I have been reading over the NGLC Blended Tool Kit Materials and am looking forward to designing my course and assisting SUNY Brockport faculty, using this method. I am the Instructional Designer at SUNY Brockport and have been working with faculty on developing their online and blended courses. So far, we haven't set any designated training for blended learning and I found it reassuring that the Educause material and first reading in the Blended Tool kit suggests the training for both online and blended is similar.
For the purposes of this blog, I would like to approach this Blended training from a Media Ecologist perspective. Loosely defined, media ecology is the study of humans, values, and cultures in relationship to media communication technologies. As communications technologies have progressed into interactive social media forums, online courses strive to create a social environment for student..to keep human interaction at the center of learning. Blended has the face-to-face element, but I would like to discuss extending social interaction in the online portion of the courses for student engagement and multimodal learning.
Thoughts?
"So far, we haven't set any designated training for blended learning and I found it reassuring that the Educause material and first reading in the Blended Tool kit suggests the training for both online and blended is similar."
ReplyDeleteAnn:
Do you currently offer faculty development offerings to prepare instructors for teaching fully online courses?
If so, what topics do you include in that training?
What a fascinating concept of media ecology Ann. Have you participated within social interactions of virtual worlds? My doctoral studies at CTU are in emerging media. It will be very interesting to hear how you translate your media ecology perspective into your blended learning course.
ReplyDeleteHi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI have been at the College at Brockport for a year and a half and in that time we have begun to offer training for online teaching. The online courses have grown from 8 to 35 during this time.
Some years ago to this, faculty attended the SUNY Learning Network training when they were using Lotus Notes.
I initially had 3/4 workshops designed, The Nuts and Bolts of Online Teaching, Creating a Social Atmosphere, Designing Engaging Assignments and Effective Assessments, for all faculty to attend.
We are somewhat caught between requiring training and the faculty culture and feelings around any requirement. I make this as a positive statement. I am a firm believer that the value in quality teaching is number one here.
So, presently we host a "Why Teach Online" session and then faculty who will be teaching come to one group workshop. After that, I along with the technical support group work individually with faculty on their courses.
I was very happy to see that blended learning should be presented to faculty the same as online training, that the social aspect with the digital generation is key, along with engaging assignments.
(Sorry for the long answers, but I wanted to give you a picture.)
Barbara,
ReplyDeleteI have personally used social media and studied how people learn with technology from a Media Ecologist point of view. This really involves looking beyond the tools of technology and considering the human aspect of interaction and communication.
I am presently teaching an online course for the Education department titled "Technology for the Classroom". In this course, we are working on studying and creating social environments for students.
At Brockport we also received a fellow for an international course collaboration linking our students with students in Russia. The course will focus on gender studies and we will be developing a blended course using distance communications. I really want to create an opportunity for the students to use social media and develop relationships.
There is a Media Ecology Association that your students may be interested in learning about. They have a website and it is a great group.
I think that regardless of traditional, blended, or fully online, we run a huge risk when we make the assumption that faculty members know how to teach. They are replicating what has been modeled for them. They are experts in their field but not in pedagogy. So, based on this bias, I believe that all faculty should be trained in both pedagogy (androgogy) and methodology. The methodology would include both face-2-face techniques and distance tools. The objectives remain the same, the activities and assessments should be able to be consistent, but the methods will need to be adjusted for synchronous/asynchronous choices.
ReplyDeleteThe conversation, materials and activities in week five were very helpful. I really feel Dr. John Hagedorn's statements about including a variety of multimedia for lessons and activities is important in a blended course. It goes beyond the class meeting part of the time and students working independently the rest of the time to become a more differentiated learning experience.
ReplyDeleteKaren, I strongly agree with you, although in the ten years I've been consulting with faculty, my respect for their understanding of what goes into their teaching (more than pedagogy!) has grown. They also have to think about their lives and their careers -- they are not teaching all day and all night. So for me, instructional development is about improving (deepening) student learning while improving faculty satisfaction (morale).
ReplyDeleteAnn, there's of course been a lot of discussion about social presence over the years, but certainly there is a lot of room for the development of discussion protocols for online settings. I'm interested in that myself, and I look forward to the ideas you come up with!