Week 4 -- Blended Learning

The topic of study this past week was “Blended Learning.”  As I listened to Dr. Bonk’s lecture on blended vs. online learning, I realized that I actually teach a “blended” class right now as part of a home school co-op that my family is involved with.  So, it has been interesting for me this week to consider the positives and negatives of a blended learning environment, realizing that I have a good opportunity to see this instructional delivery format in action.

I teach a World Religions class for home schooled high school students who are part of the Wildcat Creek Home Educators Cooperative in Lafayette, IN.  The class meets face to face two times per month, September through April.  Because of the low number of face to face class sessions, part of my strategy when designing the course was to encourage participation beyond the face to face meetings.  My solution was to form an online class discussion forum that would allow class members to have ongoing interactions about class topics. 

This online component, I have learned, qualifies the course for “blended” status.  So, the question now is…does the blended environment enhance the instructional quality of the class?  For this particular class, I would say that it does, and it certainly has the potential for greater benefit.   Because the class only meets face to face 16 times over the course of a year, the online element allows the class to have more interaction than would otherwise be possible.  It also helps the students (and the teacher) to remember the class content between sessions, which allows us all to have more productive face to face meetings.  The online forum provides some accountability that would not be there otherwise.

I do have to acknowledge that the online discussion forum has posed a challenge to a few students because they have limited internet access.  In some cases, this is due to parents not allowing internet access and, for others, it is due to poor internet service in their area.  Regardless of the reason, these kinds of limitations have made it impossible for me to “require” that students post to the discussion forum.  I encourage them to do so and try to monitor postings and give feedback, but I cannot make the online element a requirement.  I have also run into some minor technical problems with the NING site we use for the forum, but these have been quickly resolved.  Ultimately, I would like to find a more effective tool to use for this particular class, but for now it’s serving the purpose I intend. 

Most students are familiar with various chat tools, blogging tools, etc., but I have found that it has worked best when I have given them specific guidelines for posting to our online forum.  I set a deadline for making an initial post and also for responding to the postings of others.  As a class, we have discussed some “rules” for making posts, such as being respectful and using words wisely.  In the future, I think it would help for me to also set some “minimum word number” parameters for their postings.  This would encourage them to think more deeply when replying to the posts of their classmates. 

So…blended learning environments…my experience teaching this World Religions class has shown me that blended options have the potential to enhance instructional quality.  However, I still must keep in mind that technology is only a tool.   The use of technology must be considered in light of the overall objectives of instruction.  I have learned that internet technology offers options for teaching that were not present even just a few years ago, and I plan to continue to take advantage of those options when it is appropriate.