A Model for Teaching Large Blended Classes

Blended courses, when executed skillfully, can create a better learning experience for students while also meeting the needs of the institution for scalability and academic rigor.

The challenge of designing and teaching a blended class is deciding what content pieces are best delivered in a live classroom versus those that can be delivered more effectively using technology. If you simply add new media and technologies at random to a traditional classroom format without understanding the unique properties of each, you can easily end up with confused and disengaged students and unhappy instructors.

Besides the challenges inherent in blended learning, there are external constraints as well. For example, student populations are expanding, while budgets are shrinking; therefore, effective blended curricula must take into account a need for both scalability and low cost — all the while ensuring a positive learning experience.

Even so, research shows that the skilled blending of these two different pedagogies yields measurably improved outcomes: increased engagement, higher retention, and accelerated mastery, to name a few.

In the online seminar A Model for Teaching Large Blended Classes, you will gain the skills you need to adapt the blended learning model to your own courses. This seminar goes beyond discussing theory and focuses on demonstrating how blending has worked in classroom settings.

Watch a brief clip from the program:

Topics covered

During this seminar, Jill Schiefelbein, an experienced online educator, demonstrates and explains her successful work with blended course design so that you can see how to apply it in your classroom. You will:

• Evaluate a successful, scalable blended course model
• Assess an existing business communication course as a case study
• Review a checklist to use for the development of a blended course
• Receive a checklist for faculty development in blended learning
• Help students understand the blended model to maximize positive outcomes

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Benefits of blended learning

Research reveals a wealth of studies demonstrating the benefits of blended learning, including:

• Making the best use of limited classroom resources and space
• Spurring increased student engagement, collaboration, and participation
• Fully addressing the needs of all three key constituencies—students, faculty, and administrators
• Increasing student success, satisfaction, and retention
• Earning better course evaluations
• Gaining valuable feedback for improvement via analytics

Key takeaways

This seminar emphasizes practical strategies that are grounded in results. When the session is finished you will have the tools you need to apply the blended learning model to your teaching. These include:

• Specific techniques for using both teaching channels effectively
• A clear understanding of “scalability” and how to achieve it
• A path for selecting head faculty for blended courses
• Rubrics to help faculty manage TA/FA relations
• Outlines for building your own versions at your institution
• A “next steps” guide to assist in applying the lessons from the seminar
• Sample documents, screenshots, and checklists

This seminar is now available on CD. The recording includes the complete transcript and all supplemental materials.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

Who will benefit

If your institution is like most, you will be accommodating more students but will have fewer resources in coming years. The blended model may well be an important part of the solution. Therefore, virtually anyone involved in teaching, instructional design, or administration can benefit from this online seminar. We suggest inviting the following audience:

• Faculty
• Instructors
• Instructional designers
• TAs
• Department chairs

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Blended Learning Toolkit: Design, Deliver, Assess

More and more faculty are “taking the plunge” into blended learning; delivering anywhere between 30 and 80 percent of the course content online. It’s a successful instructional model that’s proven popular among faculty and students alike.

If you’re wondering whether your courses could evolve into blended ones – and more important, how you’d go about it – we urge you to spend an hour in a special online seminar presented by Thomas B. Cavanagh, PhD.

In Blended Learning Toolkit: Design, Deliver, Assess, Dr. Cavanagh helps you determine the opportunities for online learning in your classes, and outline a methodology for developing them. You’ll learn:

• Which course elements are most suitable to bring online
• How much to bring online
• Sound strategic planning for course design and delivery
• How to establish data collection and assessment protocols

Dr. Cavanagh also shares course models in algebra and composition, and introduce you to an online “Blended Learning Toolkit” you can rely on for guidance throughout the process of creating, delivering and fine-tuning your blended learning courses. Funded by a Next Generation Learning Challenge Wave 1 grant, the Toolkit is a collaboration between the University of Central Florida and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

At the conclusion of the hour, you’ll not only have greater confidence about making the move to blended learning, but a clear understanding of the right way to approach it, the best practices for content delivery, and the most meaningful methods of assessment and improvement.

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Topics covered

Adding online elements to traditional coursework can be an exhilarating, career-broadening process. That is, unless you get in over your head … in which case the experience can be decidedly less positive, for everyone involved.

Blended Learning Toolkit: Design, Deliver, Assess provides critical insights on blended learning, delivered by one of higher education’s leading authorities on the subject so you can make a smooth entry into the blended classroom.

In a content-rich 60 minutes, the presenter:

• Addresses perennial questions about what—and how much—should be online
• Provides strategies for course design and delivery
• Shares course models in algebra and composition
• Examines assessment and data collection protocols
• Introduces you to an online Blended Learning Toolkit to help you throughout the course creation process

You’ll come away with the tools — and the confidence — to begin integrating online elements into your coursework. Don’t miss this important look at best practices in blended learning.

