Improving practice

Online and blended learning can obviously take many different forms, and my own experience is rather rudimentary. It totals two courses, one pure online course and the other a blended course combining online with offline teaching. The online aspects of these courses were, for purely non-academic reasons, kept extremely simple. For instance, the pure online course offered participants no direct student-teacher interaction of any kind and student collaboration was encouraged but largely left to the students. The blended course had plenty of face-to-face interaction during classroom sessions, but little in the way of online activities of a similar kind.

There is in other words substantial room for improvement. Taking the cue from Solomon’s Five-stage model (Solomon 2013), both courses could start with a mandatory introduction to the online environment and to online teaching. This would give students an opportunity to acquaint themselves with the technological aspects of online learning such as video meetings, chat boards and learning blogs. Many of these are intended to emulate the interaction that takes place in a classroom, and it is essential that the students master them at an early stage.

These technologies can then subsequently be used to aid students in their learning process, whereby the technological comfort zone can be extended step-by-step. Initial interaction could if possible involve a video meeting, possibly in the form of a video lecture to lower the participation threshold. Written instructions could here be elaborated upon in the presence of the students, allowing them to pose questions. Subsequent meetings should to a greater extent involve the students, for instance in small discussion groups under some supervision. Ideally, students would soon be able to organize their own online learning networks, providing the teacher with a possibility to focus on other aspects of teaching.

Central among these other activities is feedback, or formative assessment. If student-teacher face-to-face interaction is limited in an online setting, other forms of feedback become more important. This for instance includes individual feedback on assignments, feedback that provides the student a clear signal regarding what has been learnt, where lacunas still are present, where more information is available and how this could be integrated.

These various suggestions may all be classified as various forms of scaffolding, defined as a “guidance or support from teachers, instructors or other knowledgeable persons that facilitate students to achieve their goals in learning” (Farhana Jumaat and Tasir 2014, p. 74). They can variously be sorted under the headings procedural scaffolding which assists students in using available tools and resources, conceptual scaffolding that aids students in deciding what to consider in learning, strategic scaffolding offering alternative ways of dealing with problems in learning, and metacognitive scaffolding that supports students regarding what to think during learning (Farhana Jumaat and Tasir 2014).

Yet, irrespective of the labels, much could be improved simply by copying and adapting elements from ONL181 (2018).

References

Farhana Jumaat, N., Tasir, Z. (2014). Instructional Scaffolding in Online Learning Environment: A Meta-Analysis. Proceedings of the IEEE, April 2014, DOI: 10.1109/LaTiCE.2014.22

ONL181 (2018). https://opennetworkedlearning.wordpress.com/

Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html