In love with blended learning...
I can honestly say that I am in love with blended learning! Done right I think that blended learning can stimulate student to more cognitive work. However, it is not a tool to be used lightly and constructing good courses for blended learning requires a great deal of knowledge in different fields. The activities online and IRL has to fit to their purpose and have a real meaning to students.
As a tool for blended learning many, including myself, use a learning management system (LMS), and that might partly be dangerous since you as a teacher might fall for the idea that all the answers to blended learning resides within the LMS system. One thing that the ONL171 course has really opened my eyes to is that this is not the case! Not at all!
![By Matbury (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Community_of_inquiry_model.svg)
Just as explained in the image by Matbury (Own work) ([CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons) there are three dimensions in blended learning (social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence) and they all need to be addressed in designing courses using blended learning techniques. Vaughn et al has written a nice introduction in this topic, stating that we need to create purposeful communities in courses with blended learning to ensure good learning experiences.
So how can we achieve a course design for blended learning leading to these three dimensions? One thing it clearly shows is that we need to be present also online both as teachers and students, otherwise it will not work. As teachers we also need to make the procedure for designing for blended learning visible and understand exactly what we want our students to do and achieve during the course. Part of this is understanding where our students are when it comes to understand how to work in blended courses. Here, I think that the Five Stage Model by Gilly Salmon can be very useful.
During the autumn I will use my new knowledge in this field to try to work towards better student communities in my blended course in project management. I will get back to you if I succeeded in this or not!
