EXAMPLE REVIEW JOURNAL ABOUT BLENDED LEARNING
A.
Basic Theory
Blended
Learning
Blended learning has been described as a mode of teaching that
eliminates time, place, and situational barriers, whilst enabling high quality
interactions between teachers and students (Kanuka, Brooks, & Saranchuck,
2009). It echoes the practice of distance education that emphasized flexi-
bility of time, place, and pace of student learning.
Research suggests that the student experience varies considerably
and results in variable learning experiences (Jeffrey, Kinshuk, Atkins, Laurs,
Mann, 2006; Zepke, Leach, & Prebble, 2006), indicating a need to clarify
how a blended ap- proach can support learning.
Teacher Resistance to Technology
Despite the clear demonstration of the benefits of using
technology in education, there continues to be a marked reluctance by academics
to engage with online learning (Anderson, 2008).
Becker and Jokivirta (2007) also found that academics worldwide
reported low enthusiasm for using technology in learning. More recently, a
large-scale study (over 4,500 teachers) by Allen et al. (2012) found that 65%
of faculty were more afraid of teaching with technology than they were excited
by the prospect. Over the
past 15 years several factors have been identified as discouraging academic
staff from teaching in online environments, including inadequate support and
training, time for developing online materials, fears of failure, and beliefs
about the value of technology in education.
Mansvelt, Suddaby, O’Hara, and Gilbert (2009)
presented findings from an online survey of 408 teachers and 40 qualitative interviews ascertaining beliefs and experiences
of staff regarding e-learning professional development. They found that
managerial support, individual beliefs, and time allocation influenced the
attitude of faculty to attending training to improve their use of technology in
teaching. Allan (2007) also argued that using online learning for professional
development would not be effective unless account was taken of two factors: the
extra time involved in networked learning, and for people new to e-learning to
adjust to this type of study.
Greener
(2009, p. 267) reported that “online, the teacher's status can easily be
eroded, as learners can compare teacher-designed resources with video lectures
from across the world on similar topics and chat directly with experts in the
field through their blogs.” The potential for such comparisons inclined
teachers to be reluctant to expose themselves to ridicule or unflattering
comparisons.
Measuring Effective Blended Courses
There are a number of ways of judging the effectiveness of online
and classroom teaching practices. One of the most common is measuring student
learning. It is less common to evaluate a course against a set of pedagogical
principles. An advantage of evaluating courses using recog- nized criteria is
the removal of the third variable problem that comes into play when students’
learning outcomes are used as measurement. A number of factors other than
teaching effectiveness can influence student learning. Assessing online and
classroom components directly against established criteria is a more direct
measure of their quality.
B.
Methodology
This study was part of a larger study on student engagement in a
blended learning environment that involved both students and teachers (Jeffrey
et al., 2012). The purpose of this part
of the study was to:
1.
Identify what aspects of
their courses teachers put online and what they used in the classroom, and how
they explained these decisions.
2.
Compare the quality of the
online experiences to those of the classroom, using a set of student engagement
strategies identified from the literature.
Teachers were interviewed individually (between 1 and 2.5 hours)
and asked:
Ø How they decided what to put online and what to teach face-to-face
Ø For a detailed description of their classroom teaching (based on
the student engagement strategies).
Ø What they considered to be the advantages and disadvantages of
classroom teaching and online teaching.
Content analysis was used to interpret the interview data
(Neuendorf, 2002). The transcripts were read and key words and phrases
identified and recorded. These were then categorized according to theme and
labeled. All data was then sorted according to these categories. Data within
each group was then re-sorted into variations on the theme and these sub-groups
were also labeled.
Two reviewers evaluated each online learning site (inter-rater
reliability was 87%). The evalua- tion sheet used a detailed list of student
engagement strategies and each of these was rated using a four-point scale from
0 (not present), 1 (minimal presence), 2 (adequate presence) and 3 (good
presence). An overall score was obtained for each of the strategies. The data
on the use of en- gagement strategies used in the classroom was extracted from
the interview data and rated in a similar way. These two sets of data were used
for rating the two components of each course (online and classroom) on their
pedagogical value.
C.
Results :
The decision to put learning content online or use in the
classroom seems to be largely driven by the teacher’s perception of the
functions served by the two modes. Usefulness, ease of use, and student
pressure were also considerations.
Different Functions for Classroom and Online Contexts
Teachers commonly made three distinctions when discussing how they
used classroom or online contexts as they saw lectures, tutorials, and online
environments as serving different functions. Lectures were considered to be
appropriate for teaching theory, and while these could be made more interesting
with examples, theory was described by teachers as being dry and abstract but
“ they’re here to learn about theories as well as everything else,
that’s what university’s about, so
they’ve
got to have that component [lectures]” (Teacher 5).
