Getting Started with Blended Learning

How do I integrate online and face-to-face instruction? (ASCD Arias)

William Kist

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781416621195
• eBook ISBN: 9781416621225
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Do you want to incorporate purposeful and effective online learning into your classes but aren't sure where to begin? Here's the perfect introductory guide to planning a hybrid class for grades 4–12. Author and educator William Kist enthusiastically advocates for blended learning as he explains how to * Navigate the technical details of Internet access and learning management systems.
* Decide which learning experiences are best delivered online and which should be saved for face-to-face instruction.
* Organize your online space for maximum effectiveness, respond to your students, and structure online discussions that are most beneficial for students.
* Evaluate the design of your blended instruction, and refine it for the next class. No matter what subject you teach, Getting Started with Blended Learning can help you develop the skills and confidence to introduce students to this engaging way of learning.

Blended—or Hybrid—Learning

Blended learning is hot! Teachers at all levels are creating lessons, units, and even complete courses that combine traditional face-to-face (F2F) classroom instruction with online components such as video clips, discussion forums, and PowerPoint presentations that students access from home. It’s clear that teachers are seeing advantages to both learning arrangements and want their students to benefit from both.

A lot of attention has focused on the growing popularity of online-only courses—and not just at the college level. During the 2013–2014 school year, 16 percent of K–12 students attended a fully online school with no F2F instruction, and 30 states offered fully online statewide schools (Smith, 2014). At least five states require each high school graduate to have taken at least one online course (Sheehy, 2012). Institutions of higher education, high schools, and middle schools are seeing how popular online learning is and are trying to catch up with the demand.

Not only are there compelling societal pressures to embrace some form of blended learning, there are also strong pedagogical arguments for doing so. It’s evident that many students across the United States are demonstrating the possibilities of online learning outside of school as they curate their own inquiry paths: reading and writing many minutes per day on a screen, writing over 100 text messages per day, and reading and writing hundreds of words per day on social networking sites (Pew Research Center, 2015). It’s no wonder teens report being more comfortable writing in online environments than they are in other media (Applebee & Langer, 2013).

Due to a combination of pedagogical, political, technological, and economic factors, more teachers than ever before are confronted with the challenge of moving at least some of their instruction online. And this trend includes me! For the past 15 years, in books and articles, I have chronicled the adventures of teachers all over the world who are using breakthroughs in technology to craft new and exciting teaching strategies and assessments. A few years ago, I found myself in the position of needing to redesign some of my own college classes as hybrid courses. I had to quickly get up to speed but was not sure where to begin! I have gone on to teach hybrid courses almost every semester, including methods courses for undergraduates, research courses for doctoral students, and a first-year English composition course mandated for all majors at my university. I enjoy facilitating blended learning so much that I would find it difficult to go back to completely F2F teaching.

The feedback I have gotten has been impressive. Most of my students go on to become middle school and high school teachers, and I enjoy hearing about the elements of hybrid instruction they have incorporated into their own teaching, with positive outcomes for their own students. For example, one of my former students, Randy Rininger, employs a different hashtag phrase (such as #Mockingbird or #Hamlet) for each piece of literature his high school students study. He has noticed that students tweet on the weekends and at all hours using the hashtag phrase, even when they were studying ancient Greek mythology! Another former student, Angie DiAlesandro, has her high school students take part in a plethora of online activities. She writes, "For a writing-intensive English project, my students create websites using Google Sites. The students use hyperlinks, site maps, image embedding, and other digital tools to complete the project. I use my Google account to leave comments on each individual page to provide feedback. I pair up each student with a partner, and they use GoogleDocs to collaborate on every major writing assignment. Students use the shared documents to provide and receive feedback. This has increased accountability and revision in my classroom."

The purpose of this book is to provide a quick synopsis of the best ideas I have found to make the most of blended instruction. I believe the ideal person to speak to novices about teaching online is someone who was recently a novice himself. It’s my hope to provide useful information for those of you who are excited about getting started with hybrid learning as well as those of you who are wary of the whole endeavor. A note about terminology—there are various definitions of hybrid and blended learning. In this book I use them interchangeably to describe any learning experience that is structured to be delivered partially online and partially in an F2F environment.

Although my own hybrid teaching experience has been at the college level, the process of examining course content for ways to match different portions of it with the delivery model that suits it best is essentially the same. The examples and applications included in this book are usable for teachers of grades 4–12 and beyond. I provide some snapshot descriptions of engaging online assignments and assessments to help you navigate the possibilities of teaching and learning in a blended environment. Once you begin, I predict you’ll become accustomed and even addicted to the responsive capabilities of a classroom that is 24/7—a classroom that never sleeps.

Where to Begin

When you take up the challenge of moving some of your F2F instruction online, there are several questions that you will need to answer. This section provides these questions as well as some of the answers that I’ve come up with as I’ve taught hybrid courses.

• Why do I want to make my lesson, unit, or course a hybrid?
• What hardware and software do I need?
• What is a learning management system, and how do I choose one?
• What are typical experiences that students will have in hybrid environments?

The Rationale for Hybrid Instruction

Even if you are being compelled to hybridize your teaching, you still need to answer some foundational questions about what exactly you want to accomplish. Obviously, you want to meet your particular curriculum goals. So, keeping those in mind, how would you answer the following questions?

• What can students achieve when the learning targets are taught in a blended environment? (Perhaps you might answer that your students will be able to work on assignments that tap into their creativity by making assignments that can be created in a hybrid setting rather than solely in an F2F setting or—gasp—only on paper!)
• What kinds of students can I reach in this new way of teaching—students, perhaps, who are living a great deal of their lives online outside of school? (Perhaps you might answer that you will reach not only students who love spending time online, but also those who are self-directed high-achievers, those who are introverted and like working alone, those who are learning English and might benefit from being able to see demonstrations that can be repeated many times, and those who are groggy and distracted early in the morning but wide awake and ready to learn at 10 p.m.)
• How can I make sure that students who have been successful in F2F environments aren’t overwhelmed by this transition to blended learning? (Perhaps you might answer that you need to start slowly, by giving one online assignment during one grading period, then ramping up the blended component as you and your students become more comfortable teaching and learning in this new way.)
• Why do I want to do this?

"Why do I want to do this" is listed last, but it might be the most important question to consider. If your answer is that you want to teach in hybrid fashion because "everyone is doing it" or "because I have to," then you might have missed some of the valuable qualities of this kind of teaching. I hope this book will provide some compelling examples that make the transition to blended instruction something that is seen as inspiring creativity and student engagement. I myself now find it difficult to imagine not teaching in a blended environment. Before getting to planning, however, there are more questions that need to be answered, from a technical perspective.

Technical Requirements

The good news is that most teachers who are planning to teach online for the first time already have many of the tools and resources they need. Here are a few basics to think about.

Continuous, reliable Internet access. A reliable Internet connection is a critical component of blended learning. It’s what allows students to access assignments, assemble multimedia presentations, and view videos from home. And it’s what enables you to check in on the videos and multimedia presentations they are creating, monitor and engage in online discussions, and provide responsive feedback and guidance. Even though you will still be seeing your students in person on a regular if not daily basis, they will be working online outside of your class more often than they would in a traditional F2F classroom. Students who have a question or experience a technical difficulty while attempting to complete an online task are going to quickly become frustrated if they can’t get in touch with you. This is not to say that you can’t let students know that there are certain times of the day when you will not be responding to e-mail. Setting boundaries is important! But one of the conveniences (and benefits) of this kind of teaching is that it can take place around the clock, and you need to be sure that responding in a timely manner is possible for you.

A laptop with camera and microphone. Some school districts might supply a high-quality laptop or tablet with these features, but if yours doesn’t, a personal investment in this kind of equipment might be worth it. The ability to record video and audio will be valuable should you choose to record your own lectures or just to provide audio or even video feedback on your students’ work (as is possible within many learning management systems.)

A headset. Along those same lines, it is a good idea to invest in a simple headset that you can purchase at any big box store. These headsets are combination earphones and microphones, and they look like something a sports announcer or an air traffic controller would wear. You will capture better audio when you are recording if you have a microphone that is closer to your mouth.

Learning Management Systems

All online learning must take place within some platform or learning environment, known as a "learning management system" (LMS). Many school districts have purchased a license to an LMS that usually excludes the use of any other LMS. If this is the case for you, you simply need to become familiar with the LMS that’s available to you. Most systems have fairly straightforward tutorials that will take you on a tour and explain its features.

