Sloan-C: Blending With Purpose

Blending With Purpose

Anthony “Tony” G. Picciano facilitated a panel that included George Otte (City University of New York), Karen Vignare (Michigan State University) and Tony himself.

Before the panel format began, Tony talked a bit about the emergence of blended/hybrid courses over the past 6 or 7 years. Tony had put together a multimodal model of blended learning intended to address both learning styles, student learning outcomes, and relevant web technologies and tools to create quality blended learning environments that are interactive, engaging, and collaborative.

Articles that served as the basis for the panel discussion:

Anthony G. Picciano. Blending with Purpose: The Multimodal Model

Mary Niemiec and George Otte. An Administrator’s Guide to the Whys and Hows of Blended Learning.

Kathryn Lowell and Karen Vignare. MSU Medical Colleges Blended Learning for First Year Science Courses: Uniting Pedagogy to Maximize Experience and Real World Limitations.

Multimodal Model

“Why are we here?” Tony posed the question, and his answer was that we are here to learn about how to engage our students to help them get an education. He argued we needed to address student engagement regardless of the modality (face2face, blended, online).

He moved on from there to smash the naive hope that “just adding technology” will make a course engaging. There has to be a reason behind it, a pedagogical impetus.

Learning Styles

People learn in different ways. Teachers teach in different ways. Content lends itself to various formats and deliveries as well. How do we reconcile these three variables?

We should organize instruction using multiple modalities that allow learnes to engage in learning in a way they prefer while also challenging them to learn in other ways where they have less preference, interest, or ability.

From here, Tony showed his multimodal model (I will try to track down an image) that demonstrates a link between pedagogical objectives and the choice of technology to engage students.

Tony also discussed the future of higher education with regard to assessment and evaluation. He cited a recent NY Times article (I’ll try to track it down) that prophesied the end of the University unless, among other things, assessment changed. Some things on the horizon are more widespread use of eportfolios.

An Administrator’s Guide

George Otte took over at this point to discuss how to reap the institutional benefits of Blended Learning.

He argued that Blended Learning was a “sleeping giant” and included an image of a giant sleeping dragon (which was unattributed! ha!). Not only from a future potential standpoint, but also from an untapped present potential.

Some Whys of Blended Learning

Economic motivations

• Reaping what is already sown.
• Justifying new investment

Less quantifiable reasons

• Getting up-to-speed technologically
• Giving impetus, visibility to faculty development

The Challenges of Blended Learning

Developing a plan

• Achieving Clarity on Institutional Mission and Goals
• Foreseeing Barriers
• Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses

Thinking through Implementation

• Ensuring Adequate Resources
• Clarifying Policies and Principles
• Providing Effective Information
• Having an Effective Assessment Plan in Place

Asking questions UP FRONT

George stressed the importance of asking the hard questions up front. Such things as policies, faculty load, development process, assessment, resources, intellectual property, and more.

The keys to success:

• Match blended learning to institutional goals
• Match goals to specific strategies (and vice versa)
• Identifying strengths and weaknesses (and proactively tackling the latter)
• Providing critical support
• Ensuring effective communication (a blended approach)

Community of Inquiry Model

Based upon the Community of Inquiry model by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) and the How People Learn model by Bransford, Cocking and Broan (2000), Karen Vignare discussed this interesting conceptual and theoretical model of developing blended learning environments.

This particular model showed a progression from semester/quarter/year where three aspects of learning become more and more apart of the learning environment, resulting in highly collaborative learning. That is, making the education learner centered, knowledge centered, and assessment centered.

Karen cited the ability to go back and review lectures after-the-fact is used by just about every single student, even the “best” students.

She said students were still skeptical about discussion boards. Medical students are more interested in discussing cases. By moving lectures online, they were able to utilize class time for discussing patient cases.