Preparing for blended e-learning: Understanding Blended and Online Learning (Connecting with E-learn

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That could massively increase the audience student revenue for the same course without disproportionately increasing the costs of the product. It is worth remembering that it is the multitude of small-scale initiatives that are taking blended e-learning forward, even though they do not attract the attention of the press when they succeed, or fail. Can e-learning improve quality? As the examples at the start of this chapter indicate, e-learning makes possible many things that would be unfeasible without the use of technology.

In particular, it lends itself to personalization, tailoring content and delivery to better suit the needs of individual students. For example, students with a disability can access certain types of resources using assistive technologies, and e-learning can thus expand their range of study options.

This is a similar effect to using a gifted researcher in a relevant area to teach without preparation. The researcher may find that they have failed to communicate effectively with some students even though the content is academically excellent. Although improving the quality of learning and teaching design may be a stated motive for blended and e-learning, there is also a sense in which transition to ICT is, more obviously, a means to improve quality in the process of delivery and recording of learning.

Here the emphasis is not on pedagogical innovation but on the development of systems that support accountability, recording and transparency. The ease with which student records of achievement can be exchanged, or shared, between and within institutions is one potential advantage of a shift to e-learning. It allows them to be disseminated and developed more systematically, and can make them visible for quality control and staff development in ways that other teaching material rarely are.

Improvements in the quality of student administration are easier to quantify than the impact on learning and teaching quality. This is particularly the case with e-learning, where the approach to teaching and understanding of learning may be substantially different from what has gone before.

How is it possible to judge the impact of e-learning on teaching and learning quality? Can e-learning widen participation? There are many prospective students who cannot attend courses that are taught exclusively full time and on-campus. This has always been the case, although recent growth in the availability of places in further education and higher education means that, in most developed countries other than the What is blended e-learning?

There is at the same time a growth in accredited professional development and the demand for lifelong learning opportunities, which both bring substantial numbers of mature students into higher education. Overall, more students now choose to engage in post-compulsory education than ever before. When it started in , it intentionally set out to attract students for whom the standard route to higher education was unavailable. Having no prior record of formal educational achievement was not a barrier to obtaining an OU degree. At the same time, it has been open to new teaching approaches, particularly the use of technologies, notably use of radio and television, in which it was a pioneer.

It has acted as a model for other large open universities and mega-universities such as the Indira Gandhi University in India Daniel, Many other institutions are now widening participation in further and higher education, and have adopted new teaching approaches, including blended learning and e-learning, to meet the needs of students from diverse academic, social and cultural backgrounds. That support has always included face-to-face and telephone support options, but increasingly offers online and computer-based alternatives and extensions.

Other educational institutions are also using e-learning as a form of support for students both on- and off-campus. They may use it as a form of distance or distributed learning, to offer access to education to those who cannot attend campus-based activities. They may also use it to offer additional or alternative support to students on more conventionally delivered courses.

If we broaden our horizon and think globally, the challenge of meeting demand for higher education becomes even startling. The demand in China alone is overwhelming — 20 million places by Within more developed countries there also is a struggle to meet demand through full-time courses. For many potential students this delivery format is inaccessible, and in the United Kingdom the number of part-time students now accounts for 40 per cent of all registrations.

However, potential part-time options that require regular attendance for face-to-face teaching may still be out of the reach of many. In this context, e-learning off-campus, or blends of e-learning with campus-based teaching, could provide the answer. Do students expect and want e-learning? The growth in use of personal computing has not been restricted to education. In the home and workplace, personal computing has grown at an even more startling pace. Some would argue that it is now necessary for colleges and universities to recognize this by making technology use inside the classroom comparable with use of technology outside it.

As many students now carry mobile phones even into examination halls as revision aids! Guardian, , there is a sense in which the learner cannot be separated from technology and will use it with or without explicit instruction from the tutor. He argues that younger students grew up using this type of technology for leisure and for schoolwork, and are very familiar with it.

Computer games, email, the What is blended e-learning? Prensky b and others have suggested that educational design should learn from games design in order to engage and retain younger students. This contrasts with traditional approaches to assessment, which offer only limited opportunities to improve performance following an initial failure. Exciting as these ideas may be, there is also a sense in which it is simply not possible to hold back the use of computers in education, as students are now used to using these tools in everyday life.

Recently, commentators such as Stephen Downes Downes, have suggested that students, if unhappy with the e-learning tools offered by the institution, will forge their own, substituting personal online tools for those that the institution has provided. School-age students use instant messaging, outside the control of their schools, to keep in contact with homework buddies. It will seem natural to them to continue this practice when they leave school and start studying elsewhere. The technologies do not play the same role in formal learning contexts and there are mismatches in the learning processes involved in classroom settings and social situations Kukulska-Hulme and Traxler An extensive survey of students at the University of Strathclyde Wojtas, showed that although, over a four-year period, students changed their use of ICT for informal learning, social and play activities, they did not display a corresponding shift in how they expected e-tools to be used in formal learning at university.

