Oct 01 2007
Sep 28 2007
Learning for the ICPS from TQEF Project
Aug 15 2007
Reflections from the Caribbean
I’m copying this comment onto the blog, it’s from Prof. Tom Franks another member of our team, who’s recently returned from the Caribbean, where (he tells us!) he’s been delivering a face to face section of BCID’s blended learning course.
I’m hoping that it’ll spark a response from other readers – we’d like this blog to provide an opportunity to continue our conversations with more experienced ‘blended learning practitioners’, so if you’ve something to say please leave us a comment.
Thanks for your interest in our project!
bye for now
Lucy
As an experiment in ‘edublogging’ I post a few thoughts arising out of my recent assignment in Trinidad. This was the ‘talk-and-chalk’ phase of a 20-credit masters module. It is followed by a 10-week e-learning phase.
• It is difficult to engage the students (who are all working full-time) on e-learning activities unless they can see an immediate benefit in terms of assessment.
• The discussion board on Blackboard arouses no interest at all. We already know that it is very cumbersome. I wait to see whether the edublog is more user-friendly.
• Blackboard retains its value as way to post course materials such as references, presentations of group discussions, and to manage formal processes such as submission of assignments and course evaluations.
• Busy people only communicate through their ‘own’ e-mail. Most of the students in the Caribbean and Tajikistan never look at their University e-mail, and I think the same also applies to many Bradford-based students as well. We need to investigate whether tools like Blackboard can be modified to accommodate non-University e-mail addresses.
• For many of our students, including those working full-time, the social interaction in the lecture room and at seminars is an important part of their learning experience. We need to try and build this in to our blended learning approaches (and it is vital to retain it for BCID’s customary full-time student market).
Tom
Aug 02 2007
What do we mean by Blended Learning?
This are just my initial thoughts. Let’s have some discussion about this and then we can use this to make a permanent page that i can add to the site. Look forward to hearing from you soon,
Lucy
Blended learning as I understand the term means learning that involves a range of different teaching tools and strategies to enhance the students’ learning experience. So for example, a student might attend a lecture, participate in a discussion, read an article or web page, contribute to a wiki or blog or reflect on their own experience (for example of attending a demonstration or interviewing someone). All of these experiences may be learning opportunities.
Blended learning can also be used to describe new learning opportunities that involve the use of ICT and in particular web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and blogs.
Within the context of this project however we are using it in its broadest sense, ie. although we are including learning technologies based on ICT we are not exclusively focusing on these.
Our primary objective is to find ways to make our courses accessible, relevant and attractive to practitioners, and we are looking for the most appropriate blended learning options to help us do this.
