A series of short (10 minute) presentations of ideas and tools for blended learning. Read More
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. Read More
Sloan-C Blended Workshop
Mary Niemiec kicked things off at the 2009 Sloan-C Blended Workshop by speaking a bit about the evolution of blended learning. “When we first started it was an invited 30 people. Blended learning wasn’t well defined (hybrid? tech-advanced?).”
“It took almost two years to agree on a common definition that seems to be permeating both the US and Canada.”
Blended learning, she explained, is an intentional blend of online and face-to-face instruction. That could be just a blended course or an entirely blended program.
Data Collection
Other problems she noted were the lack of a consistent method of collecting data about these courses. Generating data about performance, retention, and more remain issues regarding blended learning.
The dominant theme she sees is that blended learning is becoming a part of almost every institution, especially as budgets get tight.
Niemac, finally, stressed her hope that we would leave this workshop (“Not a conference, a workshop!”) with new ideas for planning and teaching in blended formats, but also to become committed to collecting good data and assessments of how blended courses and programs are working.
I will be attending the Sloan-C Workshop on Blended Learning and Higher Education this weekend hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago in Lisle, Illinois.
You can find more information on the conference page, but during the event I will be:
I am presenting to some Allied Health faculty today on using Blogs in education. Check out the pdf:
Blogging In Education – (PDF 1.6MB)
I’d like to hear others’ thoughts about this year’s Learning, Libraries + Technology conference.
Here are some potential prompts:
I used a Flip Mino HD ($229!!) to shoot this welcome video to RAD133. Edited in iMovie ‘09 (I like the new typography options in ‘09.)
Connie Molnar, Brenda Boyd, Mark Karamol, Paul Bowers, Sheryl Hansen & Leslie King led a panel presentation/discussion about the Quality Matters consortia.
Quality Matters is “both a process and a (not-for-profit) service.” An inter-institutional peer review for improving online course design. It is a collaboration on rubrics, standards, support, and more.
Connie Molnar and others present on Quality Matters
QM does a lot of work to help improve online courses by, among other things, creating a good dialogue about quality in course design. It should be noted that QM focuses on DESIGN and not DELIVERY — which is a whole other arena of evaluation.
In addition to encouraging excellence and improvement, QM helps build collaboration between institutions as well as within institutions.
More information about Quality Matters can be found here:
http://www.oln.org/QM/qm_consortia.php
An area of concern from my perspective is the high costs associated with participating. I’m generally on board with the whole idea, but I imagine that many institutions are struggling to compensate their faculty for developing and teaching online in the first place, let alone investing that much into evaluation and improvement.
Anyone else have thoughts?
Michael Edwards is an Instructional Designer for the Center for Distance Education at Rhodes State College.
This blog contains his thoughts on various elearning resources, pedagogy, technology, and web 2.0 as well as feeds from some of his favorite resources.
Sloan-C: Designing for a Blended Community of Inquiry
Designing for a Blended Community of Inquiry
Karen Swan introduced Norm Vaughan (Mount Royal College) as he delivered an interactive workshop about blended learning across two sessions divided by a break. Read More »