There is therefore a certain powerful logic to the driver that courses should be devised that make use of these tools, even though there is scant evidence, as yet, that students actively choose courses on the basis on the e-learning technology employed. Now communication and interaction at a distance can be as rich at a distance as it would be in face-to-face campus-based settings.

Where distance-taught students had previously met other students and their tutors infrequently by travelling to a central or regional location, online learning now offers an alternative. It was also now possible for distance-taught courses to offer a more engaging social experience to their students, with the kind of serendipitous conversation and peer interaction normally associated with attendance at a campus-based university Rennie and Mason, There has not been the same enthusiastic take-up of online teaching in conventional non-DL teaching.

One of the biggest pedagogical barriers to adopting fully online teaching approaches in campus-based institutions is often presented as being that students may feel isolated, or that tutors would lack the feedback that they require to teach effectively e. Of course, the reason why DL institutions are keen to adopt online learning is that for them these two aspects are improved by online interaction.

Campus-based students and tutors have a number of face-toface alternatives for meeting and conversing with other students and their What is blended e-learning? But for distance-taught students, online discussion, particularly where there is also use of audio or video, offers a much better level of interaction with others than was previously possible.

Unlike telephone conferencing or regional seminars, these means of establishing and maintaining dialogue are also scalable and can be experienced asynchronously that is, without the need for all participants to be online together at the same time. These students already expect not to see or meet with other students and tutors on a regular basis. The systems that are needed to support students studying away from the campus e.

Within more conventional institutions there is a greater cultural gap. Here the norm for tutors and students is to see each other at regular intervals at scheduled events and on an ad hoc basis. Offering fully online interaction in place of face-to-face can be perceived as a second-best alternative. Where it is offered, it may be as an extension to distance learning provision, which is already targeted at students who are not able to attend the campus — for example, overseas students studying for an MBA by distance learning. These are offered to students to allow study of courses that would not normally be offered within that institution, or as alternatives to support a more flexible timetable.

Even within distance education, fully online courses remain fairly uncommon. Some mass online courses e. The most common example of the use of additional resources is the use of electronic learning environments ELEs and intranets as a place to publish the course resources and handouts Becta, This, and the use of software such as Microsoft PowerPoint to prepare lectures, are the most frequently observed uses of computers in education Golden et al.

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Described more fully in Chapter 2, the blend can refer to several aspects of the course design, including the activity and media blends. Ideally, what determines the mix of different elements will be the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. However, as with other ideals in course design, the determination of what part of the course is online can be led by considerations such as the cost of developing new resources, availability of and commitment to existing resources, or simply the access that students or tutors may have to certain technologies at particular stages in the course.

When used effectively, blended approaches can address some of the problems that have yet to be resolved within e-learning. For example, it has been noted Weller, that some large online courses have relatively high drop-out rates. One way to counter the tendency to drop out may be by building in opportunities for groups to meet face to face, to help students to feel more committed to the group that they are studying with. Where the students are already in a single geographical location on a regular basis, such opportunities are usually easier to arrange.

This approach is especially useful with courses where the students have diverse educational backgrounds and different motivations for study. For example, each student studying a work-based course will have different requirements from the course, depending on their work context. They may have very different access to work-based resources depending on the What is blended e-learning?

Using e-learning to prepare students in advance of the face-to-face teaching can make the task of in-class learning easier for everyone. Blended learning could be seen as a stage in the adoption of e-learning which is less threatening and less risky than a move to fully online or fully computer-mediated courses. This level of blending is unlikely to produce convincing evidence that e-learning has anything significant to add to the educational experience.

For example, a video lecture that is simply a recording of a talking head offers little advantage to students apart from the possibility of saving travel time. An interactive video conference over three sites, requiring students at each location to research and then role-play parties to oil pricing negotiations, is an entirely different type of e-learning experience. It allows students to experience the excitement of the negotiation process, pitting their skills against others in real-time discussion. Alexander , when reporting on this use of multi-site two-way videoconferencing, pointed to the impact that the exercise had on students.

The challenges of designing blended e-learning This chapter has given you an overview of what is new and not so new in e-learning. We can recognize several persistent concerns about the use of computers in education. If we return to the concerns about quality, control and change mentioned at the start of this chapter, we see that one of the reasons why these have persisted is because sharing of knowledge of what works in e-learning has been very patchy in the past.

