Future Learn Blended Learning – week 3 summary

Week 3 presented.

In week 3 we looked at: systems, tools and resources for blended learning.

Virtual Learning Environments

First we looked at virtual learning environments (VLEs). VLEs provide teachers with a framework to allow them to organise learning activities and use available tools to create interactive, active learning components. They usually have controlled access, and present material specific to a learner’s course. They often include features to allow learners to participate and generate their own content.

I am aware of 2 VLEs – Moodle and Blackboard. This course allowed us to view an example course set up in Moodle. My institution uses Blackboard, however the library currently has no exposure on it.

More Tools

We were presented with a wide array of possible active learning tools that can be used:

Group / Class Forums Quizzes Padlet Google Slides Video creation Twitter chat Tricider – decision making tool, where contributors can vote Audacity – to create audio content Google Docs

Google Maps Prezi Balsamiq – brain storming tool Typeform – to allow user to enter text Survey Monkey Wordpress Google Hangouts ThingLink – allow creation of interactive multimedia image

Many of these are freely accessible on the Internet. They allow teachers and learners to collaborate, share, create and present material. Selecting the appropriate tool for a learning activity is important; it needs to fit the objective and pedagogy that you are using.

Open Educational Resources OERs

OERs are resources that are created and made available for others to share. They can be created by teachers and learners – helping learners to develop their own digital literacy skills.

Benefits:

• Recognition of learning and teaching abilities
• Recognition of staff member
• Promotion of school / faculty or institution
• Used in marketing / promotion of institution
• Efficiency savings of shared resources in terms of cost and time

OERs are often presented under Creative Commons License, allowing re-use.

The course presented a number of places where you can search for OERs. It was a bit overwhelming and I struggled to find library-related skills resources. Another course member pointed out the Jorum website which had a featured theme of Information and Digital Literacy Skills – here there were 191 resources.

The course presented a number of case studies from teaching staff and learners who had created OERs

Consider:

Looking for OERs was quite difficult as material is often created for a specific purpose or may be too generic to be applicable. However we have found some library skills resources and direct students to them.

Future Learn: Blended Learning - week 2 summary

Week 2 - an introduction to the pedagogy of blended learning.

We started off by looking at different theories and teaching approaches that might be applicable to blended learning:

Teaching Strategies

Constructivist Pedagogy – learners construct their own knowledge & meaning through experience; involves real world experience where teachers act as facilitators. A case study was presented where students were using a recording tool to record their activities which they could then review and discuss with their tutor.

Social Constructivism – individuals learn as a result of social interaction and collaboration with others. A case study was presented where students used flickr and facebook to share images and videos of their work. This gave students an opportunity to share and reflect on what they had done; they could take pride in what they had achieved; the material produced could be used as a revision tool.

Problem-based Learning – individuals learn as a result of active learning, using real-world scenarios; also involves social learning. A case study was presented where students were developing creative skills and were actively engaged in their activities, professional skills applicable to the workplace were also being developed.

I don’t’ have any teaching qualifications so having formal definitions of various pedagogies was interesting. These can provide a framework to use when thinking about how learning can be enhanced by the use of technologies.

Many of the strategies and activities described here would be applicable to teaching and helping learners develop their information skills. We ground our teaching very much in the practical application of skills to solve likely problems encountered in the workplace.

Tools

The week we also started to look at some tools:

NearPod ( https://nearpod.com/ ) – this is a tool that allows you to create teaching content (eg powerpoint presentations and quizzes), which can then be accessed by learners via mobile devices

Interactive whiteboard – within classrooms, this allows teachers to present interactive content that learners can engage with

Video / Audio input using multimedia tools

Google Classroom – activities can be structure ready for learners to follow

These tools are presented as “free” to use.

Matching Pedagogy with Technology

The next section of this week encouraged us to think about what technologies would enhance which teaching strategies

Digital Literacy Skills Audit

We were asked to complete a digital skills audit – my score was 160 / 250. Looking at the results some of my low scores relate to: using a VLE (which we don’t have access to), use social chat / discussion tools and using a webcam.

The library doesn’t have a presence on the VLE and we are not encouraged to participate which I think is a real shame and a big missed opportunity. We do try to encourage academic staff to include our content in their courses.

I am going to try to promote the comments facilities of our blogs to see if learners are interested in using that. We do use Twitter although there is little interaction there.

Using a webcam is something that I could consider when creating our demonstration videos.

Border College & Blended Learning

A case study was presented of Border College which was using blended learning extensively. Some key aspects that were mentioned included:

CPD for teachers – who developed new skills when creating content for blended learning

Learners – contributed to content, were more involved in their own learning, took more responsibility for their learning, had more interaction with each other

Consider:

Another attendee pointed out that evidence of learning may need to be retained for a period of time (for example for proof of qualifications) which may be difficult when using open tools outside the normal assessment structures.

It should be noted that although these tools are promoted as “free” to use, users have to create accounts and provide personal information which no doubt is used by the providers for other uses.

Tools Introduced:

NearPod ( https://nearpod.com/ )

Google Classroom