Blended Learning

I am very late to the blog... hope someone comes back and look at older messages. As I have returned to school at IUB, I have experienced blending to some extent in almost all of my classes. My focus being Informatics and IST may have a lot to do with that. Most classes take advantage of this forum (Oncourse) to post informaiton and news. Computer Science courses had chat groups before Oncourse came to play. I posted more than one cry for help while trying to figure out a line of programming. The instructors wanted students to help students out of the theory that helping others enforces what you learn. I believe that it proved true and found it helpful. Most recently I had an instructor that used Oncourse as a means to organize the students in groups for a group project. I found using that type of posting very frustrating to achieve the goal. I am unsure why that format was chosen. As I become used to being able to access class materials and assistance at any time (day or night, hence the time of this posting), I am disappointed when I attend a class that does not use some blend. It seems very confining.

engaging CMC - Christina L Bezzy (Sep 30, 2005 12:22 am)

Hi Frank, Have you thought about setting a certain time (or several times) for Oncourse communications. Or, as Dr. Bonk does with us, request each student replies to at least one other. It seems you could use the rephrased lines of chat as the start of f2f discussions probing the students to think deeper. I don't know that you will acheive an extensive amount of deep learning through the online discussions by themselves. You can use the student's thoughts as a means of understanding the students and their thought processes. Using the online communication as a start to the learning process followed up with f2f interacitions instead of the reverse could drive your teaching to engage the students into higher learning. Then you would have acheived what I have come to think of as blended learning.