Blended Teaching and Learning: Community-sourced Insights from Accelerate 2017

Concurrent Session 6
Blended

Session Materials

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Brief Abstract

This presentation will build upon our 2017 OLC Accelerate workshop with curated insights from  participants in order to frame blended learning in the context of institutional change management. Attendees will be guided through resource-sharing and networking opportunities as we explore successes and challenges related to developing blended curricula.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Linda S. Futch, University of Central Florida

Dr. Linda S. Futch is the Interim Direction, Instructional Design, for the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida. Her duties cover instructional design, technical support for online courses, and management of the course management system. Linda has been instrumental in guiding faculty development for online courses and developing systems to support faculty and students. She has developed curriculum and delivered instruction in business, high school, community college, and higher education. For her doctoral dissertation, Linda studied blended learning at a large metropolitan university and is currently studying the design of successful blended courses.

Co-presenter: Kelvin Thompson, University of Central Florida

A popular speaker and facilitator, Dr. Kelvin Thompson regularly addresses groups throughout the US on topics related to online/blended learning and educational technology while he serves as the Executive Director of the University of Central Florida's (UCF) Center for Distributed Learning (http://cdl.ucf.edu) with a faculty appointment as a graduate faculty scholar in UCF's College of Education & Human Performance. Dr. Thompson has collaborated on the design of hundreds of online and blended courses over the past twenty years and is active in the online education community. Kelvin developed the BlendKit Course open courseware (http://bit.ly/blendkit) as part of UCF's Blended Learning Toolkit, and he also co-hosts TOPcast: The Teaching Online Podcast available on iTunes and at http://topcast.online.ucf.edu. His personal research interests center around how interaction affects learner engagement, and information on his Online Course Criticism qualitative evaluation model for facilitating the scholarship of teaching and learning in online and blended environments is available online (http://onlinecoursecriticism.com). Kelvin Thompson holds an EdD in curriculum and instruction and an MA in instructional systems technology from UCF and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from The Florida State University. Curriculum vitae is available online at http://bit.ly/kelvin_cv.

Co-presenter: Jason Snart, College of DuPage

Dr. Jason Snart is Professor of English and Chair of Literature, Creative Writing, and Film at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL. He earned his Ph.D from the University of Florida and his research interests include hybrid/blended learning, 1-1/BYOD teaching models, and mobile learning. His books include Making Hybrids Work: An Institutional Framework for Blending Online and Face-to-Face Instruction in Higher Education (NCTE, 2017); Hybrid Learning: The Perils and Promise of Blending Online and Face-to-Face Instruction in Higher Education (Praeger, 2010); and The Torn Book: UnReading William Blake's Marginalia (Susquehanna UP, 2006).

Extended Abstract

The 2017 New Media Consortium’s Horizon Report says blended learning “is on the rise at universities and colleges. The affordances blended learning offers are now well understood, and its flexibility, ease of access, and the integration of sophisticated multimedia and technologies are high among the list of appeals” (Adams Becker, et al., 2017, p. 4). This learning model is indeed on the rise at many colleges and universities, and blended courses, even whole programs, are not necessarily brand new innovations for many campuses. But there is still much work to be done to see the great potential of the blended model emerge, and thrive, across higher education. Blended learning is no longer the new kid on the block for many institutions, but to realize its full potential, especially scaled across an institution, we need more opportunities to share practices, strategies, and challenges.

Can we create a community change management plan to share ideas and strategies to implement blended learning?  

This presentation will continue the effective-practice sharing from our OLC Accelerate 2017 workshop, which focused on implementing and growing blended-learning courses and programs. We will provide blended-learning resources and will guide attendees through networking opportunities to share change-management successes and challenges related to developing blended curricula at the institutional level.  

Engagement Strategies:  Participants will be encouraged to ask questions, network and add to the discussion.

Takeaways: Website and google docs will be included as part of the resources from the session.  Participant will leave with a variety of resources and a network of people to help brainstorm issues.

Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Davis, A., Freeman, A., Hall Giesinger, C., & Ananthanarayanan, V. (2017). NMC horizon report: 2017 higher education edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.