Tag: Blended learning

Blended by us or differentiated by learners: the future of courseware design

Ten years ago, in 2011, I wrote a blog entitled ‘there’s no such things as blended learning’, which essentially suggested that all learning experiences are blended to some extent, making the term irrelevant.

Since then, the boundaries between contexts, technologies and experiences have become even more blurred. Yet rather than discarding the blended terminology, there is simply a profusion of new terms, hybrid and hyflex, being the current vogue. Oh, and ‘flipped’, which is presented to the ill-informed as something new and radical. The problem is these terms are driven by us, as institutions, to define the nature of our course offering, rather than being conceptualised as the learner experiences them.

I am comfortable using the term ‘blend’, alongside ‘mix’, ‘selection’, ‘options’ and many synonyms when talking about courseware designed for a specific delivery context. The context of the learner is key. Any contemporary learner journey is going to involve a ‘smorgasbord’ of learning material, voices to be exposed to, individuals to share reflections with, and physical, social and cultural contexts in which learning is occurring. I can’t imagine a context in which a learner only learns through one communication mode, be it a lecture or workshop.

Learning can, and should, be as ‘flexible’ as possible. Informed by the principles of Universal Design for Learning, learning should be malleable enough by the learner to suit their evolving needs and context. Learners should be able to discard elements of the learning journey, take shortcuts rather than revisit existing learning if they choose. Equally, they should be able to explore around the edges of the path designed for them; to go ‘off-piste’ if you like.

Good learning design and good teaching encourage the learner to re-contextualise newly gained knowledge and experience in the light of previous learning. Given that each individual’s context is unique, it is essential that learners should blend their own learning experience. Learners should be enabled to make-meaning for themselves. Good teachers know this.

In practice, the terms blended, hybrid and hyflex, are really being used by institutions to define the nature of their ‘product’, rather than the nature of the learning experience. Institutions choose to package what they sell under different labels, it’s a marketing pitch, “now with added webinars” or “now with extra VLE resources available”. Some senior managers have assumed the opportunities for off-campus communication engagement in the internet era represent a new alternative pedagogy. In reality, the ‘alternative’ pedagogies have always been there. There have always been skilled faculty who reached beyond the lecture or seminar room and engaged learners in their own context. Designing courses that are suitable for open navigation is counter-intuitive for most institutions. The focus has been on designing a learning pathway, not pathways. It’s easier for institutions that way.

What has changed since 2011 is the range of communication technologies available for learners to choose, or not choose, to interact with content, experiences and each other. Courseware in my view can, and should, be designed with open navigation, open pathways, so a learner can choose how they want to arrive at a preconceived set of outcomes. We can provide an optimal route to success for the less adventurous, but choice empowers. Essentially, learners can differentiate their journey from others based on their context and personal needs. Hey, why don’t we use the term ‘differentiated learning’… although that sounds familiar. Wonder if anyone has used that term before? Forgive my sarcasm, but I do wonder whether we need to find new language to describe the aspirations for our courseware as it is experienced by learners.

If we acknowledge that everything is to some extent blended, then what term would encourage courses to be designed to enable learning journeys suitable for personalisation by the learner. Differentiated learning is the best I’ve got.

Photo credit: Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

There is no such thing as blended-learning.

There is no such thing as blended-learning. Or rather there has never been anything except ‘blended’ learning. Of course we all know that, we’re just lazy with our language and as Orwell(1) said “…if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Maybe it’s worth thinking about the terminology we use.

I have no problem with a conversation about the right blend, indeed I rather like the verb ‘blend’, it’s the noun ‘blended/ing’ I find problematic. Let’s stop talk about the ‘blended approach’ and describe instead our model of learning. Let’s agree on our underpinning theoretical structures (if you like that sort of thing), identify our context and that of our learners (culture, expectations, destinations, prior experience, infrastructure), and let’s describe our model.

Teaching Online 2008 - VoiceThread in Sakai
Teaching Online 2008 – VoiceThread in Sakai

What we have in the contemporary ‘blended’ debate is a healthy concern with what students’ do, and where, how and when they do it. Rather than teaching our one-hour lecture and our two our seminar and despatching students’ into the dark dusty stacks or the ‘short-term loan’ mêlée, we now seek to engineer the ‘blend’ of approaches we want them to take. The scrap for the library carousel and scouring the desks of the studious for the only copy of the ‘reference-only’ gem has now been replaced by a broader concern for the ‘design’ of the students’ learning. We blended twenty years ago and we blend today, only the context has changed. This is a good thing.

So why don’t we call it that, why don’t we call it ‘our learning model’? Since here is so much pressure on Universities to differentiate themselves why don’t we seek to develop, articulate, refine and promote the Massey Learning Model, the Athabasca Learning Model, the Wisconsin Learning Model.

