From COHERE
Contents |
Introduction
Download COHERE V.P. Steering Committee Communiqué Update on Blended Learning: February 2006. (1.6 MB)
COHERE is an alliance of leading Canadian research universities, working together to integrate online learning with our research culture and values. The overarching goal of the COHERE Project is to ensure that students engage in a first-rate university experience, characterized by rigour, scholarship, and opportunities for the richest diversity in learning, both on campus and through the Internet. Through this blend of experiences they will become increasingly effective online learners, able to engage in inquiry-based learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
- "The convergence of classroom and online education is the single greatest unrecognized trend in higher education today." (Young, 2002)
- "By and large, colleges and universities have not yet begun to realize the promise of technology to improve the quality of student learning, increase retention, and reduce the costs of instruction. "(Pew Learning and Technology Program, 2003)
- "In the absence of a clear policy on blended learning we risk an ad hoc approach to teaching and learning that seriously challenges the quality assurance of the educational enterprise." (University of Calgary position paper, 2003)
Blended learning, the integration of classroom learning with online or technology-supported learning activities, is on the rise at COHERE universities(Note1). Faculty members from a range of disciplines are viewing blended models as part of a teaching continuum to improve learning outcomes.
The experiences reported by COHERE universities and the results of several U.S. studies provide support for the belief that well-designed blended learning models provide an opportunity to improve learning while maintaining and in some cases reducing the cost of instruction. One of the promising applications of blended learning models is to achieve learning gains in large enrollment undergraduate classes. This application is of particular interest to our institutions given the pressures of increasing class sizes and limitations in classroom facilities and funding for staff support. As research universities, blended learning can also preserve and enhance traditional values by enhancing and expanding interactive and collaborative learning experiences and supporting communities of inquiries.
This briefing for COHERE Vice-Presidents draws extensively from a University of Calgary position paper and from the experience of the COHERE Project Directors (Note2). The paper concludes with a list of collaborative initiatives identified by COHERE Project Directors that would advance blended learning practice at our institutions.
Promising Early Results of Learning Effectiveness and Efficiencies
In Canada, COHERE institutions are leading the way in the use of blended learning and early results are promising. Table1 below identifies the goals of a number of COHERE faculty in implementing a blended learning model. Recent courses that have been implemented have demonstrated the feasibility of accommodating larger numbers of students to make optimal use of classroom space and provide students with a more flexible learning experience. In other blended learning courses, instructors increased the enrollment cap while decreasing the time spent on administration, allowing the instructor to spend more time engaged with students.
COHERE Blended Learning Design Goals
Supporting Student Collaboration and Communities of Inquiry
- To support collaboration among and between interdisciplinary teams
- To support dialogic skill building including how to engage another’s ideas, present and defend a thesis, and respond to opposing views
- To allow students more time to share and discuss their ideas
Preparing Students for Lab Activities and Providing Hands-On Experiences
- To increase the success of students in a lab environment by designing experiments and obtaining feedback prior to the lab, practicing calculations, and analyzing the results
- To support graduate students in applying theoretical concepts to practical experiences in instructional design
- To bolster the applied nature of the course by providing the students with hands-on experience in the use of information technology
Providing Flexibility to Students and Instructors
- To provide students scheduling flexibility and respect diverse learning styles
- To provide greater flexibility for students in not having to come to campus every week
- To make enrollment practical for students who live in rural areas of the province, or outside the province
Faculty members are applying their scholarship in creative ways to use technology to optimize learning experiences. To support communication, collaboration, coordination, and knowledge exchange, instructors choose from a variety of technology options from asynchronous methods (threaded discussion groups, listserves, email) to synchronous methods (net conferencing, web-based chat).
Based on blended learning practice at COHERE institutions, blended learning is most effective when the teaching and learning model for the course is re-conceptualized as opposed to incrementally adding on layers of technologies and learning activities. This also helps to avoid increased technology costs and added workload for instructional staff. Often to be effective, the re conceptualization and redesign of the course incorporates technology-enhanced activities in place of existing learning activities that have been identified to be largely ineffective – most notably excessive reliance on the lecture in large enrollment classes.
From a faculty development perspective, the ideal situation is to have a systematic approach to integrate blended instruction across whole programs to provide a strong impetus for curriculum review and for the development of teaching and learning practices in our institutions.
In the U.S., recent pilots of blended learning have shown that it is possible to address both learning effectiveness and efficiency and some universities have successfully used blended learning models to address inconsistencies in the quality of the learning experience in large enrollment classes. In one case study, Ohio State University redesigned its Introductory Statistical Concepts course that enrolls 2,350 students. Lectures were reduced by half and integrated with discovery labs, small group study, and individual and group projects.
