Blended Learning

The Innovating Pedagogy report is an annual overview of edutech from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. The 2013 report, the second in the series, selects 10 emerging innovations from the long list of existing technologies which the institute believes have the potential to make a significant impact on education. These are not technologies which are in development or even new, but rather technologies and ideas which are already being effected but have room to expand. The report ranks each innovation in terms of potential impact and timescale for implementation, describes its current application, and then explains the pedagogy behind the innovation and how it could be re-envisioned for maximum impact. One of the innovations described is geo-learning.

The Innovating Pedagogy report is an annual overview of edutech from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. The 2013 report, the second in the series, selects 10 emerging innovations from the long list of existing technologies which the institute believes have the potential to make a significant impact on education. These are not technologies which are in development or even new, but rather technologies and ideas which are already being effected but have room to expand. The report ranks each innovation in terms of potential impact and timescale for implementation, describes its current application, and then explains the pedagogy behind the innovation and how it could be re-envisioned for maximum impact. One of the innovations described is harnessing crowd learning.

Potential impact: high
Timescale: medium

The Innovating Pedagogy report is an annual overview of edutech from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. The 2013 report, the second in the series, selects 10 emerging innovations from the long list of existing technologies which the institute believes have the potential to make a significant impact on education. These are not technologies which are in development or even new, but rather technologies and ideas which are already being effected but have room to expand. The report ranks each innovation in terms of potential impact and timescale for implementation, describes its current application, and then explains the pedagogy behind the innovation and how it could be re-envisioned for maximum impact. The fourth innovation which the report discusses is the growing phenomenon of seamless learning.

Potential impact: medium/high
Timescale: medium (2-5 years)

The Innovating Pedagogy report is an annual overview of edutech from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. The 2013 report, the second in the series, selects 10 emerging innovations from the long list of existing technologies which the institute believes have the potential to make a significant impact on education. These are not technologies which are in development or even new, but rather technologies and ideas which are already being effected but have room to expand. The report ranks each innovation in terms of potential impact and timescale for implementation, describes its current application, and then explains the pedagogy behind the innovation and how it could be re-envisioned for maximum impact. The second innovation the report describes is the use of badges to accredit learning.

Potential impact: high
Timescale: medium (2-5 years)

A recent article in Faculty Focus by Dr. Ronald Jones from Ashford University approached the difficulty of keeping students engaged in an online classroom to the same level of a traditional classroom. Dr. Jones research showed a statistically significant correlation between the time a student spent logged in to an online course and his grade. While he admits that correlation doesn't imply causation, the research seems to suggest that maximizing student engagement can significantly improve student outcomes. In a blended classroom, the instructor has control over how much time students spend in the classroom, so the variable becomes introducing that same level of engagement into the blended aspects of the course. While Dr. Jones focuses his five tips on the online course, they can be easily adapted to work for a blended course. The tips reproduced below are Dr. Jones' original tips, with modified descriptions to fit with blended learning classrooms.

Facing declining retention rates and dropping grades, many universities are looking for new ways to increase student engagement and, as a result, educational outcomes. Ball State University's Institute for Digital Education and Entertainment, in an attempt to develop tools that would engage students and teachers in a way that took advantage of web-based technology, turned to multimodal learning strategies.

Ball State came up with a resource called Vizi, an online-based platform that uses multiple forms of media, integrated into targeted courseware that is flexible and engaging. While Vizi is an interesting platform in and of itself, Ball State's research and analysis of Vizi's results are what's really interesting: the designers behind Vizi wanted to use multiple channels to simultaneously engage many parts of the learner's brain. Part of their design was to create sections and sub-sections whose objectives students had to meet to move on, and to assess their understanding. They also attempted to integrate both linear and nonlinear paths.

In their collection of teaching strategies for higher education, Faculty Focus includes an article suggesting strategies to increase the efficiency of grading. Specifically, they address how to improve the efficiency of computerized (as opposed to analog, pen-and-paper) grading using what the article calls a “comment archive.” The article discusses strategies for taking advantage of the options built into your basic word processor to increase the speed and ease of your grading without sacrificing the quality of your comments. The most user friendly and simple option involves building your frequently used comments into the AutoCorrect feature of, for example, Microsoft Word. Then, instead of typing and retyping a comment each time you use it, simply use the shortcut you designated. The article includes step-by-step instructions and a video tutorial.

Our previous Comparing OER Repositories post explored how to find basic economic video lectures. There was a clear best option: Khan Academy, whose focus on video lectures made it the easy winner. With this post, we are going to run a similar series of tests, looking for thorough and extensive libraries, finding resources at college level (not just K-12), making sure that resources are reviewed. To get a sense of what’s available and where to find it, we will write a series of posts combing through four different OER repositories – OER Commons, Khan Academy, Connexions, and FREE – looking for three very different sets of material and evaluate the results as well as ease of use.

1)      Interactive materials for chemistry students reviewing volume-related concepts
2)      Video lectures on introductory economic concepts
3)      English grammar and style exercises that faculty can use to evaluate and target students’ specific writing issues

The wealth of available educational resources can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. Sites which currate these resources all have some built-in mechanism for sorting -- by subject matter, level of difficulty, source, etc. However, these pre-packaged collections are no replacement for currating your own prefered resources and materials into sets that correspond to your interests and courses. This series of posts will provide tutorials on how to create your own collections from sites which offer currated resource lists. Collections in HippoCampus are called "Playlists," which reflects the extremely multi-media focus of HippoCampus's materials. 

Creating a collection of resources on HippoCampus, as on most sites, requires you to create an account. Because HippoCampus is, in part, targeting individual learners, the sign-up process is quick and not very demanding. As soon as your account is saved, you’re ready to start creating a collection, which HippoCampus refers to as a “Playlist.” Once you create an account, you will find yourself as your own HippoCampus homepage. This page doesn’t look much different from the public homepage, though it does provide you with a link you can use to link directly to your account page from, for example, a course page. For our test playlist, we will make a playlist for an introductory level creative writing class.