Overview
Blended Learning Essentials is a short blended learning course that integrates a self-paced and instructor-led curriculum for the purpose of helping faculty design a blended learning design for their courses. With emerging interested in blended learning simmering on campus, I teamed up with colleagues to develop a course that answers the following questions:
What is blended learning at the university?
What does a blended course design look like?
What academic technologies and other resources are available to faculty for blended learning?
What are best practices for implementing a blended learning course design?
Understanding that faculty have a diversity of prior knowledge on subjects such as course design, blended learning, and academic technologies, we decided to focus on outlining a self-paced course with semesterly opportunities to join a live faculty-led cohort to discuss the course materials and work on course designs together.
Course Outline
With these essential questions and audience in mind, we came up with the following course outline:
Modules = Self-paced; Day = Instructor-led
Module 0: Anchoring Our Understanding
Module 1: The What and Why of Blended Learning
Day 1: Exploring Blended Learning Fundamentals in Your Context
Module 2: Designing Your Blended Learning Lesson or Unit
Day 2: Developing Your Blended Course Design Strategy
Module 3: Finding and Creating Resources for your Blend
Day 3: Sharing your Curated and Developed Resources
Module 4: Implementing and Evaluating Your Blend
Day 4: Sharing Strategies for Implementing and Evaluating Your Blend in Your Context
Module 5: Conclusion
Faculty Interviews
As we discussed each section we came to the conclusion that our content would be enhanced by faculty interviews. When learning something new, faculty often like to hear about a peer's journey and any disciplinary specific insights that may resonate with them. I leveraged my network of faculty already doing this work and sent them an invitation to be interviewed for the project along with a series of interview questions. I coordinated scheduling and setup times to interview them in our studio.