BlendKit 2014 Reading Reaction 5

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.

I was also struck by the sentence that “During fully online and blended learning courses, students often need more structure and support to succeed because their course activities usually require them to take greater responsibility for their own learning success”* because it drives home the importance of carefully constructing a course, so that the face-to-face and online elements are unified. It will help me to keep in mind as I continue to work on my blended course that students will need structure and support for the course to succeed, so that if I complete a lesson or module, I should step back and really think about the structure and journey through the content from the students’ viewpoint. Is the structure providing the right scaffolding for student learning? Are assignment directions as clear as they can be? Do students have opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous time with the instructor to be able to work independently or in groups online? It also reminded me of an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Inside the Flipped Classroom,” which ended with a student’s realization that learning was a greater responsibility for the student (than in a non-flipped environment). I really find this realization to be inspiring for instructors. Wouldn’t that greater responsibility motivate the average student to take ownership of learning—and who wouldn’t want that?!

*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.