Even where we recognize that good practice exists, it is not usually easy to transfer what we learn there into our own teaching and support of learners; it is not clear why this is good practice. In reality, we already know a lot about how to make e-learning work, and many institutions have been putting what they know into practice, increasingly effectively, for at least a decade. This book focuses on the factors that you should take into account when approaching the design of e-learning.

In particular, it focuses on the design of blended e-learning. Before then, Chapter 2 will take you into the world of choice that underpins blended learning. Chapter 2 Different approaches to blended e-learning As the use of computers in education has grown, e-learning has become increasingly prevalent in colleges and universities.

The blend refers to the proportion of e-learning content within the course. It can be a strong blend almost exclusively e-learning or a weak blend virtually none. It is also possible to think of blends in terms of the media blend or the activity blend. For example, a course could be a media blend of audio and video webcast or otherwise , and print resources or readings with face-toface lectures.

These could work together in a very integrated way, each referring to and building on each other, or they could work as stand-alone resources with the tutor providing an overarching narrative. An e-learning activity blend focuses on what we do and where. If it is happening in both ways at different times, how can these support each other? How can the activities be sequenced and supported so that they work well? We are usually thinking about blends of media resource and blends of activities and tools whenever we consider blended learning.

To achieve that level of seamless integration would require the remaking of courses from scratch, creating a precise balance and blend of media use across the course from the earliest design stage. On the side of pedagogy will be decisions about which activities in the course are best accomplished through e-learning with particular groups of students, what level of assessment these parts should carry, where in the course e-learning will occur, how it will be introduced, what sorts of e-learning students can access and where they will be studying.

On the operational side, concerns will centre on how to resource and support new approaches as these blend with established teaching — what the cost considerations may be, staff development implications and issues of technical support for staff and students. This chapter looks at the broad issues affecting the why, which, what, where, when and how of blended learning — why is it often proposed as the most effective approach to e-learning within further and higher education Garrison and Kanuka, ; Golden et al.

Why blend at all? We hope that by now you are convinced that there are virtues in using e-learning. The question with blended learning is, why offer a blend at all? If e-learning is so good, then perhaps the course should be offered entirely through e-learning, perhaps as a wholly online course? Different media offer different opportunities for e-learning, just as they do for conventional teaching and learning. Factors that the tutor will consider in making choices will include the impact on space e. All three concerns are addressed over the following three chapters.

Courses that rely entirely upon e-learning, whether campus based or distance-taught, remain unusual Sener, ; Becta, and are 32 Different approaches to blended e-learning generally offered only where there are special requirements that preclude any face-to-face teaching. This can lead to the perception that e-learning only works when it is at a distance. There are, however, a number of motives for adopting a wholly e-learning approach.

These can include any or all of the following: The population density may be low, and travel distances between institutions and students very great. It is no coincidence that some countries have well-established distance learning institutions, and students who are used to learning without face-to-face teaching e. Such courses may have previously been offered through more conventional printbased distance learning. The course covers such a specialist area that insufficient students could be found to make a viable cohort for face-to-face teaching. Postgraduate-level courses are particularly likely to be offered as e-learning variants.

Here the student numbers are likely to be low, and the students may already have a successful record of achievement in more conventional study. They could meet on-campus with some travel , but e-learning is a desirable and convenient alternative. The courses may be offered to students who already have experience of learning at a distance, in using computers for communication, and perhaps also in e-learning. Students and employees who are already successful e-learners may seek further courses delivered in this way Murray, Such courses and students are so far concentrated in a few discipline areas, notably computing and business.

In these areas, students may actively choose e-learning. The availability of places at colleges and universities may be restricted, and insufficient to meet demand. For example, the Syrian Virtual University www. Local e-learning is in this case preferable to residential face-to-face teaching elsewhere. The times at which individual students are studying may vary widely and there is no common pattern of availability for face-to-face Different approaches to blended e-learning 33 6 7 8 sessions. This will be particularly the case for courses that are work based, or that offer some sort of just-in-time dimension to the learning.

Wholly online sessions or segments within a course may be offered as a means of extending the reach of teaching in order to share teaching resource across more than one site. An example of this would be the use of videoconferencing by Duke University on its Global Executive MBA programme to teach internationally, or by the University of Ulster to share teaching across a multi-site campus. Another, slightly different example is the UHI Millennium Institute, which connects geographically dispersed, independent colleges across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland www.

Unlike Duke and Ulster where there is one multi-site institution , UHI has been formed from many separate institutions. Collaboration has helped to secure viable numbers across their degree programmes. Learners use a variety of means of electronic communication, from their homes, outreach centres and college campuses. Students at some locations may be asked to accept e-learning as a means of accessing an otherwise scarce resource.

The learning is based upon a stand-alone, wholly e-learning package designed to be studied independently. Local institutions may offer additional campus-based teaching on an optional, additional cost basis, but the courses were originally developed to be studied online. An example of this would be the African Virtual University, which offers online distance learning material from the OU alongside its own courses.