A preliminary evaluation confirmed that this redesign resulted in high student satisfaction and greater success on exams and assignments compared to the traditional course version. In the Pew Program in Course Redesign (PEW Learning & Technology Program, 2003), all 30 participating institutions reduced their costs by 40% on average. In 19 of the 30 projects, results also showed improved student learning with the remaining 11 projects showing no significant difference.
Advancing Blended Learning Practice at COHERE Universities
The COHERE Project Directors recommend the following projects and collaborative initiatives to support blended learning practice at our universities.
1. Build Awareness and Share Experiences to Support Faculty Development
Faculty development initiatives and resources should support and encourage faculty to become familiar with blended learning designs and the potential to enhance and transform the teaching and learning experience. The goal is to encourage faculty to deal with content in a more thorough and critical manner, not to suggest that they add more content to a course. Faculty should be aware of uses where blended learning approaches that reduce face-to-face instruction time show greatest benefit. For some faculty, less face-to-face classroom time can be seen as shirking one’s responsibility and more explicit institutional recognition of the value of blended teaching and learning experiences may be necessary to support a change in instructional methods.
High quality blended learning examples in a variety of disciplines should be identified and disseminated. Ideally, institutions should provide incentives to faculty who redesign their course, document their design, assess effectiveness, and share their experience with other faculty.
- COHERE institutions should document and pool in a shareable database examples of blended learning models used successfully in a variety of disciplines.
- COHERE Project Directors could develop a common evaluation framework and methods to assess and benchmark quality blended learning designs from both faculty and student perspectives.
Each blended design addresses specific teaching and learning goals and has its own organizational contexts and disciplinary practices (McCracken and Dobson, 2004). To provide an initial focus for the database, cases could be sought where the blended model provides support for creating communities of inquiry by increasing interaction and critical discourse. Successful models that reduce faculty time on administrative functions allowing more faculty-student interaction could also be sought. COHERE institutions could disseminate summaries of examples or case studies of blended courses in their own newsletters and professional development activities.
2. Obtain Funding Support to Conduct In-depth Case Studies
Through an initiative led by Ron Owston at York University, blended learning case studies are underway at each of the eight COHERE institutions. The primary goal of the case studies is to gain an understanding of faculty and student perceptions of teaching and learning in blended learning environments. This is an important initial step that could be the initial study in a collaborative research program for COHERE in the area of blended learning.
- As a next study, COHERE universities should seek funding support for a blended learning study that considers the costs of development and delivery in addition to assessing learning effectiveness. The study could target a number of large introductory classes in several disciplines similar to the Pew Foundation Program in Course Redesign.
3. Continue the Sharing of Advances in Policy Development & Blended Learning Design
Through the writing of this briefing as well as collaborating on a paper and blended learning case studies, COHERE Project Directors and their universities have benefited from a greater understanding of the opportunities of blended learning, the approaches used by other institutions, and policy issues and technology support challenges. This dialogue must continue through annual meetings, visits and staff exchanges, and COHERE panels at national conferences.
Collaborative initiatives such as the ones identified above, conducted under the umbrella of a “COHERE Blended Learning Strategic Initiative”, will help to advance the state-of-the-art in blended learning design to achieve quality improvements in the learning environment. While these steps can be taken individually by each university, properly designed and funded collective efforts will expedite efforts and make the best use of limited resources and key expertise.
Bibliography
McCracken, J. & Dobson , M. (2004) Blended Learning Design. In V. Uskov (Editor), Proceedings of the Seventh IASTED International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education, held August 16 – 18, 2004, Kauai, Hawaii, USA.
Pew Learning and Technology Program (2003). Program in Course Redesign. Retrieved April 14, 2003, from the WWW: http://centre.rpi.edu/PewGrant.html
University of Calgary Position Paper. Blended Learning Approaches to Teaching and Learning, 2003.
Young, J. R. (2002). ‘Hybrid’ Teaching Seeks to End the Divide Between Traditional and Online Instruction.
End Notes
1 COHERE is the Collaboration for Online Higher Education and Research, a consortium of 8 Canadian research universities including Dalhousie University, Simon Fraser University, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Guelph, University of Saskatchewan, University of Waterloo, and York University.
2 COHERE representatives contributing to this briefing that was prepared by Joanne Curry include Randy Garrison, Katy Campbell, Tom Carey, David Kaufman, Larry Maloney, Kathleen Matheos, Ron Owston, Lynn Taylor, Walter Archer and Virginia Gray.
