many of us in higher education think we
know what hybrid or blended learning
means and I think that's true for
students as well we often use a very
simple definition its face to face and
it's online learning the biggest
challenge I find is to design for a
meaningful rich engaging blended or
hybrid learning experience in order to
consider this design we need to street
see consider three aspects what happens
before a class what happens during a
class and what happens after class the
biggest challenge is that students
perceive there is more than one course
taking place there's the online course
in the face-to-face course our challenge
for the design is to integrate those
environments so that students can
experience what learnings like all the
time not just inside but outside of the
classroom so this sort of design begins
with what are the outcomes what is the
knowledge the skills the attributes the
habits of mind that we want students to
take away from a learning experience so
that's what we must start with what do
we want students to leave the learning
experience with next we consider the
assessment what sort of feedback
feedback the students are going to give
themselves each other the peer feedback
the teacher and the expert feedback to
help them achieve those X those outcomes
so again a very close alignment between
outcomes and the assessment activities
once we've identified those we need to
break down the activities so there's a
clear link what's happening before after
and during class before class it's
really critical that we create the
excitement we call this a triggering
event students are challenged with ideas
and what we really want to do is raise
questions we want to raise their
awareness about the topic but from a
teacher perspective
if we also want to get an idea of what
do they know what do they not know about
this concept or topic so in terms of
activities before class we can get
students to work on different apps on
their phones different games activities
that really inspire excite students but
are also allowing us to collect
information about what they know and
don't know it's critical then when we
begin the face-to-face session that we
link to that activity they already did
for example it could be simple as a
reading and an online quiz and with the
online quiz we need to share the results
in class with the students oh my
goodness only twenty percent of the
students understand this concept the
student understands they're not alone
there's others in the classroom who
don't understand it they're much more
ready to accept and to have a dialogue
about those topics the other question I
always ask before class is what don't
you understand what are you concerned
about what should we have a dialogue or
a discussion in the classroom so again
the key is is setting the triggering
event up before the class during the
class is integrating bringing that
conversation into the classroom and then
providing more opportunities to students
to go deeper to have a richer dialogue
around the questions the issues that
challenge they have and then what we
must link is linked that to the homework
what are the activities what our
students going to do after the class and
often what they're going to do is work
collaboratively on problem-solving
activities we've had a discussion we've
had a debate in the class about the
issuer challenge students have started
to come up with pass their ideas that
they need to then go outside of class to
test them to talk to people in the
community to collect research from the
library to do experiments and streams
and in the natural environment and then
they're able to bring those back to the
next next class to continue the dialogue
so the key is
is using technology tools to make clear
links before during and after the class
that is the key successfully designing
and engaging a rich blended or hybrid
learning environment there's a saying in
English we teach how we were taught it's
a cycle so for many of us I'm growing up
we're used to coming to a classroom
where people would talk at us sometimes
we were able to ask questions and for
homework we read books and we answered
questions about the content of the books
so murr for many of us entering higher
education the Academy this is the type
of teacher assignments and feedback we
give to our students we focus on tests
and writing assignments we call this a
form of summative assessment and again
this is important but I'm not sure it
always helps students grow and develop
and often it can have the reverse effect
is that students get it very afraid and
they don't understand how to use our
feedback and they look at it the form of
almost punishment so what I think we
need to do is teachers is there's always
a time and a place for summative but
learn how we can give students
meaningful feedback we call it formative
assessment throughout a chorus now this
is important for students but it's also
important for us to learn to do it in a
way that's efficient and effective
because like anybody we're very busy and
again I think we can do this in
partnership with others we as teachers
are ultimately responsible for the final
grades the summative assessment of each
student in our class but throughout the
course we can use experts in the
community in our institutions at other
universities to help provide meaningful
feedback for students and I think this
is very valuable not just for students
because they're getting feedback from
experts but it's also valuable for the
other experts the other professors the
people in the workplace because it gets
to sin
for them about what students know and
don't know so the key for me around
teacher assessment is to rely not just
on one form of assessment not just a
summative assessment to focus also on
formative assessment with experts in
your field in English we often use the
word assessment and the word evaluation
interchangeably both is making judgments
and giving feedback but to distinguish
those two in the English language we
talk about assessing people giving
feedback to people such as students and
an evaluation we often talk about
evaluating things such as disciplines
courses and programs I'd like to talk a
little now about evaluation and I think
evaluation really is a very powerful
form of research and it's something
that's becoming more and more important
in north america is the evaluation or
the research of our own teaching
practice and again I think we need to do
this in partnership with others with our
students with our graduate students but
it's very important when we're
evaluating we're researching our hybrid
and distance courses that not only do we
look at student success in terms of the
grades or the summative assessment how
successful students are in completing
the course but we also examine the
challenges the road neck there was a
bottlenecks is of the the roadblocks
what are the issues what are the
challenges that are preventing all
students from being successful in the
class for me those are the most
meaningful things that I like to
evaluate is why what is is about my
teaching the technology the environment
that is hindering that is holding
students back all students from being
successful in terms of conducting this
sort of research I think it's important
to first identify what are those issues
and concerns
secondly I think it's important that I
work collaboratively with a team to
explore why is this happening what's
already existing in the literature
building on the research of others
designing my own research and
partnership with others and then third
actually conducting the research
actually creating an experiment creating
a situation we run collecting
information for more than one just form
of data so i may be surveying my
students but i'm also getting someone
else to interview the students and i may
be actually getting data from the
virtual learning environment such as
moodle so I'm triangulating my data last
but not least when I collect this data
and analyze it's critical that I do
something with it I use the findings
from my study to not only improve my own
teaching practice but to share it with
others in my own institution through
presentations and conferences but I
share it with the larger educational
research field through again conference
presentations and journal publications
one of the most difficult things for for
myself as a teacher in a higher
education is to admit that I have
problems or challenges when I'm doing my
research my academic research this is
what I'm looking for is problems and
challenges but I often feel very
insecure and nervous about talking with
other people about my teaching
challenges or problems because I don't
want to admit that I have problems so I
think what's important is to find people
that I can trust environments sometimes
that could be a colleague INSEAD someone
outside of my department because I'm a
new member and I'm embarrassed to talk
to people in my faculty or department so
I'm a talk with someone insead or I may
be very fortunate that I have a mentor
who I can talk with but again I think
the key is to find someone to talk about
we need to share our problems
because our problems can often become
very rich research activities so I think
what I need to learn as a teacher to
begin is not to be afraid not to be
embarrassed when I have a problem that
we are in an age when I can get help
sometimes I'll be honest I I even the
older I get I'm gaining more confidence
is I can ask my students and and it
begins by this I really want to learn
help you learn this concept and i have
taught this for many years but i find
often students have difficulties
learning this can you help me and this
becomes a very powerful learning
opportunity for students because they
can say yes we would love to help you
students are sometimes much more
sophisticated at finding a youtube video
that demonstrates the concept maybe it's
an application and app for their phone
so i think this can be exciting when we
work with with students to solve these
issues or problems so what it needs to
do it needs to begin with me not to look
at this as a weakness or something it's
a problem with me but took the problem
outside of me and working at solving
this problem in partnership with other
people again it could be teaching
specialists at sad it could be my
colleagues in the faculty or if I have
the confidence it could be even students
in my classroom the key is to get the
problem outside of me and have a
dialogue with others about how to solve
the problem
you
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