The e-learning is bought in as a stand-alone. As more courses are offered online, more students and tutors will become used to this delivery format, and some may seek this out in preference to other forms — in the same way that face-to-face teaching, being familiar, is often highly valued by current students. The most likely reasons for adopting wholly online delivery will be that some operational factor precludes learners from accessing the same course through more traditional approaches.

Before choosing an e-learning blend Any advice on how to choose an optimal blend of e-learning must be conditional upon the provision and support of e-learning being in place, or attainable. Where the students have never used a computer before, they will require some introduction and an opportunity to acquire and practise basic skills. If the institution cannot provide sufficient access to computers, then this must also be addressed. If teaching and support staff have no experience in delivering courses using e-learning, then this needs to be remedied. These will include the anticipated cost of developing resources in a new format, availability and allegiance to existing resources and approaches, and the availability of certain technologies at particular stages in the course.

It is tempting to think that by adding on e-learning as an extra you are managing risk, creating an effective blend and at the same time allowing students to fall back on conventional face-to-face sessions if this does not work. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, research shows that where use of new media is optional or incidental, students will typically not value material presented in that way as much as material that is clearly core or assessed Kirkwood and Price, Ideally, what will determine the use of conventional or e-learning delivery for the different elements within a blended course should be the strengths and weaknesses of each medium rather than the prejudices and fears of the course designer.

Media strengths differ, and it is important to obtain a suitable blend so that learning can be enabled and enriched. It is interesting to observe how changes in format e. Increasingly, the format in which the media are made available will also affect decisions about which media to blend and how these should be introduced to students. As well as improving the potential access, greater prevalence of portable media playback and recording devices in everyday life builds expertise and acceptance of these among learners. Where everyday use of such devices is extensive, for example in Norway and Japan, they provide a natural extension to the media traditionally used to communicate with students.

One way in which the potential of media can be understood is in terms of the affordances that they offer. This term is derived from the work of Gibson and Norman , and can be taken to mean the perceived as well as the obvious, almost visible, features of the medium. Just as a ball lends itself to kicking, throwing, catching, rolling, etc. For example, an MP3 recording will lend itself to being carried about on a just-in-case basis rather more than an audio tape would, and this makes it more possible that learners will be able to access a recording precisely when they need it as well as increasing the likelihood that they will share it with others.

This takes advantage of the capability to record and re-record speech. Across a range of disciplines it is used to provide variety in terms of interviews with experts, or verbatim accounts presented as case history. In music teaching it can provide access to performances. As with language teaching, audio is central to learning in this discipline. Audio can be listened to in a group or on an individual basis. However, the tapes or CDs can be damaged and the players even the Walkman-type players are relatively bulky.

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Video has often been used with large groups, as trigger material or to bring to the class real-life examples. For individual viewing, videotape requires access to relatively bulky, non-portable devices and a television. Although most homes possess a video recorder, access to this device may be restricted because of competition with other household members. There are many different video recording Medium Audio Video Use of DVDs has largely overtaken use of videotape, as this format offers additional functionality in terms of navigation, storage capacity and smaller physical size.

Many DVDs can be viewed on computers as well as dedicated players although there may be format incompatibilities. Digital-format video allows students to edit using a home computer or laptop and compact video recording devices. Streaming video allows students to view remote events as they are happening, while video downloads allow them to access relevant video over a fast internet connection.

Video diaries and portfolios are easier to create and update. With MP3 recording devices and the capability to download and upload recordings from the internet, the access to recordings has increased exponentially and the portability of the devices has also dramatically improved.

Preparing for Blended e-Learning (Connecting With E-Learning)

These devices can carry such quantity of audio that it is common for them to allow organization as playlists, simple browsable sets of recordings that can be shared online with others. In music, the digital form allows musicians to compose and perform material virtually, without meeting face to face.

Students can create their own individual audio artefacts, or create ensemble pieces, and upload these as podcasts to share with peers and tutors. Many radio programmes are now available as podcasts and some colleges and universities are making audio resources available in this form as part of their courses. Affordances of e-learning formats Table 2. Projecting a static image so that it can be viewed by the whole class presents some logistical problems, and access to individual copies can be limited, as full-colour images are relatively expensive to reproduce.

Locating static images to use as in-class resources can offer challenges, as the size and format are likely to vary between sources, and the potential to resize these is limited, and can be time-consuming. There is little opportunity to reuse images produced in a non-digital form. Copying from copies will degrade quality. Traditional animation, because of high cost, was relatively little used in conventional teaching before the advent of digital techniques.

Static images Animation formats and students will need access to specialist editing suites to create viewable video output. This has opened up the potential for a wider range of visual arts students to develop skills in animation as well as opening up the potential for educational technologists to employ this medium. Ha and Dobson, Digital images can be shared and displayed more easily. In particular, they can be used and reused in presentation software such as PowerPoint much more easily than the 35mm or acetate equivalents.

Blended and Online Learning

The resolution of digital images can be such that it is possible to drill down through a succession of images to reveal more and more detail, as for example on the GoogleEarth project earth. Students and staff can manipulate images, resizing, changing colours, morphing, cutting and pasting, to create integrated and original documents. Students of photography can create a variety of effects using their computer without access to a darkroom.

There may also be concerns about the infringement of digital rights. Several mobile computing devices e. Affordances of traditional formats Access to artefacts may be important so that students can appreciate intangible aspects of the object in a way that they could not by viewing static or moving images of it, or because the student needs to handle and use the object. Unfortunately many artefacts that students are asked to access, e. Where students use the object or equipment themselves there may still be problems of rarity and access, although on a smaller scale.

Transitioning to Blended Learning: Preparing Pre-Service & In-Service Teachers

While it is feasible to provide every student with a rat for dissection practice, it is not feasible to provide medical students with enough human bodies for their practical studies. While students may be able to have hands-on experience of an electron microscope, this will probably be a very limited experience because of the numbers sharing the equipment. Medium Artefacts Table 2. Students are able to rehearse practical experiments using virtual equipment such as microscopes.

Web sites reviewing the step-by-step process that students will need to undertake in handling artefacts are also popular. For example, the virtual frog dissection site www. Affordances of e-learning formats Text Print is a familiar and largely portable format which is relatively inexpensive to produce and reproduce. Digital forms of print are now extensively used in education to create resources.

Although many texts will have been created digitally, they may only be available to students in physical book form. With the onset of word processing it has been easier for tutors to create, reuse and share their handouts with students and colleagues.

The arrival of blogging and wikis now makes publishing online and creating documents collaboratively a possibility for most students. Although most colleges and universities still rely upon libraries with print-based stock, there has been a growth in access to online journals and ebooks. When one is inputting text, voice recognition is now a feasible option, allowing some disabled students to take notes and prepare written work without the need for human scribes.

In that chapter we also consider cases that involve the use and blending of different media and activities. Media and mobile manifestations One of the most exciting recent developments in e-learning is the use of web-based applications that allow streaming of audio and video within web pages, enabling the integration of several types of media within a single space. They can access and move easily between the different media without swapping between devices. This solves several of the operational difficulties that formerly restricted use of multimedia for example, ensuring that each student has the correct version of the item and access to a device suitable to review the content.

It also removes some of the problems of how to use the various media within a single activity. Prior to this, an activity that required a student to make notes on an offprint, then view a video and then contribute opinions in a discussion would require changes in location and involved an amount of wasted time in setting up and transferring between each medium unless the institution had the capability to create interactive DVD or CD-ROMs incorporating web links.

This inconvenience is now reduced, although the effect of switching from library search to note taking, then on to viewing video and into discussion, will still not be entirely seamless, as each requires different skills. These offer even greater opportunities to learners by allowing access to multimedia resources in a variety of locations where such access would otherwise be impossible. Greater mobility of the playback and recording devices also opens up the pedagogical potential — although use of these devices in education is still quite new.

In this example the mobile devices were loaned to students for the day. They first needed to be trained in using the handheld personal digital assistants PDAs , and they had no opportunity to continue to use these in Different approaches to blended e-learning 41 Example 2. Mudlarking in Deptford This project headed by Futurelab a spin-off from NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts equipped groups of schoolchildren with hand-held mobile devices which they could use to write in, record audio, take pictures, access reference resources online and, with satellite navigation, pinpoint their exact location.

These records could then be accessed by later groups and extended or edited into an evolving and increasingly rich and diverse resource. Many adult students now carry devices such as mobile phones and PDAs that have much of the capability of those used at Deptford. They may prefer the use of familiar applications and devices, which could in some cases be superior to the college-provided equivalent this has led to the suggestion that in the future there should be personal learning environments owned by students rather than virtual learning environments owned and controlled by institutions Downes, This form of e-administration is often seen as non-contentious, although there are ethical barriers to taking its use further, for example by tracking absent students using satellite navigation.

Encouraging students to submit multimedia records using mobile devices is still unusual and most often ignores the technology owned by the student in favour of technology loaned by the institution Attwell, In Chapter 9 we return to some of the ethical issues this presents for blended e-learning. The following example shows the progress that is being made in bridging the divide. Although targeted at the very poorest countries and schoolchildren, the development of affordable and robust mobile computing devices is likely to have a much broader impact.