The recording of this seminar is now available on CD. You also will receive the complete transcript and all supplemental materials.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

Intended audience

Blended Learning Toolkit: Design, Deliver, Assess is essential for any faculty member seeking to introduce online elements to coursework. It will also be of interest to instructional designers, instructional technologists and distance learning administrators.

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Perfecting the Blend: Designing Blended Course Interactions

It takes one set of skills to engage students in a traditional classroom setting. It takes another set to make the most of an online learning environment. How can one faculty member make the most of a blended course that combines elements of both?

Ideally, a blended course will merge the strengths of each teaching-learning format seamlessly, creating multiple opportunities for student involvement and interaction in different settings. Achieving this ideal, however, requires conscious and deliberate planning.

It also requires updated knowledge of the best blended course design strategies and interaction principles.

Discover the newest, research-based techniques for improving blended courses in Perfecting the Blend: Designing Blended Course Interactions, a live online seminar featuring Dr. Kelvin Thompson and Dr. Susan Wegmann.

Watch a brief clip from the seminar

Topics covered
This online seminar covers everything you need to know in order to maximize student engagement in a blended class, including:

• Designing interactions that support seamlessly integrated blended courses
• Marshaling students’ reasons for contributing to course interactions
• Increasing student engagement in the classroom and online
• Understanding why you must address interaction during the course design phase
• Fostering student-student and teacher-student interaction
• Implementing optimal blended design strategies
• Overcoming design and implementation challenges
• Creating ideal interaction opportunities in both teaching formats
• Collecting in-depth data for evaluation purposes

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The presenters also draw upon and introduce the SCOPe process for evaluating blended learning engagement and includes sample course design documents to support improvements at your school, while giving you the opportunity to participate in illustrative interactive activities and ask questions.

Presenters
In a field as new as blended coursework, it’s hard to find specialists with years of proven experience. For this professional development event, we’ve located two of the best.

Dr. Kelvin Thompson, assistant director of the University of Central Florida’s Center for Distributed Learning, has collaborated on the design of hundreds of blended courses during his career. He developed the BlendKit Course open courseware as part of UCF’s Blended Learning Toolkit, and his research agenda focuses on how interaction affects learner engagement.

Dr. Susan Wegmann, associate professor at UCF, focuses her research on online asynchronous communication and is currently writing an online book that harnesses Web 2.0 technology for added interaction. She has extensive experience designing effective interactions in face-to-face and online contexts.

Who will benefit
Perfecting the Blend: Designing Blended Course Interactions is appropriate for all levels of faculty members—teaching assistants, instructors, lecturers, adjuncts, and tenure-track and tenured professors—regardless of their current amount of experience with blended learning.

It is also recommended for instructional designers, faculty developers, and instructional/educational technologists.

This seminar is now available on-demand or on CD. Whichever format you choose, you’ll also receive the complete transcript and all supplemental materials.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

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In an interview with Online Classroom, Veronica Diaz, associate director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, talked about how to avoid common mistakes in blended course design.

Blended Learning Course Design Mistake #1: Adopting an add-on model. Diaz recommends designing a blended course from scratch; however, a lack of time and resources often means that instructors will redesign existing courses. “Nine times out of 10 there are going to be pretty significant constraints, so you’re likely to do this on the fly, where you will put some things online as a supplement rather than truly having an online component that is integrated with your face-to-face component. That’s when the problems really start. You end up having what they call ‘a course-and-a-half,’ which is a lot more than either the faculty member or students bargained for,” Diaz says.

Blended Learning Course Design Mistake #2: Lack of coherence between online and face-to-face modes. The add-on model of blended course design can lead to a disconnect between the face-to-face and online modes within a blended course. When students do not see the connection between the two modes, they tend to participate less, Diaz says. When faced with constraints, instructors often “end up adding things with really little thought given to the relationship between the online and face-to-face components,” Diaz says.

Blended Learning Course Design Mistake #3: attempting direct conversion from one mode to the other. Those who are new to blended (or online) course design tend to convert content from the face-to-face classroom without taking into account the differences between the two modes. When instructors try to convert their face-to-face lectures to the online format, the lectures often are less effective. “They don’t translate well. They’re not effective for students. Students do not [view or listen to lectures], because who wants to sit there and listen? There are too many distractions,” Diaz says.

This is not to say that lecture capture, narrated PowerPoint, or other similar content is inappropriate. “I think short lectures that are very topically based are helpful…I think there are still a lot of folks out there who will record an entire lecture. That’s not translating, that’s just converting,” Diaz says.

Excerpted from “Recommendations for Blended Learning Course Design.” Online Classroom, (October 2011): 1, 3.

For more on blended course design, see Best Practices for Designing Successful Blended Courses, an online seminar presented by Veronica Diaz that’s now available on CD.

Blended Learning 4-Pack

Pack includes 4 video presentations, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcripts • $299

Blended learning is one of the most important trends in higher education today, with a documented ability to improve student performance more than either face-to-face instruction or online technology can independently.

In this new 20 Minute Mentor Blended Learning 4-pack, you will learn how you can design a course that takes advantage of both worlds to create a robust learning experience for students.

Presenters Dr. Ike Shibley and Dr. Tim Wilson, both award-winning faculty members, share their comprehensive approach to blended course design in a series of four fast and focused presentations based on established pedagogical theory and shaped by real-world experience:

1. What Is Blended Learning? – Get an overview of how combining classroom instruction and online activities can transform student learning.
2. In Blended Courses, What Should Students Do Online? – Learn how Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning can help faculty determine whether to deliver content face-to-face or online.
3. Should I Use ADDIE as a Design Map for My Blended Course? – Gain insight on this theory-driven and reality-tested approach to designing a blended course.
4. What Three Things Could I Do to Improve My Blended Course? – Learn new ways to think about activities, technology and collaboration to enhance your blended learning course design.

From conception to design to improvement, this Blended Learning 4-pack is loaded with practical insights and advice, all for a reduced price of $299 – a savings of almost $100 if you were to buy the Mentors individually.

Learning Goals
These professional development programs will show you:

• How to enhance student learning with different delivery techniques
• How to use Bloom’s Taxonomy to deliver differing course content in the most appropriate format
• How to create synergy between face-to-face instruction and online activities
• How to increase student engagement in classroom sessions
• How to rethink the role of the teacher in learning
• How to adopt a productive attitude toward the use of technology in education
• How to find colleagues who can help you improve blended course design

Blended learning is here to stay. Add this valuable 4-pack to your professional development library so faculty members can implement blended learning best practices into their courses for years to come.

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Contact us about a Campus Access License to load the CD onto your institution’s internal web site for unlimited, convenient on-demand access to members of the campus community. The Campus Access License is ideal for ongoing group or individual training or to build a library of professional development material.

Should I Use ADDIE as a Design Map for My Blended Course?

Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99

Approaching your first blended learning course can feel as though you’re venturing into unknown territory. You know instructional design can be just as important as content when you’re combining face-to-face instruction and online technology, but where should you begin?

Let this 20 Minute Mentor get you off to a great start. Should I Use ADDIE as a Design Map for My Blended Course? features Ike Shibley, Ph.D., and Timothy Wilson, Ph.D. explaining the ADDIE Design Map, a theory-driven and reality-tested approach to course design. ADDIE is a helpful design format for any type of course, but it’s particularly useful for blended learning.

ADDIE stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. You’ll learn what each phase requires, with sample activities for each, such as:

• Through analysis, determine the knowledge students bring to the class
• During the design phase, focus on learning goals
• In development, don’t forget to consider peer-to-peer interactions
• During implementation, make sure you’re ready to release your complete program
• During evaluation, build assessment into your process

Watch a brief preview of the Mentor:

Wilson, assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, and Shibley, associate professor at Penn State Berks, will also share key recommendations, including:

• A timeline for completing each phase
• Information about how to make the most of campus resources when completing the ADDIE process
• Guidance for using your experience to improve future courses
• Rubrics and recommended resources for further action

Use a research-based formula for designing your blended learning course and deliver an impactful learning experience.

This Magna 20 Minute Mentor includes a CD with the video presentation, supplemental materials, a critical reflection worksheet, a copy of the PowerPoint slides and the program’s transcript.

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Contact us about a Campus Access License to load the CD onto your institution’s internal web site for unlimited, convenient on-demand access to members of the campus community. The Campus Access License is ideal for ongoing group or individual training or to build a library of professional development material.

In Blended Courses, What Should Students Do Online?

Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99

A 2009 meta-analysis of U.S. Department of Education data found that blended courses, mixing online learning and classroom instruction, resulted in better student performance than either delivery format independently.

For college faculty interested in exploring blended learning, deciding which course elements to teach face-to-face and which to address through online technology can be a major stumbling block. Learn a framework for making those essential educational judgment calls in this 20 Minute Mentor program, presented by Tim Wilson, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, and Ike Shibley, Ph.D., associate professor at Penn State Berks.

This fast and focused professional development session will help you make the most of the opportunities presented by blended learning. Drawing from Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning, they recommend:

• Using online technology for the lowest-level learning, before class
• Emphasizing student engagement during face-to-face teaching, building on the facts and focusing on mid-level learning skills (application and analysis)
• Pursuing your highest-level learning objectives through online activities, after class.

Watch a brief preview of this Mentor:

After following their step-by-step approach, you’ll be able to:

• Determine which of your lower-level cognitive tasks should be completed before class
• Describe activities suitable for drawing students into mid-level learning during face-to-face instruction
• Identify after-class online activities exercising the highest levels of cognitive function

Be confident that your selection of which materials to present online and which to present in the classroom for the best learning experience for your students.

This Magna 20 Minute Mentor includes a CD with the video presentation, supplemental materials, a critical reflection worksheet, a copy of the PowerPoint slides and the program’s transcript.

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Contact us about a Campus Access License to load the CD onto your institution’s internal web site for unlimited, convenient on-demand access to members of the campus community. The Campus Access License is ideal for ongoing group or individual training or to build a library of professional development material.

What Three Things Could I Do to Improve My Blended Course?

Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99

Teaching a great blended course involves much more than divvying up content between face-to-face instruction and online technology. Effective blended course design requires faculty to reconsider their role in learning. It calls for rethinking your approach to students, teaching, technology, and your colleagues.

In this Magna 20 Minute Mentor program, you’ll also learn new ways to think about organizing activities, make the most of technology, and work with your colleagues.

Presenters Ike Shibley, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, and Timothy Wilson, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, concentrate on three core considerations for improving blended learning design:

• Think about all phases of learning
• Deliberately seek out technology
• Collaborate

Watch a preview of the Mentor program:

After this professional development session, you’ll be able to:

• Explain why it is so important to coordinate learning before, during, and after class in blended learning courses
• Consider the multiple ways online technology can boost student learning
• Identify individuals on your campus who can help you with course design for blended learning

Whether you are new to blended learning or a seasoned pro, this program will take your course to the next level by exploring three avenues you can focus on for improvement.

This Magna 20 Minute Mentor includes a CD with the video presentation, supplemental materials, a critical reflection worksheet, a copy of the PowerPoint slides and the program’s transcript.

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Contact us about a Campus Access License to load the CD onto your institution’s internal web site for unlimited, convenient on-demand access to members of the campus community. The Campus Access License is ideal for ongoing group or individual training or to build a library of professional development material.

What Is Blended Learning?

Program includes a CD with the video presentation, plus supplemental materials, PowerPoint slides, and complete transcript • $99

Blended learning, which combines face-to-face classroom instruction with supervised online activities, is one of the biggest, most promising trends in higher education today. This 20 Minute Mentor program will show you how you can fuse the best of traditional techniques and cutting-edge online technology.

What Is Blended Learning? is led by two experienced and engaging professors — Ike Shibley, Ph.D., associate professor at Penn State Berks, and Timothy Wilson. Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario — and it explores the basics of blended course design.

You’ll learn how to:

• Use different delivery formats to enhance student learning
• Separate online and face-to-face learning goals, based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning
• Employ online activities to improve face-to-face learning
• Create complementary face-to-face and online activities

Watch a brief clip from the Mentor program:

Drawing on real-world experience and sound pedagogical principles, this professional development program will show you:

• How “flipping the classroom” for blended learning can give you more class time for interaction and higher-order learning activities
• How using online technology can help students prepare for class and demonstrate their growing mastery of course content
• How to structure class time to maximize student engagement
• How to address institutional issues with blended learning

Blended learning is here to stay. Learn how to take advantage of online technology to better your students’ learning experience and improve your instruction.

This Magna 20 Minute Mentor includes a CD with the video presentation, supplemental materials, a critical reflection worksheet, a copy of the PowerPoint slides and the program’s transcript.

Want to make this program available for your entire campus?

Contact us about a Campus Access License to load the CD onto your institution’s internal web site for unlimited, convenient on-demand access to members of the campus community. The Campus Access License is ideal for ongoing group or individual training or to build a library of professional development material.

In the online seminar Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design, Ike Shibley, associate professor of chemistry at Penn State – Berks, explained how to successfully transform a traditional course into a blended course, and dispelled a number of teaching myths along the way.

“This is not the only way to approach [blended design] but I am going to suggest that you want to still use the face-to-face time as the central focus of the online time, and look at how you can get students prepared for face-to-face time and how you can help the students after they’ve been in class,” Shibley said. “So you start with the face-to-face and then think about using the online component for the other times the students interact with the material. In order to do that, you need to throw away all preconceived notions and start from scratch.”

One of the keys Shibley talked about was to use the ADDIE process to guide the design of your blended course. Here’s a brief summary of how to use ADDIE, which stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation.

Analysis:

• Review prior course evaluations for guidance on where students struggle.
• Identify the most difficult concepts for students and focus on those.

Design:

• Create detailed learning objectives. Use strong action verbs and avoid terms like “know,” “understand,” and “learn.”
• Divide course into F2F and online components.
• Match learning objectives with technology.

Development

• Start early – at least a semester, preferably a year, in advance.
• Create an ideal course then start with the most important elements in the next step.
• Create a shell with the intention of refining and improving over several semesters.

Implementation

• Start with a smaller course if possible (summer is a good time).
• Launch the entire course once completely designed rather than piecemeal.

Evaluation

• Assessment is critical for course improvement and accreditation.
• Leverage technology to collect data (think about this in the design stage).
• Utilize evaluation data to ‘close the loop’ to improve the course for next time.

In addition to using ADDIE to guide design, Shibley explained how to divide your course content in a way that creates opportunities for learning before class, during class and after class; how to assess student learning; and how to use technology to support learning. While the before-class activities typically introduce students to the content and include low-stakes grading, in-class activities tend to focus on higher-order thinking, collaboration and high-stakes grading. After-class activities then provide opportunities for working with the content, higher-order thinking, and grading in the mid-to-high-stakes range.

Watch a brief clip from the seminar:

Learn more about Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design »

Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design

There’s good news for college administrators agonizing over online learning versus face-to-face instruction. With a blended course design, you can get the best of both worlds, a synergistic combination that can help you reduce costs while improving the quality of learning.

Blended courses combine online learning and F2F instruction, and you can discover how to make it work at your school by participating in the video seminar Ten Ways to Improve Blended Course Design.

During the video seminar, presenter Ike Shibley, PhD, an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State – Berks, outlines and explains why blended course design is an effective option for today’s educational institutions, faculty and students:

• It solves physical space issues. With capital construction projects put on hold, blended course design can help you work effectively with the space you have, while allowing for enrollment growth.
• It enables students to work more and enjoy greater flexibility. Tuition costs continue to increase, which is driving more students into the workplace. Blended course design provides them with the flexibility they need to hold down a job while still pursuing an education.
• It provides today’s most effective education model. A 2009 Department of Education report suggested that blended course design offers the greatest change for student success in a course.
• It is an expected choice for a new generation of students. Today’s student is online, and expects their services to be on-demand. This is a format readily accepted and expected by new students.

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The use of blended course design allows instructors to imaginatively redesign any course to fit the needs of the learner, while reducing the space constraints of an institution. By the end of seminar, you’ll be able to:

• Decide which courses are good candidates for blended course design.
• Transform your current courses into blended courses.
• Understand which learning activities work best online and which are most effective F2F.
• Create a class guide to help organize the course.

Blended courses are the natural result of a changing educational landscape. With careful planning and an up-front investment of time and expertise, blended learning delivers a cost-effective, quality-laden educational model for the present and the future.

Watch a brief clip from the seminar:

When you order the recording of this seminar on CD, you’ll also receive the complete transcript.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal website for unlimited access by the entire campus community.

Order the CD + Transcript

Who Will Benefit
This seminar is designed for any college or university. Key staff members to invite include:

• Instructors
• Course Developers
• Instructional Designers
• Administrators

All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

“That’s one of the major pitfalls we see, but you really shouldn’t do that,” said Veronica Diaz, PhD associate director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. “You really want to integrate those two components so we encourage people to take the time to redesign the entire course. In other words, break the whole thing down and reassemble it in the blended mode.”

In the recent online seminar Best Practices for Designing Successful Blended Courses, Diaz outlined a model for blended learning course design. The first step, she says, is to “modularize your course.” The modular approach creates a more organized structure, which benefits students, and makes it easier for the instructor to update and maintain.

The process of modularization begins with mapping a course that you want to design or redesign into a blended format to ensure alignment across course objectives, activities, technology used, feedback mechanisms, assessments, and other key components. In the case of a face-to-face course that’s being redesigned into a blended course that often means looking at what the instructor and student each currently do to support or meet those objectives, and then consider the different ways of getting students more actively involved in their learning.

Diaz noted that, unlike in most face-to-face courses, blended courses often have a better balance between what the instructor does to support learning objectives and what the student is asked to do in terms of interacting with the course content.

“A lot of faculty express that they often get some pushback from students, because in the face-to-face course, there’s a tendency for the instructor to do a lot more of the delivery and interaction with the content,” she said. “In a blended course, students are going to spend a fair amount of time out of class, and you want to make sure that they’re involved in the learning, probably in a much deeper and more active way than they were in the past.”

Another part of the redesign process is to identify and prepare for potential “student crisis points” – issues that may interfere with the learning experience. Crisis points include issues related to technology, a complex concept, or waning motivation. By being aware of possible roadblocks to learning, and informing students of them as well, you can often minimize the disruption.

Best Practices for Designing Successful Blended Courses

Blended (or hybrid) courses have emerged a powerful solution that meets the flexibility needs of today’s diverse learners and the space constraints felt by many campuses. But it takes unique insights and careful planning to effectively fuse the worlds of face-to-face and online instruction.

Veronica Diaz, associate director of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, explains how to bring out the best of both worlds in Best Practices for Designing Successful Blended Courses. Whether you need to design a blended course from scratch or re-design a traditional class, this 90-minute online seminar provides the guidance you need to make it happen.

You’ll learn the basic requirements for blended teaching, review examples of blended courses and explore:

• An overview of re-design for the blended environment
• A basic model for course re-design
• Mapping your course into the blended mode
• Organizing content into instructional modules
• Common crisis points for students and instructors, and how to handle them
• Tips for aligning your course with quality assurance rubrics.

Order the recording of this seminar for $149 and you’ll also receive the complete transcript.

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

Order the CD + Transcript

Who Will Benefit:
This is a foundation level course, appropriate for all institutions, and particularly helpful for:

• Faculty
• Administrators
• Librarians
• Information technology professionals
• Learning technologists.

All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Finding the Right Technology to Support Learning Outcomes

You have probably heard the rumors: Blended instruction can yield better results than traditional face-to-face courses. That’s right. Student performance will improve while costs go down. Only it’s no rumor. It is entirely true.

Blended instruction can save money and increase student success. Yet while adding online components to a course might make it “blended,” it doesn’t necessarily make it good. You have to make the right changes at the right spots to increase student learning and reap the benefits blended learning can deliver.

Find out how to imaginatively redesign almost any course in Finding the Right Technology to Support Learning Outcomes. Led by Ike Shibley, PhD, this seminar will help participants to optimize face-to-face classroom time by adopting and applying various instructional technologies. Shibley is a professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, a small four-year college within the Penn State system. He has proven expertise in developing blended courses that focus on enhanced learning and that meet or exceed university performance standards.

In just 90 minutes, you’ll gain real-world insight on innovative yet practical ways to evaluate and redesign courses that improve student performance. You will learn to:

• Identify the essential components of a successful blended format;
• Revise existing blended courses and redesign other traditional courses to ensure optimal instructional design;
• Determine which learning activities are better accomplished in class and which are better accomplished online;
• Articulate the role blended courses can play in learner-centered instruction;
• Identify most appropriate uses for both online and face-to-face communication;
• Review and evaluate existing courses to determine when blended formats would be advantageous.

When you order the recording of this seminar on CD, you’ll also receive the complete transcript.

Order the CD + Transcript

An optional Campus Access License is available for an additional $200. It allows the purchasing institution to upload the CD of the seminar onto the institution’s password-protected internal web site for unlimited access by members of the campus community.

This seminar is intended for:

• Instructors
• Course Developers
• Instructional Designers
• Administrators

All seminars include a discussion guide for facilitators
Participating in a Magna Online Seminar as a team can help leverage unique insights, foster collaboration, and build momentum for change. Each seminar now includes a Discussion Guide for Facilitators which provides step-by-step instructions for generating productive discussions and thoughtful reflection. You’ll also get guidelines for continuing the conversation after the event, implementing the strategies discussed, and creating a feedback loop for sharing best practices and challenges.

Blended courses offer a way to move beyond a midterm and a final. By combining the benefits of online instruction with the advantages of face-to-face instruction, you might improve learning in your course in ways that are impossible to achieve using only face-to-face meetings or only online resources.

I often hear teachers lament that there is so much content in a course that they never have time to do any critical-thinking activities in class. Moving lower-level content—such as definitions, simple exercises, timelines, and other strictly factual content—to online resources allows the teacher to spend face-to-face time on more critical-thinking activities as well as active and collaborative work. But a teacher cannot simply think of the online activities as a way to accomplish lower-order skills; otherwise, online work runs the risk of becoming an electronic textbook. Technology broadens the range of pedagogical choices so that step 2 in the list on Monday’s post requires even more background knowledge, more creativity, and more pedagogical savvy.

When I recently taught nutrition, I was able to guide students through the reading material in the textbook prior to class so that critical-thinking activities could be done in class. We analyzed food labels while eating different food each week: chips when discussing fats, peanut butter sandwiches when discussing carbohydrates, protein bars for proteins, and sports drinks for vitamins/minerals. The face-to-face activities were used to rehearse content from the book but also to help students as they worked on a higher-order assignment online. They reviewed a current diet book, based on the nutritional information they were learning in class.

When designing a blended learning course, the instructor should remember to use the online portion as an opportunity to create more exciting face-to-face interactions. Utilizing a pedagogically rich repertoire of online resources will allow an instructor to become the teacher he or she has always dreamed of being: the creator of dynamic classroom learning environments that fully engage all students. The power of blending online activities with face-to-face work can allow this transformation. Face-to-face interactions should work synergistically with the online activities. The blending of the two components can transform learning. But to accomplish the transformation, the focus must remain on learning.

Ike Shibley, PhD. is an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, a small four-year college within the Penn State system.

From Putting the Learning in Blended Learning. Online Classroom, February 2009, 1,8.

Many discussions about blended learning, however, focus not on learning but on blending. “Blended” is an adjective and “learning” is a noun; why has our focus been directed at the adjective? Do we assume, as is often done in the teaching paradigm, that learning is automatically assumed? I think that blended learning has become widely established enough that attention can now be paid to the learning portion of the name.

In higher education learning must be the focus—the push for learner-centered teaching is a noble, pedagogically defensible goal. Improving the cost-effectiveness of teaching should play only a secondary role. An instructor should not begin a blended design by asking how many face-to-face hours are really necessary, even though some administrators may use reduced hours as a starting point. The course should be designed to maximize learning.

Blended learning course design
In designing a blended course, a simple way to start is to imagine a discrete unit of learning, for example, a particular topic or a chapter of the textbook. Here is a three-step process:

1. Establish clear learning goals for the topic.
2. Design activities to help students meet the learning goals.
3. Sort the activities into two categories: online and face-to-face.

None of these steps is particularly easy. Writing effective learning goals is a skill that teachers must constantly hone. Designing activities requires a creative mind that is pedagogically grounded. Addressing the third step could be the easiest of the required actions but requires much pedagogical savvy. In considering each step, the following questions might help:

• What do I really want students to learn?
• How can I ensure that students read the book prior to class?
• What lower-level activities can student complete online prior to class?
• What higher-level activities can be accomplished during class?
• What higher-level activities can students complete after a topic has been discussed face-to-face?
• Which activities require a grade and which activities will students do because they can immediately see the link to other graded activities?

As small decisions are made about individual topics and the instructor decides the balance between face-to-face and online learning, the bigger picture will emerge. The teacher must start with small decisions then step back to see the picture that is emerging about the course, in much the same way that we step back from pointillism to see the picture that is created from thousands of small paint dabs.

Ike Shibley, PhD. is an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, a small four-year college within the Penn State system.

From Putting the Learning in Blended Learning. Online Classroom, February 2009, 1,8.

New Ideas for Selling Blended Learning to Your Faculty

Mention the phrase “blended learning” to a group of faculty, and here’s what they hear … More work. Endless e-mails. A depersonalized learning experience. Their carefully honed teaching style tossed out the window.

You know that blended learning can do great things … not just for your institution, but for students and, indeed, for faculty themselves.

So how do you convince a skeptical audience that “blended” doesn’t mean “inferior”?

Our new online video seminar will provide you with a wealth of effective strategies. In News Ideas for Selling Blended Learning to Your Faculty, Muriel Oaks, PhD will provide ideas for winning over reluctant faculty and contributing to the growth of blended learning at your institution. Dr. Oaks, dean of the Center for Distance and Professional Education at Washington State University, has been a leader in continuing and distance education for nearly three decades.

Drawing on her extensive experience, she explains:

• How to develop your “sales pitch” for academic colleagues.
• How to effectively communicate the benefits of nontraditional delivery methods.
• The distinctions between blended and hybrid learning.
• How blended courses can become new revenue sources.
• How to establish best practices for developing and delivering hybrid and blended programs.
• How to help faculty build both synchronous and asynchronous elements into courses.
• How to determine whether a course fits comfortably into an “all-classroom,” “all-online” or blended delivery mode.
• And much more.

If you’ve been struggling to demonstrate how blended learning can enhance pedagogy without burdening faculty or cramping their teaching style, this seminar provides the insight you need.

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Who will benefit:

• Distance learning administrators
• Course designers
• Institutional administrators
• Academic faculty
• Department chairs

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Now José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, challenges this assumption by asking his faculty to put their lectures online and devote face-to-face classes to discussion. His logic is impeccable. Lecturing is simply delivering delivery, and not much different from reading a textbook in this regard. If so, then why must lectures be held in class? An instructor could just as easily record his or her lectures and put them online for students to view at their leisure. Better yet, the time freed up from delivering the same lectures year after year, course after course, could be spent putting together rich multimedia content that combines narrated PowerPoints, podcasts, Prezis, videos, VoiceThreads, etc.

In fact, why should faculty create their own lectures at all? Bowen notes that our system of faculty creating their own lectures is a bit like having every instructor write his or her own textbook. If faculty wrote all of their own textbooks, most textbooks would be terrible. Why not just use the best lectures that have been posted on iTunesU, TED, etc. for content?

I tell faculty that their real value is not the information stored in their head. After all, nearly all of that information is publicly available in books or journals. A faculty member’s real value is in their interaction with students. The back and forth with students in discussion, or commentary on their assignments to improve their writing, for example, is what gives them value. Faculty should focus on this aspect of their teaching and automate as much as possible the simple content delivery part. Yet most faculty have it backwards—clinging to their lectures as their most important function.

Teachers can test the waters of Bowen’s teaching model by putting one or two of their lectures online and devoting the subsequent class to discussion of the topics in those lectures. I’ve done this with wonderful results. But the secret is to avoid the all-too-easy mistake of falling back into lecturing during class time. As faculty, we think that lecturing is our primary duty, and it is hard to break ourselves of this habit.

One option is to assign students to come to class with one question about the lecture content written on a sheet of paper that the instructor collects to initiate discussion. To avoid embarrassment, have the students crumple up their sheets at the beginning of class and throw them around the room for 30 seconds. Then have each student pick up one of the pieces and start reading them in order to guide discussion.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works.

Resources
This video features an interview with José Bowen as he explains why he removed technology from his classroom, and the resulting benefits. Watch it here »

Lecture sites

• TED—Wonderful compilation of short lectures on interesting topics. http://www.ted.com/
• Free Video Lectures—over 18,000 free lectures. http://freevideolectures.com/
• Video Lectures—Great lecture exchange site. http://videolectures.net/
• iTunesU—Must download the player to access the lectures. http://www.apple.com/education/ipodtouch-iphone/

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

In an email interview, Dr. Ike Shibley, an associate professor of chemistry at Penn State Berks, talked about blended course design and activities.

Q: One of the findings of a recent Department of Education report is that students who took all or part of their class online performed better than those taking the same course face-to-face. What accounts for this?

Shibley: We don’t know for sure why students in blended courses outperformed students in both traditional and online courses. I suspect the explanation lies with clarity and motivation: teachers who can talk to students face-to-face on a regular basis can address any confusion about the course layout or the content, plus the teacher can constantly remind students about assignments due that week. The online components are quite helpful and can help students succeed, but it seems that when you add even an hour of face-to-face time each week students will have a clearer conception of the course and will feel the pedagogical pressure to get their work done. Having that meeting time seems to me a powerful motivator.

Q: A recommended practice for online instructors is to have every aspect of the course ready to go on day one. Is this also the case for blended courses? Where can you build in flexibility?

Shibley: Anyone hoping to teach a blended course should have the course ready to go on day one. Organization is of utmost importance because students need to understand the course design so they can achieve maximal success.

Flexibility is built in when students make suggestions such as due dates for online quizzes: during face-to-face time an instructor can poll students about any possible changes. Another way to be flexible is to build in that flexibility. If you have a course where an instructor can exercise discretion about what extra topics to cover, he or she can create a poll as one of the first assignments in which students choose the most interesting topics from a drop-down list. Then the syllabus can reflect those topics.

Q: How do you communicate to the students what to expect? Do you recommend structuring each unit in the same way? Why or why not?

Shibley: Students quickly acclimate to any organizational structure that an instructor chooses. They have learned how to adjust. What they will not accept is changes throughout the course. Once they plan to have an online quiz every weekend the instructor cannot say, “Well, it’s not done yet so you can take it on Monday or Tuesday.” Students structure their time during a semester around their course requirements, but if a teacher keeps changing times or assignments then students feel like they are shooting at a moving target and will quickly get frustrated.

I am a bit compulsive, but I do believe that students benefit from having the same structure throughout a course. The instructor wants to teach content and the best way to achieve that is through a course design that is easy for students to follow. Then students are worried about learning the material instead of trying to figure out when assignments are due or what kind of assignment they have in any given week. Consistency in design will lead to improved student outcomes.

When you undertake a blended learning course, you can’t just think about what assignments and activities you are going to move online. You have to reconceptualize the entire course. This means starting with your learning goals. The place to begin is by asking yourself: What do I want students to learn?

If you don’t start with a clear idea of your learning objectives, you’re not going to end up where you want to go. A theme throughout this white paper is the reminder to keep thinking about the overall goals that you’ve created for the course. While this is not meant to be a white paper on writing learning objectives, one helpful tip is to remember to use action verbs as much as possible when outlining your course goals.

Here are examples of some possible learning objectives in history, ranging from ineffective to very effective:

• Poor: Know the causes of the American Revolution
• Better: List three causes of the American Revolution
• Best: Given a possible cause of the American Revolution, provide reasons to support that cause

When you write learning objectives, it is very helpful to keep in mind how you might write a test question based on those objectives. Verbs like “know” are too amorphous to be very helpful. How would you test and how will you assess whether students “know” the causes of the American Revolution? The verb “list” is more specific. Students can write a list of possible causes to study.

Even better, though, is to think at higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. At the higher levels, you get the students to analyze a particular cause critically or provide reasons why something occurred. You have them do some evaluation or some synthesis using higher-order thinking. The more you can move your learning objectives beyond the lowest levels of thinking, the more you will improve your courses through blended learning.

Here’s another example of learning objectives, this time taken from a science class:

• Poor: Understand hybrid orbital theory
• Better: Describe the underlying construct for hybrid orbitals
• Best: Given a molecule, identify the hybrid orbitals and explain why they exist

Understanding a particular theory isn’t that impressive. Far better is trying to encourage students to describe some of the constructs, or better yet, apply them to an example. It would be fairly easy to write a test question based on the best learning objective here.

It is important to have learning objectives for the overall course and for each unit within a course. Naturally, they will be different for every discipline. You need to think through what you want students to accomplish and how you are going to know when they have accomplished it. This will help you map out your blended course.

With strong, clear learning objectives, you will be prepared and organized when it is time to begin moving some of those topics online. You’re going to be able to make informed decisions about which content to put where and whether to have them complete certain activities before or after class time. But it all begins with the learning objectives.

CLICK HERE to order a copy of the whitepaper Blended Learning Course Design.