Week 7

Migrating a Face-to-Face Course to a Blended Learning Course: Best Practices

For variety of reasons, many businesses and schools are opting to offer online or blended distance learning in addition to or instead of traditional face-to-face learning environments. For trainers and teachers, it is important to understand differences in planning face-to-face instruction and planning for distance learning. This post will provide a guide to some of the most important considerations when revising a face-to-face course for use as a blended learning course.

Rovai and Hope (2004) identify three key considerations that should be addressed when revising a face-to-face course for distance learning. First, many face-to-face courses are teacher-centered. A preferred model is student-centered.  In a student-centered model, the instructor becomes more of a facilitator of student learning by supporting students in developing self-direction in their learning and helping students become critical thinkers. Second, instructors and facilitators must reach out to students to prevent a sense of isolation and help students adjust to a self-directed learning environment.  This requires the student to become an active learner rather that a passive learner.  Third, building a sense of community among learners provides additional support and a sense of belonging that is critical to student success in a distance learning situation.  The course designer and facilitator must provide tools and opportunities that allow students to interact with other students.

Based on these three considerations, here are some tips for successfully reconfiguring a face-to-face course to create an effective blended-model distance learning course:

Creating a student-centered environment

• Understand the technology used to deliver the course and be able to support students in using that technology (Piskurich & Chauser, n.d.).
• Provide a lesson plan that includes a variety of activities to provide students with engaging and interactive opportunities for learning in which the student discover and construct knowledge.
• Specify expected learning results (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek, 2009).
• Provide a detailed syllabus to provide student with general course expectations, specific assignment requirements, schedule, deadlines (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2004).
• Avoid "Death by PowerPoint". Use polling, small group discussion, short formative assessments, and other activities to keep students engaged and attentive.

Helping students be successful in a distance learning environment

• Provide opportunities for students to practice using technological resources prior to when they have to use such technologies for graded assignments (Simonson et. al., 2009). Allowing students to experiment with access to courses and modules, posting and responding to discussion prompts, responding to polling or assessment tools, and submitting assignments to drop boxes will prevent panic and frustration when these tools are used in the actual class.
• Be in constant contact with students to support their efforts to become self-managed, self-motivated learners.
• Provide a discussion area where students can post questions and receive answers from the facilitator. It is important that the instructor respond to such questions in a timely manner, and students should be provided with reasonable expectations of when they can expect a response (e.g. 24 or 48 hours) (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2004).
• Foster collaboration, cooperation, and supportive culture. Help students understand the value of collaboration in the learning process.
• Provide opportunities for students to share information about themselves to build connections between students and the facilitator (Simonson et. al., 2009).
• Encourage students to seek help from colleagues, not just from the facilitator.

Encouraging and supporting student interaction

• Establish protocols and expectations related to student interactions, such as demonstrating respect for others' opinions, responding to others using positive, non-threatening language, and being courtesy to fellow students. If needed, address individual issues.
• Consider breaking the class in to small groups for focused interaction and then share out the results to the larger group.
• Document minimum requirements for written student interaction based on length of posting (e.g. 3-5 paragraphs, 600-750 words, etc.) and the number and or frequency of postings (e.g. a minimum of 5 postings each week made on at least two separate days).
• Use a rubric to help students understand expectations.
• Grade discussions for participation and quality.
• As an instructor, monitor discussion to help students stay on topic and ask open-ended questions to help students think more deeply and subtly provide direction students to consider key.
• Refrain from answering all postings; a rule of thumb is to respond to no more than every fourth posting (Simonson et. al., 2009).
• Allow students to develop discussions with minimal intervention unless the discussion goes far off topic or to help redirect discussion to foster additional interaction and learning.

References

Durrington, V., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J. (2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190–193. Retrieved from http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/433631/strategies_for_enhancing_student_interactivity_in_an_online_environment/

Piskurich, G. & Chauser,J. (n.d.). Facilitating Online Learning [Video].  Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5693699&Survey=1&47=5871191&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1.

Rovai, A. & Jordan, H. (2004 August).  Blended learning and sense of community: A comparative analysis with traditional and fully online graduate courses. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(2), ISSN: 1492-3831.  Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/192.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.