One child, one laptop Announced in January , this initiative is set to address the need for affordable mobile computing in classrooms beyond those of the developed world. It is proposed that the laptops will use a free-of-charge open source operating system Linux , have wireless broadband and, among other things, allow each laptop to communicate with its nearest neighbours, creating an ad hoc local area network. Pictures of prototypes such as that shown here feature a hand crank to provide an innovative power source. It is suggested that these laptops will be able to do almost everything that a conventional laptop can except store huge amounts of data.

Developments in e-learning, particularly the sort of format changes in new media outlined in Table 2. While students are studying full time on campus they have a range of opportunities to engage in discussions with their fellow students and tutors. Even where e-learning options are available they may prefer to attend a lecture face to face so that they can discuss the content there and then, with peers if not with the tutor. Forming social relationships online can appear daunting to many students. However, distance-taught students have a much more limited opportunity for any interactivity, so e-learning the synchronous webcast or asynchronous recorded lecture, or online discussion is perhaps their only or best option for social interaction.

However, it is realistic to recognize that the opportunities for off-campus students to engage with the course community are often necessarily limited, so their motivation to use technology is likely to be stronger. The level of student experience with e-learning as well as their location relative to campus can be important factors in determining how, where and when to blend e-learning with conventional teaching.

Put simply, if the student is located at a distance from campus, then they are likely to value e-learning alternatives to campus-based resources and activity. If they are also experienced e-learners, then they will be able to engage with this style of learning from the start of the course. If they have extensive experience of using e-learning, then they can be expected to build on this, 44 Different approaches to blended e-learning Distant Student A Student B Expert Novice Student C Student D Near Student A has minimal experience of e-learning and is quite distant from campus — requires a blend that introduces e-learning gradually; quite dependent on using e-learning.

Student B is a novice e-learner, learning mainly on-campus — requires a blend that introduces e-learning gradually; not very dependent on using e-learning, and may use on-campus alternatives. Student C is a very experienced e-learner, very distant from campus — can use e-learning competently without introduction; large distance and high expertise would suit e-learning. Student D is highly experienced but able to learn mainly on-campus — can adapt to extensive use of e-learning from start of course, but also has choice as regards on-campus delivery; the best of both worlds.

The four students shown in Figure 2. Any, or none, of them could be experienced students in terms of successful completion of conventionally taught courses.

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There will be other factors, perhaps unrelated to study, that will determine their success on a course which employs e-learning, but what is evident here is that students can approach the same course with differing levels of motivation to use ICT for learning, based on location and differences in their obvious capacity to use it effectively from the start. This is not a problem that is unique to e-learning, but e-learning may offer an effective solution.

With moves to create personalized learning and personal electronic learning environments through use of e-learning, we can see that in the future there may be individualized blends, perhaps even a unique blend for each learner. For example, each of the four learners in Figure 2. Different approaches to blended e-learning 45 Informal, work-based and just-in-time blends There is already very extensive use of the internet for informal learning, whether we think of the research that children might do into their Yu-GiOh heros, the genealogical investigations and other hobby research that many adults undertake online, the sharing of knowledge and resources through specialist discussion boards, or the serendipitous outcomes from following interesting links into unfamiliar areas.

Many students now entering further and higher education will have prior experience of some of these types of informal learning, either individually or as a member of a learning community. They may supplement the formal materials supplied by the tutor with resources located on the internet. Many students, particularly those in further education, will be 46 Different approaches to blended e-learning studying vocational courses and may be undertaking some of their learning in their workplace.

Learning off-campus presents problems in creating effective bridges between practice-based learning on the one hand, and theory- or campus-based learning on the other.

Increasingly, electronic communications are used as a means of keeping in touch with students who are on placement, and web-based course resources are often referred to by students as they put theory into practice. For example, a social work student may look to government web sites and their course resources as well as their workplace colleagues for guidance on recent changes in the law. They may engage other students as well as their tutors in online discussion of how to approach work-based problems that are not covered by the course.

This could be as part of continual professional development or to update their knowledge on an ad hoc, just-in-time basis. Such use recognizes the potential of web-based material to be not only the most up-to-date source but, in some cases, the most authoritative resource available. Once a school subscribes, all staff within that school can use the resource, and the site covers a range of staff in primary and secondary schools, from librarians to classroom assistants, from teachers to governors.

There are significant barriers to recalling graduates from their employment for regular updating, yet professional bodies now often insist that members undertake accredited continuing professional development in order to retain their professional standing. Blending e-learning offered by universities and colleges with the workplace learning offered by employers is one approach to meeting this need realistically. Participants can become work- or research-orientated communities Seufert et al.

You cannot claim to have a blended e-learning approach if you have simply inserted online content into a course without considering the impact on the media blend or the activity blend. If the addition of e-learning activity and resources is based upon some idea of doing least damage, rather than doing most good, its inclusion is unlikely to be valued by either students or staff. This chapter has introduced some ideas about alternative approaches to blending, including: These all present challenges and opportunities, and underline that the potential of blended learning is very real.

There is a shifting kaleidoscope 48 Different approaches to blended e-learning of e-learning technologies, which with new media formats and new mobile learning opportunities present a constantly changing series of opportunities. A blended approach takes account of the possibility of tailoring a solution to the institution, the course, the tutor, or the student.

The move towards increasing personalization and customization in e-learning offers many more opportunities for learner-led blending. Chapter 3 Devising blended e-learning activities We live in a world that increasingly relies upon digital communication devices. We use them socially for play, professionally and socially for work, and increasingly we use them to support our learning. Some of these devices support communication. That can be immediate, real-time communication, perhaps using ubiquitous portable devices such as mobile phones.

Other communication may take place in convenient but discontinuous asynchronous episodes e. Teaching is a social process and becoming more so all the time, as the reliance on formal didactic approaches to teaching declines. When we talk about the design of courses and resources, the focus is often on the formal resources and content rather than the communication process that supports them.

But we all recognize the importance of feedback from students about the learning activities that they are engaged in and feedback to students to help them to improve and make sense of their learning. Students and tutors need to know how they are doing, and we will look in this chapter at why this is so important in e-learning. When we talk about the design of courses and resources we must recognize all the implications of the increasing diversity of media used. It is sometimes easier to see these as contributing only to e-content delivery, without appreciating the opportunities that they afford for communication with and between students.

Having many curious minds working together on a single topic will often quite naturally generate conversations, questions, ideas and arguments. However, even where there is substantial face-to-face interaction, this should ideally have been planned.


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Leaving an appropriate space in teaching sessions for student interaction is something that formal lesson planning or storyboarding techniques encourage see Chapters 4 and 5 for more on this subject. When we talk about e-learning activities, we are dealing with an environment where the opportunities for communication around activity needs to be deliberately designed in if we intend the activities to be more than simply individual student activity.

It is possible to create an e-learning course that offers no interaction with others, either fellow students or even a human tutor. Many of the early computer-based learning courses did just that; the student sat at the computer and interacted with the programs offered, receiving feedback directly from the computer. If there was a human tutor or facilitator, the students did not need to meet or talk with them and there was no direct feedback from one to the other. For some types of course, and some elements within courses, this type of simple e-learning activity, perhaps leading to a diagnostic or formative test, is still sufficient.

One of the interesting aspects of online communication is how it can make visible to the whole class conversations that they might not otherwise have been privy to. This can make it a valuable resource for students to refer to. It may also make contributions to the discussion appear more formal than the equivalent, more ephemeral question-and-answer Devising blended e-learning activities 51 conversation in class.

However, this need not be a problem as long as students are aware of the opportunities they have to respond and interact online and can take advantage of those within the time set aside for discussion. These features of e-learning necessitate rather different approaches to the design of learning activity than you may be accustomed to. With large-group, same-place teaching such as lectures the opportunities for interactivity in small groups within the session may be very limited, but against this can be weighed the reassurance that at least those students who are physically present have an equal chance of receiving the same information at the same time and asking questions about it.

Online largegroup teaching can move into small-group or paired activity without the participants changing physical position. Against this convenience needs to be balanced a concern that the more complicated the navigation within the learning space, the more likely it is that a student may get lost or miss an important part of the online discussion. Of course, some tutors will blend the two approaches in the ways explored in Chapter 2. They may be using face-to-face sessions for information transmission reinforced by online publication of handouts and presentation slides on the electronic learning environment.

They can also be using online forums to discuss some of the more complex issues, perhaps also using online tools for specialist activity such as collective mind mapping, or polling, capturing opinions and ideas to bring into seminars for face-to-face discussion. While synchronous discussion is obviously taking place with involvement of all participants and observers at the same time, in its e-learning form it need not necessarily be occurring at the same place.

Examples of differences include issues such as: This effect can lead to overlapping and confusing conversations. There is not usually a front-of-class position that commands attention; rather, the attention is on the current speaker, and at times too much attention and discussion space may be paid to speakers who are not talking from a position of strength, particularly if there are no tools to allow anyone to interrupt them.

Various solutions have been developed to overcome these problems. Options will vary depending on the system used and the medium employed. In a videoconference, where each participant is visible, it is easy to indicate that you wish to speak by raising your own hand. Participants can also use this recording as a memory aid so that they do not feel the need to make extensive notes during the session. Within a face-to-face conversation or synchronous online discussion, it is possible to be there present when the conversation takes place , or to be absent not present. If you are absent, then in order to access what was said you will need to rely upon the memory and goodwill of participants, or some record of the event.

You cannot, as someone who was not participating in the original time-limited discussion, subsequently become a discussant in the original conversation. This is often not the case when a conversation is carried out asynchronously. It can also make problems for the tutor trying to manage student online participation, or the student planning their workload.

From the point of view of teaching and learning, the use of asynchronous discussion, which is almost inevitably text based, allows students and tutors to draw together points made across many messages and refer to these with accuracy. This can lead to some interesting online or blended activities that would not normally be possible during a non-recorded faceto-face discussion. For example, it is possible to keep student groups apart for some stages of the activity and then, at a given time, allow them access to what has happened in other tutor groups so that they can compare past discussion.

The asynchronous activity can sometimes be blended with face-to-face to act as a lead into, or follow-up to, a synchronous real-time discussion. An example of this blending of asynchronous and synchronous tools follows. Blending asynchronous and synchronous tools to support a debate A student debate is one approach that tutors may take to introducing, or concluding a controversial topic within a course.

Ideally, students will also continued 54 Devising blended e-learning activities have had time to prepare evidence and arguments and rehearse these. Conventionally, the audience or in educational settings the participants will vote at the end to show which side of the argument they now agree with. In the MA in online and distance education at the UK Open University the debate has been used several times within different online courses with students located internationally. One format for the debate was wholly asynchronous, with students presenting arguments and counterarguments in turn, each side meeting deadlines to do so and answering questions placed by fellow students.

Another approach to the debate took place using both asynchronous and synchronous tools. The students did not at this stage know which side of the debate they would be supporting, although they were briefed on the question that they would be arguing and given an overview of the events and deadlines over the four-week activity. The roles included those of proposer, seconder, researcher, scribe to produce a summary of the early discussion and technical reviewer to comment on the experience of the technology.

In this next stage the students were using asynchronous tools to gather and review the resources that they would use to support their side of the argument in the debate. Towards the end of this stage they obtained access to the asynchronous audioconferencing environment in which the debate would occur. Although this was a synchronous environment, it was often more convenient at this stage for sub-groups within the debating team to use this, avoiding the need for everyone to be using the space at the same time. The software Lyceum audioconferencing, a system created at the OU allowed students to assemble in private rooms that could not be accessed by students from other debating teams.

It was therefore possible for several groups to work there concurrently. This took place in real time for all participants, with use of the polling in Lyceum to tally votes at the end. Although this example is taken from a distance-taught course, it could be adapted to be blended with face-to-face teaching. In that case the students could prepare the debate online asynchronously and perhaps also synchronously if the appropriate tools were available and then perform the debate and voting in a face-to-face setting.

A formal record of the design of this debate activity using IMS Learning Design methodology would show us exactly how the event is planned — what is happening to who and when. For now you need to recognize that there is usually a more deliberate planning of activities within e-learning, with emphasis on the scheduling of events and the interplay between them. This is particularly the case where there is considerable asynchronous activity over extended periods, or where there are elements of synchronous activity that require all students to be at the same point in their studies at one particular time.

Although the above example is based on an activity that is quite strictly scheduled each week marks a new phase in the activity , the blend of synchronous with asynchronous activity will often be aimed at extending the dialogue after a class-based activity has occurred, or as a means of allowing students to prepare for a class-based activity. In this form it may become a regular feature of all teaching sessions, particularly those that are aimed at part-time students who may be restricted in the time that they can give to synchronous activities which are campus based.

In these examples the amount of time allocated to the synchronous activity may be much more modest than that taken by the asynchronous activity. If this is the case, then it is important that the course design take account of the additional student activity. When we look at the output from text-based learning and teaching conversations online, we can see a huge number of visible conversations, perhaps hundreds of messages where the course is a large one using course-wide online discussions.

Each student and tutor could be aware of and participate in the discussion asynchronously, which will also tend to extend the period of activity, spreading it out and making it feel very time-consuming. When we think of all the separate individual asynchronous messages that take the place of a single time-limited conversation e.

To refer back to it the students and tutor will need to rely upon memory or notes, which limits the amount of information about the session that they need to process once the session is over. If students, or the tutor, miss one of the conversations that was happening, perhaps because several small sub-groups were working on the same problem simultaneously, then this is considered acceptable and, to some extent, unavoidable.

However, with asynchronous conversations it is often not so clear what is the end point in the discussion. Philip Barnes [Full Books]. Key Features of Practice: Understanding it and doing it well By - [Full Pages]. A Bus Trip in India: A Reader By - [eBook Online]. Volume 7 By - Carole P. Journey of an Asylum Seeker: By - David Gillborn [Full Pages]. Philip Barnes [Full Pages]. Improve your team s performance, behaviour and attitude with kindness and success By - Sonia Gill [eBook Online].

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