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Blended Learning
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For several years now, studies have shown that at large state universities and community colleges blended courses, or courses that combined online and classroom instruction more effectively engaged students and produced higher learning outcomes than wholly online or classroom-based courses. Our research over the past two years shows that a blended approach not only provides similar benefits in the smaller, more intimate setting of a liberal arts college, but that it also supports the LAC approach to higher education by enriching faculty-student interaction and freeing up class time for activities known to effectively engage students and promote deep learning.
However, the "start-up costs" involved in developing a blended course -- that is, the time it takes to research available materials, learn how to use them, and figure out how to effectively integrate them into a course -- are daunting. The problem is compounded in some fields and in courses beyond the introductory level material in almost any field by a dearth of suitable materials. This site is designed to help reduce those start-up costs by making it easier for faculty to find and share information about materials and techniques that work for blended learning in a liberal arts college setting.
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Google to break into the textbook market
Its latest foray into the education market, Google announced in July that it will begin to sell and rent digital textbooks through the Play store. The ebook market has been dominated by the likes of Amazon and Apple, with Amazon's Kindle-based textbooks maintining the lead in digital textbooks. While Google already features a few digital textbooks for purchase from smaller publishers, the new expansion is expected to create "a comprehensive catalog of higher education titles across science, mathematics, engineering, and more from all five major textbook publishers including Cengage, Wiley, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Macmillan." Following on the heel's of Amazon's textbook rental model, Google will also allow users to rent textbooks for six months at discounted rates. The press release includes a list of some of the new top titles, including Complete Works by Plato, Constitutional Law, and Principles of Data Integration. Like other books available through the Play store, users will be able to access the textbooks across web and mobile platforms, as well as using the search, notes, highlight, and lookup functions.
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Comparing OER Repositories Part 2 - Basic Economic Video Lectures
Our last Comparing OER Repositories post focused on finding interactive materials related to chemistry. The results were mixed. The different searches revealed different breadths and depths of results, but no one stood out far above the others as the best option. 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.
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Comparing OER Repositories Part 1 - Interactive Chemistry Material
There are, as a quick search of this blog will show you, any number of websites available which aggregate OERs and educational course materials. However, as we often find with the internet, just because something is available doesn’t mean that it’s useful, and it can be difficult to sift through the sheer volume of available information to find what’s really useful for you. For college-level instructors navigating the world of OERs, some of the obvious concerns include finding sites with 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.
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EdSurge's Try Before You Buy
The people at EdSurge are thinking the same thing as many edtech afficiandos -- with so many products and services on the market, wouldn't it be great to be able to test them out and find the right one without having to invest before you know what you want? This summer, EdSurge is going to try and help with their "Clear & Simple" trials program. The premise of the program is to let educators try out new edtech for 60 days completely free. Instead of a bare-bones "trial" version, the program allows the testers to access the full version, without any commitment to resubscribe or continue at the end of the 60 day test. All vendors participating in the program have signed on to the same basic terms.
Like most of EdSurge's programs, many of the programs in the Clear & Simple trial are targeted towards K-8 or K-12 educators. Many of them focus on tracking and assessing student mastery of Common Core standards, which are not easily repurposed for college uses. However, some of the programs such as Gobstopper and All In Learning, definitely have potential for the liberal arts blended classroom.
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Creating Your Own Collections: MERLOT
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. This post will focus on MERLOT.
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Blended Learning -- to go!
Once the great menace of the classroom, cellphones and other mobile devices are gaining functionality as an educational tool, both in and out of the classroom. Though many educators may be skeptical about introducing or encouraging the use of these devices, creators of OERs and other educational materials are increasingly working to harness their potential for interesting and diverse uses. While there isn't necessarily cohesion to the pool of uses, the diversity is part of the appeal. It's worth experimenting with the different possibilities to see if and where they can be useful to you.
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Five Models for Blended Learning
What exactly IS blended learning? The term (along with its analogue "hybrid" learning) is broadly used to describe individual courses or educational programs that combine "traditional" classroom-based teaching and computer-aided learning outside the classroom. This is a very broad umbrella, however, and I get many questions attempting to clarify what counts and doesn't count or what blended learning looks like on the ground in more concrete terms.
The National Center for Academic Transformation has developed a taxonomy of blended learning models that might provide some clarity to those new to the subject and inspiration for faculty looking for ways to transform a "traditional" course into a blended one.
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Thinking Context: No More Writing "Workshop"
Thinking Context is a recent post by John Warner on his Inside Higher Ed blog, "Just Visiting," where Warner considers and discusses the implications of the language educators use. Regardless of whether or not the particular terms he discusses - peer review vs. peer response, workshop vs. laboratory, research paper vs. researched essay, etc - are relevant to your field and your classroom, he raises important points about the necessity of deliberate language in the classroom. These standardized education terms, as he points out, are often communicating more than we intend, and can set an unintended tone for assignments and activities.
While Warner's article is focused on the traditional classroom, his argument has interesting implications for the world of blended education, where the terminology is less established, less conventional, and more flexible. As we are beginning to arrive at mutually agreed upon and communally understood language, it's important to think through the implications of the terminology which is gaining traction.
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Interactive Resources in Moodle
If you would like to create your own interactive materials, Moodle offers several advantages. In addition to being relatively easy to use, even without coding ability, Moodle's extensive wiki "MoodleDocs" is full of instructions, explanations, and best practice suggestions.
Related resources:
Creating Quizzes on Moodle
Creating Flashcards on Moodle
Moodle Scheduler
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WebWriting: Why & How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning
WebWriting is a born-digital, open-access "book-in-progress" sponsored by the Trinity College Center for Teaching and Learning. It deals with issues concerning when, how, and why the web can be used for teaching writing by incorporating essay concerning basic but difficult questions about the risks and benefits of using the web, reconfiguring pedagogy to use online resources, and finding the right tools. The book also deals with specific issues like "How to organize simultaneous peer review with Google Doc" and "Balancing Public Writing and Student Privacy". The site is powered by WordPress's CommentPress Corp plugin, which allows users to interact with the text by leaving comments on sections, pages, or the entire document. The book also includes an annotated "Bibliography-in-progress," complete with links to the cited sources, which creates a small but concise resource library for users interested in the topics WebWriting approaches.
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Blended Learning Conference Take-Aways
I was struck by two themes running through the conference presentations this year:
First, the importance of "closing the loop," or bringing the online components of a blended course back into the classroom in some way. Kristine Rabberman, for example, talked about the importance of opening class discussions with insightful observations, questions, or debates from her course's online discussion boards and blogs, as part of her strategy for fostering a deeper, sustained intellectual conversation online and in the classroom. This resonated with feedback we received on student surveys of courses that were part of the NGLC blended learning study project. Rightly or wrongly, students perceived online work that was not recognized in some way as being unimportant or ancillary to the course. Making these activities "low-stakes" (i.e., giving some points or credit for completing them) rather than "no-stakes" was one common mechanism faculty used to signal that online materials were important, but student survey responses and experiences faculty shared suggest that discussing students' online work in class as Kristine did or explicitly communicating how you are using student's online work to diagnose and address problems -- for example, by going over a problem you noticed students were having trouble with in online homework, might be as, if not more, effective.
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Blended Learning Conference Recordings Available
First, I would like to thank everyone who helped to make this year's Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference a success. Our in-house catering, conference, and housekeeping teams and my student assistants, Yichen Liao and Angela Rosenberg, did a stellar job of making sure we were well-fed and everything ran smoothly behind the scenes. The fact that they were able to do so immediately following Bryn Mawr's graduation celebrations (and for the students, weeks of exams) is a testament to their talent and dedication!
I would also like to thank our 15 presenters, who agreed to expose their teaching and their discoveries to public scrutiny, so that we all might learn from the experience. Recordings of their presentations and any slides and materials they've shared are archived on our conference website -- just click on the title of a presentation in the schedule to see everything associated with it.
The conference was a huge success, attracting about 100 registered guests from over 30 institutions, not counting many Tri-College faculty and staff who dropped into sessions as their schedules permitted. As always audience questions and comments and the informal conversations over breaks and lunch were one of the most valuable and interesting aspects of the event.
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July 18 Webinar on Sloan–C Blended Learning Mastery Series
The Sloan Consortium is offering a Blended Learning Mastery Series designed to help faculty develop effective blended courses. The series consists of three workshops spaced about a month apart to allow time for personal reflection and incorporation: research and design, teaching techniques, and assessment techniques. The next series runs from August 16, 2013 - October 25, 2013, and costs $599, which includes a certificate upon successful completion. For more information, Sloan-C is hosting a free webinar on July 18.
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Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference
Bryn Mawr College will be hosting the second annual Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference on May 20-21. This conference was designed as an opportunity for faculty and instructional technology staff who are experimenting with blended learning to share resources, techniques, and findings -- with a particular focus on how blended learning might work in a liberal arts college setting. Our definition of "blended learning" is quite broad, encompassing in which: 1) students get feedback on their learning outside the classroom through computer-based materials or activities, and 2) the classroom component informs or alters how an instructor uses class time. Advance registration is required, the conference fee will be waived for affliliates of colleges that were partners on the NGLC Blended Learning grant study. See the conference website for more information or follow us on Twitter at #blendLAC.
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Multi-Subject Clearinghouses
Educational clearinghouses with massive databases of resources provide access to different types of OERs covering multiple subjects and using multiple. This Blended Learning group is created to currate resources which we consider particularly useful for approaching specific problems, but there are thousands of other resources available. This post will direct instructors and students to two of the more comprehensive sites.
Resources covered:
OER Commons
Open.Michigan
OER Commons tracks down and currates resources which they consider to be the best OERs available. They currently have over 44,000 available. Their resources include labs and activities, video lectures, and readings. OER COmmons also features a section called "Teaching and Learning Strategies" which help instructors new to OERs how to find the right resources and implement them. In addition to some of the more complicated browsing structures, those looking for something in particular can search by subject areas, grade levels, and material types.
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Interactive Simulations for Science
One of the hazards of teaching science outside of a classroom setting is that there's no way for students learning on their own to access all the traditional experiments and visualization tactics available in schools. Blended learning provides alternate methods for delivering those simulations and visuals to students working independently and hoping to further their studies outside of the classroom.
Resources covered:
HHMI Biointeractive
PhET Interactive Simulations
KDE Step
Step is the KDE Education Project's interactive physical simulator. The Step Handbook explains that the simulator works by allowing users to place defined bodies in the simulator and then apply forces. Users can alter the parameters of the bodies and forces to see how they respond to the laws of physics. The tutorials include bodies and springs, motors and forces, and joints. Because the simulator requires a fairly complex understanding of the rules involved, it is better suited to use by educators and higher-level students.