer
review of course assignments. For example:
  1. Students can create their own course weblogs using Google's
Blogger application.
  2. After completing each course assignment, and review of the
instructor's assessment feedback, the students then post
responses to the following reflective questions on their
weblogs: (a) What did you learn in the process of completing
this assignment? (b) How will you apply what you learned from
this assignment to the next class assignment, other courses
and/or your career?
  3. In terms of peer review, students paste or attach drafts of
specific course assignments to their blogs. Other students in
the class then review these documents and post responses to the
author's weblog. Guiding questions for the peer review process
can include: (a) What did you learn from reviewing this
document? (b) What were the strengths (e.g. content, writing
style, format and structure) of the document? © What
constructive advice and/or recommendations could you provide
for improving the quality of this document?

Q: Is blended learning especially suited to a new generation of
students with stereotypical traits such as shorter attention spans,
different learning patterns, and more collaborative tendencies?

A: Student attention spans are short because most educational
experiences are passive and lack meaning. Blended learning is
intended to address these issues. On the other hand, there is
evidence that technically savvy students are very critical about
how technology is being used. It is clear that any use of
technology must be justified and student expectations addressed. If
this happens, then students will engage in more meaningful learning
activities and assume greater responsibility for their learning.

-- Andy Guess

Comments

Blended learning is an interesting topic because it is how many
students already learn. The missing element in higher education is
a formalized system of assigning academic credit for online
learning. Blended learning offers hope that we can achieve a higher
education cost breakthrough.

Marvin McConoughey, at 8:50 am EST on November 13, 2007

A highly effective tool

The blended formula, because it allows different students to
participate in different ways, seems very powerful. We all know
students who may have things to say, but who are not public
speakers, and we all know those simply more comfortable with text.
In addition on-line conversations can easily be preserved, and
brought back to the attention of some or all of the class. And that
doesn't even touch on the abilities to add multi-media to
out-of-class work, the ability to hyperlink, the ability of
students to truly collaborate (wikis or Google Docs) in ways others
can watch.

I will say this, you can't do this without a pedagogical shift from
the faculty. If your class does not already contain
learner-generated-content within learner-generated-contexts your
on-line experience will just be the same-old, same-old. But if you
have learned to share a bit of control, if you have learned to
understand students as contributors in a real way, this will
dramatically expand the opportunities for that to happen.

I will also say that monitoring on-line or blended courses is a
great deal more work for faculty. It is much harder to "fake it"
online. You need to read it all, watch it all, and stay involved in
it all.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 9:40 am EST on November
13, 2007

more modes=more diverse outcomes

The Learning 2.0 approach is great for learning--I've been
experimenting with Internet ancillaries since before Netscape--but
it is at odds with the simplistic understandings of assessment that
seem inevitably to co-arise with the belief that appointment to an
assessment committee confers competence in the area.

Outcomes assessment is typically conceptualized in terms of
sudents' meeting some "canonical" standards whose appropriateness
is at least in part determined by their obvious quantifiability. In
this environment, the natural fit between online activities and
assessment is vitiated by selective inattention to free-form
learning that runs with the material in creative ways.

Nowhere is the antipathy of conventional outcomes assessment to
beyond-the-box excellence more sharply illustrated than in the
conscious effort to include online resources that intentionally
avoid infantilizing students. I think you can have one or the
other, but not both.

Online work can easily be set up for quantification without
judgment. Creating courses that are "assessment friendly" in those
terms enforces a dull, mechanical leveling on learning. On the
other hand, if we really grasp Ira's comment above, there is a
chance that use of online resources will promote greater
consciousness of possibilities of learning and with that, learning
itself.

Greg Tropea, at 11:25 am EST on November 13, 2007

Authentic success

"Seeming" to work can be amusing at an AERA meeting. Because at
day's end, students often manage to learn in spite of educators and
teachers -- not because of them.

Buzz, at 12:55 pm EST on November 13, 2007

Blended Instruction Course Investigation

Some may be interested in looking over the September 2005 report of
a Task Force I chaired for the UCLA Library's Information Literacy
Program. The Task Force investigated blended instruction, including
Pew-funded studies, and made recommendations based on software and
other resources available at the time. The report is freely
available from the California Digital Library's eScholarship site:
http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclalib/il/04/Esther Grassian

Esther Grassian, Interim Head at UCLA College Library, at 1:05 pm
EST on November 13, 2007

AERA

With all due respect to Buzz and AERA -- "seeming" is all you have
and all you will ever have. You can collect your numbers and apply
whatever formulas you want to your graphs, you can collect all the
stories you'd like, and we all really know that none of that proves
anything when it comes down to what any individual student, or even
group of students, will get from interacting with any particular
faculty member or educational tool.

Blended environments pass the "logic" test because the one thing
that we know absolutely about humans is that they are individuals.
So we know that when we attempt to use just one pedagogical method,
or one media, or one forum for interaction, we will undoubtedly
reach fewer students than if approach learning through multiple
routes.

