OLC Innovate 2018 Blog - Blended Programming
Welcome to OLC Innovate 2018, April 18-20, 2018 in Nashville! Here you’ll find travel tips, local information, and conference updates. Check back often!
Contributed by: Dr. Sherri Restauri, Director, Coastal Office of Online Learning, Coastal Carolina University
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There are 20 presentations at Innovate 2018 matching the “blended learning” criteria, based on self-selection of this option during the submission process. But what is “Blended Learning”, and how does that apply to our OLC Innovate 2018 conference this year? |
As early as 2007, Picciano and Dziuban (Eds.) noted that the term blended learning acknowledged the importance space between a fully online course and a course that meets in a traditional, face-to-face modality. Rather, “blended” courses employ a combination of methodologies in which students and/or instructors participate in the learning exercise remote from one another, typically utilizing technologies that allow for synchronous or asynchronous interactions through the term. Picciano and Dziuban further clarify that due to differing terminology used across our various colleges and universities throughout the world, we oftentimes see an interchange of such terms of hybrid, mixed modality, and flexible learning with the term blended learning. The primary distinguishing characteristics of these courses is that some learning occurs in a traditional, face-to-face environment, while some learning occurs remotely. This percentage may differ substantially regarding how much face-to-face and how much online work may occur; likewise, our pedagogical approaches to successfully teaching across our disciplines may also show significant distinctions. (You can read more from this excellent book entitled Blended Learning: Research Perspectives here).
Research since this book was published has continued to promote the growth in knowledge regarding best practices that the higher education population works to adhere to within our college campuses. Characteristics of strong online and hybrid online programs will easily and readily be reflected down at the individual course level with the presence of courses that meet and/or exceed these best practice standards in their own individualized and discipline-specific manner. Some of what you will see this year at OLC Innovate 2018 across numerous different presentation format types with an emphasis on blended include:
- A hands-on workshop on mobile-based video journaling with Karen Rege and Robin Armstrong (Wednesday)
- Another hands-on workshop exploring immersive learning and mixed reality with Robbie Melton and Denise Malloy (Wednesday)
- An emerging ideas session where participants will get a quick-start to building their own blended learning designs with Brenda Such (Wednesday)
- An education session allowing participants to collaborate with resources and networking opportunities with Linda Futch, Kelvin Thompson, and Jason Snart (Thursday)
- An education session presenting a new model for use in hybrid learning, the DUAL model that incorporates UDL with Tianhong Shi and Irene Knokh (Thursday)
- A conversations, not presentations that allows participants to collaborate on developing strategies as well as barriers at our own institutions in order to find best practices among us with Whitney Kilgore, Mary Niemiec, and Cali Morrison (Friday)
- An emerging ideas session outlining best practices that yielded tremendous success in hybrid and online courses through a faculty monetary incentive grant system with Sherri Restauri (Friday)
Come join us for these and the many other Blended Special Sessions at this year’s OLC Innovate conference!