Rethinking What We Do and How We Do it

Today starts the second week for the BlendKit 2012 course where this week we are asked to ponder these questions:

• Is there value in student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction in all courses regardless of discipline?
• What role does interaction play in courses in which the emphasis is on declarative knowledge (e.g., introductory “survey” courses at the lower-division undergraduate level) or, similarly, in courses that cultivate procedural knowledge (e.g., technical courses requiring the working of problem sets)?
• As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?
• What factors might limit the feasibility of robust interaction face-to-face or online?

I hope that when my group of hybrid developing faculty ponder these questions that they find that interaction is important for any discipline because when students experience a variety of perspectives such as those of their peers, rather than that of just the teacher or just the book, they tend to think critically rather than making the assumption that there is only one true way.

Also today, I was able to attend the synchronous webinar provided each week as part of this course. The guest speaker, Dylan, shared how he had offered his course in hybrid format but decided to meet with half of his class one day of the week and the other half another day of the week. He like the intimacy of the smaller group but quickly realized that it was more work for him. I suggested he consider team teaching with the hyflex model discussed in this article http://sloanconsortium.org/effective_practices/using-quothyflexquot-course-and-design-process which in similar to hybrid in that a portion of class is online and face-to-face, however, students can attend either online or on campus and the work load is shared.

Lastly, I watched the TED Talk video suggested "Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves" which suggests that motivated kids will find a way to learn. This was well worth my time and I recommend it as food for thought as to why we educate in the traditional models: