In this week’s reading there were a couple of passages that
really struck me with one in particular focusing on the limitations of course
standards: “Nearly all sets of blended/online course standards bear the imprint
of an overt instructional design emphasis (e.g., instructional objectives,
constructivist influence, technology-dominated, etc.) . . . such emphasis
typically leads to a focus on the designed (online) environment of the course to the exclusion of the experience of
instructors and students in the teaching/learning process . . . it is the lived
experiences of students and teachers, their actual interactions, in which
teaching and learning are made manifest.”* While it is important to consider
theory along with different elements in designing learning environments and
methods, what actually transpires for the student is a complicated experience
with many contributing factors: the instructor’s approach, the student’s
motivation, matching the content with the right format and technology, etc. To
me it sometimes seems that theory’s purpose is to try to explain a complex
learning situation in a simple fashion, but it also has the power to
oversimplify and distort. This concept is also tied to the notion that
measuring the best combination of online and face-to-face elements is
impossible because, among other reasons, no one-size-fits-all method for
blended teaching/learning. The key seems to be that the instructor needs to be
knowledgeable about theory and instructional design, but also needs to rely on
teaching instincts developed over time to adapt the learning environments as
needed for a particular class or particular student. Similarly, an instructor
should teach a face-to-face class prepared with a lesson plan,but be agile
enough to switch gears if the lesson plan and its execution are not working
with a particular group of students on a particular day. For novice
instructors, I am not sure how they can develop instincts with online teaching
other than through much experience.
*Portions of the following chapter are adapted from “ What is Online Course Quality?” by Kelvin Thompson under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike3.0Unported license and “Design of Blended Learning in K-12” in Blended Learning in K-12 under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike3.0Unported license. Portions of the following chapter labeled as the property of the Commonwealth of Learning are used in compliance with the Commonwealth of Learning’s legal notice and may not be re-mixed apart from compliance with their repackaging guidelines.