Tutorials were regarded as the opportunity for students to
interact with theory at an applied level:
There’s actually quite a
separation between the lecture and the tutorial. The lecture fol-
lows
the textbook, it’s purely knowledge and theory-base, going along closely with
the textbook and the slides provided by the publisher. Then there’s the
tutorial, this is purely
applied
and problem solving. (Teacher 9)
Almost all teachers saw the lecture as
the main forum for the initial teaching of content and tuto- rials as the
consolidation of the lecture through activities. Most teachers also advocated
the im-
portance of the set text, for example “I still like the idea of a
textbook, a textbook is actually all
you
need” (Teacher 8) .
About half the teachers felt that too much content online was a
problem as it gave students a false sense of security and discouraged them from
attending class. It was also felt that too much mate- rial had the potential to
confuse students. The ease of putting
resources online and the plethora of Web-base resources such as YouTube was
offered as a significant factor in using the online learning site as a
repository, as explained by one teacher:
It was very easy to put up
the core material, including - the textbooks supplied slides. YouTube is very
good, I’m finding more and more stuff on YouTube where there’s either a video
that might explain a point, might have an advert, it might have a discussion or
something like that, that I can put online. And if it’s like two or three
degrees away from the subject or it doesn’t absolutely nail what I want to say
then I’ll put it online and say, “This is an additional resource or additional
material to read.”
(Teacher 3)
Comparing
Online and Classroom Application of Engagement Strategies
Teachers’ courses were evaluated on the
use of five engagement strategies that appeared in both online and classroom
modes.
Table 1. Presence of engagement
strategies in online and classroom modes
0= no strategy used; 1 = minimally developed strategy; 2 = adequate
developed strategy; and 3 = well developed
strategy.
Overall teachers put much more pedagogical effort into developing
and using classroom engage- ment strategies than online. However three teachers
(1, 2, and 4) come close to a balance between the two modes of teaching. What’s
more, they generally used high quality strategies. Three more (5, 6, and 7)
were strongly classroom focused, apart from ensuring their online components
were clearly structured. These teachers had fewer materials online. Teacher
number 6 used very good engagement strategies in class, and these may have
compensated for less attention online. The remaining three teachers occupied a
middle position. Below is an analysis of the comparison of the engagement
strategies in the two modes.
D.
Conclusions :
The emergence of blended learning is a
major trend in tertiary education (Bliuc,Goodyear, & Ellis, 2007). This
trend is being fueled by the accumulation of evidence that points to the
efficacy of a blended approach over either online or classroom alone (Oliver
& Trigwell, 2005).
However, there is a danger that blended
learning courses will fall far short of the potential if teachers do not change
their attitudes and practices to developing blended experiences. In the main,
teachers neither fully exploited the opportunities offered by online contexts
nor inte- grated the two modes to make their courses coherent for their
students. Only one teacher in this study recognized the importance of
developing a course that fully integrated both online and classroom components.
She thought about the strengths of both teaching modes and designed her course
to fit with these. Other teachers added an online component to an existing
classroom course. They expressed reservations about the role of technology and
argued that the teacher should be the central actor, with technology playing a
minor support role. These teachers seemed to view online technologies as being
mainly for access and information delivery efficiency rather than to support
students’ learning experiences.
Developing content for two contexts
increases teacher workload, and teachers complained about the time commitments
necessary to develop even minimal online components. This is an issue that must
be addressed by institutions. The benefits of a blended environment will only
be real- ized when multiple engagement opportunities afforded by the two
contexts are developed to pre- sent students with a range of different
experiences, individually and collaboratively. A critical aspect of this
development is the integration of the online and classroom components. As
others have pointed out, the key to a successful blended learning design is the
“ thoughtful
integration of classroom
face-to-face learning experiences with on-line learning experiences” (Garrison
& Kanuka, 2004, p. 96).
In 1986 Shuell said, “It is helpful to remember that what the
student does is actually more important in determining what is learned than
what the teacher does” (p.
429). We agree with this mostly; but we would add “what the teacher does first strongly influences what the students do ”.
Teachers are the gatekeepers to learning
experiences. Teachers through their selection and design of learning
experiences will influence the nature and quality of student learning. What
students learn is determined by what they have the opportunity to DO when they
engage in the experiences and activities designed by teachers.
E.
References
Jeffrey,
L. M., Milne, J., Suddaby. G., & Higgins, A. (2014). Blended learning: How teachers balance the blend of online and
classroom components. Journal of Information Technology Education:
Research, 13, 121-140. http://www.jite.org/documents/Vol13/JITEv13ResearchP121-140Jeffrey0460.pdf. 9 September 2016
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