Topic 4 - Online and Blended Learning (ONL181)

My favourite topic in the ONL course. Sadly, I had little time to explore it as I would have liked to. But when I see the result of our PLB6 group work, I realise I made a small contribution to the overall result.

I would like to start this reflection by looking back at what I learned a few years ago in a course I took, a blended course taught by Martha Cleveland Innes during the time she was affiliated faculty to our Department at KTH. First a definition of what the difference is between online and blended.

o   e-learning = technology enhanced

o   online = 80% of the content delivered online

o   blended = 30 to 79% of the content delivered online

o   traditional / web-facilitated = 0 to 29% of the content delivered online

Unfortunately I missed the webinar but have just watched the recording. Great to hear Marti’s calm and well explained points. I loved listening to her again talking about the drivers of change influencing Higher education. I had not heard before about the Sloan consortium and the five pillars of quality (scale, access, learning effectiveness, faculty satisfaction, and student satisfaction).

So I will spend some time on the notion of ‘flexible design for the complex need of diverse students’. I have been discussing Kolb’s experimental learning cycle (Kolb 2005) with my students, which has helped them understand the notion of building a Natural Critical Learning Environment (Bain 2011). This discussion leads to the notion of importance in building communities to construct learning.

The Community of Inquiry introduced by (Garrison et al. 2000) and worked on further by Vaugh and Marti herself (2013) highlights the importance of a conceptual framework for the modelling of online educational design. I believe that teachers need to start with how we learn in order to be able to think about how we are going to teach. So once we are able to fulfil the learners basic needs, then online course design play a key role.

Reading a number of blogs and reflection of Topic 4 I see that many chose Salmon’s (2017) five stage model. It’s attractive as it gives structure and presents a tool box for those who are starting to create courses online. Both learning and teaching are part of a development process. I believe learners today need less the teacher figure and more the supervisor character, a person who is able to understand the learner and provide what needed.

At last, I believe a successful course lies on design as van Ameijde (2018) highlights. That’s when instructors should be spending most of the time, discussing with colleagues how a course should be designed in order to reach the intended learning outcomes.

References:

·       Bain, K. (2011). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press.

·       Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher educationmodel. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87-105.

·       Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(2), 193-212. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/AMLE.2005.17268566

·       Salmon, G. (2005) The Five stage Model [online] Available from: http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

·       van Ameijde, J., Weller, M. and Cross, S. (2018). Learning Design for Student Retention. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, Vol 6, Issue 2, pp.41-50.

·       Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.— Chapter 1 “The Community of Inquiry Conceptual framework. http://www.aupress.ca/books/120229/ebook/01_Vaughan_et_al_2013-Teaching_in_Blended_Learning_Environments.pdf