I participated in the Hybrid Learning Pilot with two courses: ITEC-N411 and ITEC-N287. The approach I chose is the 50% f2f and 50% online. The attendance was a major concern; therefore I put a weekly task to be submitted online as a proof for utilizing the time allocated for independent learning weekly. The IL weekly activities varied: Case studies blogs, new topics discussions, projects journals, and traditional assignments. Some policies were established after the feedback collected from students during the first three weeks, those are:
1. The weekly IL started Sundays and ended Saturdays midnight
2. An announcement got published every Sunday describing the respective week’s IL task
In addition to the above, the students agreed to provide their personal emails to be used with the college emails as two additional communication methods for the weekly announcements as well as any additional required messages. The experience had an overall positive impact on the outcome of the semester, however, few areas for improvements were highlighted for similar experiences in the future.
It’s well known that the flexibility of the Hybrid learning approach is probably the most obvious advantage, which was the case for our BAS students that are mostly working students with serious family commitments. On top of that, the students benefited from the opportunity to dig deeper in the delivered topics and learn deeper on their own and using their own learning style. Such opportunity is much slimmer with pure f2f approach due to the limitation of time that forces the student to remain passive to a large degree in his learning process, given the previously highlighted commitments. On the other hand, students learning on their own pace while exercising a lot of time management techniques to meet the weekly deadlines. In brief, this experience allowed the students to further develop their independence, time management, research skills, and the sense of responsibility for their own learning.
The weekly deadlines however increased the stress for the students no matter how small the required task. This was one of the major changes in the style our students are used to, which left them uncomfortable. In a semester the students usually have three to four deadlines and a lot of them do the most in the last one week before any deadline. To have two weekly deadlines for two courses and sometimes more when other courses assessments are due certainly was an annoying element. One more challenge the pilot implied is slowing down the pace of the topics delivery in general compared to my previous experience running the same course fully f2f in spite of the deeper understanding benefit described above.
In my opinion the advantages are overweighing the encountered issues, which can be addressed and improved with better alternate strategies. Many ideas are there among which replacing the weekly deadlines with weekly reading and an optional discussion board with a weekly deadline for the teacher to address all the raised concerns by the students. The evaluation can be then on the students pattern analysis regarding the overall activity level in the optional discussion. We would love to brainstorm such alternate strategies to support this worldwide trend of online learning. After all, I believe we’ll be in a better position if we try to adapt to it rather than resist it.
Hi Barra, it sounds like it was a very successful project for you. I wonder though how much time did it take you to develop it? I would like to create my own blended learning courses but find it difficult to make time to plan how it will look and to learn how to use the software e.g. BBVista or Moodle. How was the experience for you - did you set specific times for yourself to review discussions/tasks or did you check every day which requires a completely different mindset to the one we're used to as classroom teachers at HCT? Did you ever wish you were back in the 'good old days' when all you had to do was stand in front of a class and talk at them - and then go home and relax without the niggling compulsion to check for updates to discussions etc?
ReplyDeleteStrange ... I have the same answer to all your questions ... Yes ... it was very time consuming experience specially the video recording ... I had to come up with specific time to check the posts because otherwise I was not able to keep up with all posts ... and I have not repeated the experience of flipped learning model anymore, because it simply doesn't fit with the nature of our teaching load currently.
ReplyDeleteHi Bara'a, Do you think the challenges that you faced with your BAS students are common to all of our students? What I mean to say is that although you said "the advantages are overweighing the encountered issues......can be addressed and improved with better alternate strategies", you reached the conclusion that 50% blended learning approach did not fit very well with our current teaching load and therefore never repeated the experience again. I have similar concern with my proposed usage of a social media collaboration tool. As I am planning to introduce this to a level 4 section, the challenge(s) may even be deeper than with your BAS section. You said the “experience allowed the students to further develop their independence, time management, research skills, and the sense of responsibility for their own learning” and my question is how much of these skills did they possess as they joined HCT and how can we measure the improvement as they graduate. I guess, the answer would be it is very difficult to measure and may not even be very profound change in their overall behaviour. I think the key skills you mentioned had to be embraced, practiced and developed from early on in their life to have a definite presence in their long term learning culture.
ReplyDeleteIt was very time consuming process indeed, and I figured that I cannot afford with the norms of my teaching load. Moreover, the disadvantages that I was referring to are more related to the students experience, like: the confusion due to the new structure, and the weekly deadline of graded work that they had to present. Those are two things that the Management need to look into together with the teaching load to devise a workable model for Hybrid Learning experiences.
ReplyDeleteI think it'll be a bit harder with Level 4, but I second your opinion on starting this new approach with a younger group to continue with them the following semester. This way you can answer for yourself the difficult question of measure patterns of students skills development year on year.