Design for online and blended learning (#HP621A)

Posted May 17th, 2019 by Jonas Bäckelin & filed under HP621A.

Supporting student learning by scaffolding and facilitation is a key area in the provision of a ‘quality’ educational experience in formal settings.
Successful student support has a marked and positive impact on retention, progression, completion rates and overall student satisfaction – this can be even more so for students studying online. Blended learning can become unmanageable if the design build on activities and responsibilities, with no time to reflect on meaning and engage in discourse for shared understanding. The concept ‘Community of Inquiry’ (CoI) argue that an learning experience is both a collaborative and an individually cognitive processing known and stimulate higher-order thinking skills (HOTS). The Chickering and Gamson principles has in “Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry” (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013) been adapted to ubiquitous connectivity afforded students as follows:

Plan for the creation of open communication and trust
Plan for critical reflection and discourse
Establish community and cohesion
Establish inquiry dynamics (purposeful inquiry)
Sustain respect and responsibility
Sustain inquiry that moves to resolution
Ensure assessment is congruent with intended processes and outcomes

When learning online the “Five Stage Model” by Gilly Salman (2013) describe e-moderating and technical support as participants building expertise. She wrote “Given technical support, good human intervention from an e-moderator, and appropriate e-tivities to promote action and interaction, nearly all participants will progress through these stages of use of asynchronous networking opportunities” (s.12)

Reflection on module 4:

4.1 Reflect on your current practice and reason about possibilities for development of online and blended learning designs.

-I have often taken the approach of Distributed Cognition (Hutchins) and Connectivist MOOC (Downes). This line of thought also investigate the concept of rhizomatic knowledge and community as curriculum (Cormier). This involves four principles:

Diversity: In learning we encourage students to engage in diverse readings, diverse environments and diverse discussions
Autonomy: The students chart their own course, select their own software and pursue their own learning
Interaction / Connectedness: Knowledge emerges as a result of the connections among the students and educators – and is not limited to transfer from experts to recipients
Openness: There is no barriers between ‘in’ and ‘out’ – students can accommodate the full engaged, the partially engaged, and the rest – creating strong ties and weak ties (i.e. Perceiving connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill)

4.2 Reflect on how you can provide better support and scaffolding to students in online and blended learning environments.

-I’m interested in ‘nugeing’ and micro/nano learning to support students. One emerging trend is to use Bots and AI as scaffolding in an online-environment

4.3 Are there opportunities for further development in this area, that you have identified as a result of your own experiences as a learner in this course and of your engagement in this module?

-I want to look at how the culture of sharing is supported in education and P2P-review. I also like to develop skills among students from pattern-recognition and believe this can be done by discerning salient properties from real-world scenarios or examples.

References to Learning resources:

Salmon, G. (2013). E-tivities: The key to active online learning. Routledge (online)
Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press.

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