Of course "the research gods" do not like that kind of implication,
and it creates messy answers and requires far better teachers than
if we can "prove" that "method A" is "better" in a "statistically
significant" way. If we could do that, then we could easily
replicate instructors and easily provide valid standardized tests.

But in the end research is simply story telling based on experience
-- either personal or observed. So my research, based in both, says
this "seems" to work in a significant way.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 1:35 pm EST on November
13, 2007

Well said, Ira!

I have to agree with Ira Socol, who says, "You can't do this
[blending] without a pedagogical shift from the faculty. If your
class does not already contain learner-generated-content within
learner-generated-contexts your on-line experience will just be the
same-old, same-old. But if you have learned to share a bit of
control, if you have learned to understand students as contributors
in a real way, this will dramatically expand the opportunities for
that to happen." Interaction is the key, and that happens when
communication is two-way rather than one. Without interaction, the
Web material is just another form of handout. With interaction, web
activities become a dynamic medium for dialogue, for expanding the
knowledge base, for empowering students, for engaging students in
their own learning process. Well said, Ira.

Jim Shimabukuro, Kapi'olani Community College, at 2:50 pm EST on
November 13, 2007

"Seeming" to test

" .. With interaction, web activities become a dynamic medium for
dialogue .."

News-flash: given that grade inflation have made GPAs 95% farce,
purposeful employers are left with few alternatives. So, many
employers use objective, third-party testing (e.g., GRE, GMAT,
LSAT) to weed out unproductive "dialogue," etc.

The proof is in the pudding. The rest is yada, yada, yada and blah,
blah, blah anyone can get from Wolf, BOR, and Rosie.

Buzz, at 7:05 pm EST on November 13, 2007

Learning to learn

Whether we like it or not, online enrollments are the fastest
growing sector of higher education, so we had better start
concentrating on how to make it significant learning.Ira is right,
it is not for the weak or those unwilling to rethink the very
nature of teaching and learning - faculty and students alike.

If we have learned anything over the past decade it is that
creative teachers and persistent students do best with online
courses. We also know that a combination of synchronous and
asynchronous environments works best.

For those just getting into blended teaching, one might try some of
the excellent blended text books that have been published in many
disciplines. I recently audited an international relations course
that used a blended text, and it was a powerful learning
experience.

Finally, let me share a few observations from Charlotte Neuhauser's
presentation ("Building An Online Learning Community through
Socialization: Can Best Practices Build a Learning Community?") at
last week's Sloan Foundation conference on distance learning.

Findings * Courses designed using best practices can lead to
socialization and to a community of learners * Online students, if
provided opportunity and environment, do exhibit behaviors that
encourage and support their peers, thus enhancing a social climate,
and ultimately enabling the learning community* Using best
practices in online course design and instruction, students
perceive the presence of learning community characteristics

Suggestions for Us * Use best practices to design online courses *
Require students to talk with and respond to each other * Provide
questions and opportunities that promote referential and reflective
responses * Set an environment that is warm, caring, with justice
and self-discipline * Do not dominate discussions, but provide
"sense of presence" * Provide opportunities for small group
discussions and activities * Show students relationship between
interactivity and learning * Monitor presence of socialization and
development of learning community* It's not enough to facilitate
even in courses that are designed using best practices; instructors
must move beyond facilitation to ensure a community of learners

Finally, administrators must be prepared to invest more heavily in
faculty development and reward those who go the second and third +
miles to develop blended learning courses.

Merle F. Allshouse, Faculty Fellow at University of South Florida,
at 8:10 pm EST on November 13, 2007

No, Buzz is right!

This is just another form of progressive ed. Blended leraning: a
new code word to go along with interactive, innovative, global,
actively engaged, learning community, and all the other brainwashed
indoctrination of the radical left. You are not interested in
knowledge accumulation on the part of students. You are mainly
interested in socialization. You sound credible, and that is why it
is very hard for the average layperson to decipher your hidden
agendas, i.e., Marxism. Traditional lecturing suited my generation
very well through the late 70s, 80s and 90s. There is no reason not
to stick to successful, proven pedagogy as opposed to the
UNSUCCESSFUL ones forced on to university profs today.

Dr. Paul, at 8:15 pm EST on November 21, 2007

"Learning 2.0'' is a wonderful article that touches on how many
people already learn. By taking already existing courses and
turning them into "blended learning" courses, it forces students to
take responsibility for their learning. Blended learning isn't an
easy way out for students, it's an opportunity to force them to use
what they're being taught. Too often students sit in a
lecture-based class, and get bored. Their boredom and short
attention span does them no favors. Having a blended course would
force the student to get closer to their professor, not necessarily
physically, but intellectually, because they would have to use what
they are being taught. Using this as a tool, students would learn
how to ask the right questions and in essence become responsible
for their learning.

Meagan Drewyor, Schoolcraft Community College, at 2:55 pm EST on
November 28, 2007