‘Blended’, like many terms in education, has been in vogue and now risks being taken for granted and misused. Alternative terminology also has its supporters; ‘mixed-mode’ and ‘hybrid’ are also used synonymously. The most common conception of blended learning is one in which there is a combination of face to face, real-time, physically present, teaching and computer-mediated, essentially online, activity. The term has come to imply an articulated and integrated instructional strategy. The term blended is often used to imply something more than the evolution of digital materials ‘supplementing’ face-to-face instruction, rather it implies that each ‘mode’ can serve a student’s learning in different ways. In practice this might mean that a two-hour lecture and a two-hour seminar become a web based lecture, a face-to-face seminar and several web based activities, allowing more time for contributions, more time for voices to be heard.

The contemporary argument is often simply maths. In a class of 40 where one would hope to have a thoughtful 10-15 minute contribution from each student, a seminar would need to be 8 -10 hours long. Online that same reflective and expressive opportunity is unbounded by class-time.

There are many reasons to reconsider the reliance on face-to-face instruction.

Participation, the opportunity to contribute, is one. But there are also opportunities for content to be paused, reviewed, annotated, questioned, spliced and shared in ways that live synchronous face-to-face contact cannot be. Media-rich course content, video and audio, interactive resources, formative assessments, all serve to allow the student to choose not just when, but also where, to study. The ‘where’ question then also gives rise to the other popular motif amongst University leaders, mobile learning.

The reason it is so difficult to establish what the right ‘blend’ is, is simply because the context of the learning determines the nature of the blend. The students’ context establishes what can and can’t be done in a specific mode, what time parameters exist, what technology restrictions and what assessment evidence is ultimately required.

Perhaps the biggest argument in favour of a blended approach (20 years ago and today) is simply that it requires engagement. Managing to access content and activities, participate appropriately and incrementally develop a portfolio of formative assessment towards a final summative goal, requires, self-management, discipline, at least some digital literacy today, and some motivation. Turning up and sitting in class is not hugely onerous (although arguably it demonstrates time-keeping).

So if you’re an institution considering the ‘Blend’, I’d like to offer a suggestion. Don’t. Instead consider the nature of your context (past-present-future) and articulate the learning model around which your exemptions and exceptions will develop, articulate a learning model to rally staff to a shared concept of learning (believe me, ‘blended’ won’t excite them) and articulate a model that learners will say “I recognise that, that’s my concept of myself as a learner, I’ll go there”.

Take a diagnostic model (here’s one I prepared earlier…) and define your own unique model of learning (better still invite me to come and work with you on it), and I guarantee you will be blending (verb) but you won’t have to try and sell the stillborn ‘blend’ (noun).

(1) Politics and the English Language” (1946) George Orwell

Contextual Learning not Blended Learning

Terminology in education is a fascinating thing. Words are after all concepts. Concepts change, evolve and mutate frequently more quickly than the words associated with them along the way. Learning once meant to go to the place of learning associated with what one wanted to know, the monastery to learn about religion, the blacksmith to learn about metals, and learning was learnt at the foot of the master. As European notions of learning evolved so did our concept of what was valuable to be learnt. The book gave rise to libraries, and libraries to Universities. Where else would one go to study the ‘learning’ in the books?

Our concept of learning has now reached well beyond the word itself, and so we have created prisms through which to view its process, pedagogy, andragogy, heutagogy; and an array of theoretical lenses, constructivist, social-constructivist, connectivist.

No where is this mis-match of word and concept change more evident than in the very new domains associated with e-learning in its multitude of forms. Even a ‘simple’ concept such as ‘online’ when associated with learning in the 1980s usually meant CBT (Computer-Based Training and a dedicated PC ), in the mid 1990s with home based dial-up browser based access (lots of CMC- computer-mediated-conferencing), in the mid 2000s with moderately rich multi-media VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments). In 2011 being online can mean all of the above, and access through tablets, television, game-stations and hand-held devices, in the office, at home and literally anywhere there is a wireless or data access point. Being online is changing.

Blended is the perfect example of this. Blended as a concept becomes fairly meaningless the more it is discussed. The addition of some online (see above!) activity to a campus based programme was in the 1990s deemed ‘blended’, although many would suggest a blending of lecture and self-study, reading and discussion had long been a feature. Blended meant blended with technology. But, as the technology environment evolves (the current notion is the ‘digital ecology’), the nature of the ‘blended’ learning experience necessarily changes. This environment or ecology is fluid, and variable (by social access and geography most notably) and so the nature of the learning opportunities associated with it are also fluid.

It is not only the contemporary nature of technology, its ‘here and now-ness’, it is also the contextual nature of technology. The choices I make about what I am prepared to access and when are not the same as someone who happens to be my age, or share my job title, or live in the same street. My context is unique to me. Hence my ‘blended’ opportunity is totally unique to me.

Learning designers who attempt to design effective ‘blended’ learning opportunities frequently fail to satisfy their students’ expectations. Not because some are digital natives and some are not, as Open University research demonstrates. So why? Because my notion and your notion of blended are simply different. What I can do as a learning designer is to design into your opportunities for study, into the learning that I am able to support and believe is appropriate, the flexibility for you to make the very best use of your context. With your digital ecology context, your prior learning context, your social context and your professional context, we can design learning that allows you to ‘blend’ it into a meaningful learning pattern for you. It doesn’t matter if we mean different things with the words we use. Blended should come to represent as a concept the choices we facilitate not the technology we provide.

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