Here are the most common LMS features:

• A location for uploading course materials (such as handouts or even streaming video of lectures or other material).
• A location for class discussion (commonly known as a discussion board).
• A location for individual student reflection (aka a blog).
• A location for student work—this could be a space for collaborative or individual work. Some LMSs farm this function out to another provider, like Dropbox, that has room for bigger files.
• A private space for the teacher to give feedback. We’ll talk about the specifics of feedback a little later on.

If you do have the freedom to choose which LMS to use, here are some questions to consider:

• Does the LMS include all of the standard features?
• Is the layout of the LMS easy to navigate, or is it difficult to find what you need?
• Is there a "help” function that students can use when they have questions?
• Does the LMS force you into a certain organizational pattern (organizing instruction according to dates, for example, rather than in units or vice versa)?
• Is it easy to make changes to your classroom site if you change your mind about something?
• Is there space to provide private feedback for students?
• Is there room to store large files, or will students have to use Dropbox or some other location outside of the LMS?

If you have a choice over which LMS to use, it’s worth remembering that most blog- and wiki-hosting sites, such as Blogger and PBWorks, can fulfill many of the functions of an LMS because you can set aside space for posting class materials and comments. Having your students blog or work on collaborative projects on a wiki is a simple way for you to get started with hybrid teaching if you are tentative about conceptualizing an entire unit or course as a hybrid.

Try not to get too bogged down in choosing an LMS—so many have features that have become universal over the past few years.

What Hybrid Learning Looks Like

Here are the essential kinds of online experiences that students navigate in hybrid classes:

Learning activities. Students respond to an article, chapter of a book, or video you have uploaded to the LMS. Just as in an F2F class, the texts should be chosen with great care. Students will tune out if the video or article is dull or has no clear connection to their learning. This is one of the main challenges of hybrid teaching—figuring out what are failsafe, compelling texts for students to engage with outside of class, when no one is monitoring whether they are really paying attention.

The learning activities tend to fall into four categories.

• Simple Q&A. Students answer questions about the texts. Just as in an F2F situation, it’s necessary to make sure that these are not just fact-level questions, but rather questions that spark real learning. In an online environment, however, these questions might be asked in a discussion forum so that everyone can share their answers.
• Posted reflection. Students reflect, in a more discursive way, on specific elements they have read or viewed. Similar to a blog, this is usually referred to as a post and is longer—perhaps 500–1000 words.
• Peer response. Students respond to one or more posts of other students. This could take the form of a fairly formal peer response protocol, or it could be much more informal, with the student just required to say a sentence or two in response to a certain number of other students.
• Artifact creation. Students create an online artifact either individually or in groups, such as a video or PowerPoint presentation that they upload to the LMS.

Assessment. Sometimes, students complete an assessment online. It could be as simple as a series of multiple-choice questions or as elaborate as a multimodal composition of some sort.

Many teachers require students to take part in a relatively limited set of activities, but I prefer to vary and expand the kinds of activities my students will do online beyond the basic list. I describe some of these alternative assessments in the next section.

Planning Your Hybrid Instruction

Now comes the fun part: creating your learning experiences and deciding which of them will be online and which will be F2F. Below are some key questions you need to answer, followed by some of my favorite online assignment ideas.

What Are My Learning Objectives and Targets?

Any teacher needs to know the curriculum objectives for a unit or class. In a hybrid environment, this becomes even more crucial; you will need to think very carefully about what aspects of your curriculum might be better served by an F2F environment, and which elements might be more effectively taught online. The first step, before deciding on instructional strategies, is knowing what you want and need to teach! Many school districts and even colleges now provide a curriculum map that includes some underlying goals or standards. Some curriculum maps even break down the standards into discrete learning targets.

If you do not teach in a district (or in a higher education institution) that has such a map, you will want to separate out more specific "learning targets" as shown in the lesson plan format in the Encore. Once you establish your chosen learning targets, you will want to examine these closely to think about certain standards that might lend themselves to online teaching and learning as opposed to F2F learning. What are the qualities of a learning target that might make it most suitable for fitting into a blended environment? Some questions to guide your decision-making process—to help figure out when to use online or F2F instruction—are suggested in the following section.

What’s the Best Location for the Learning Strategies I Want to Use?

This is one of the most essential questions when teaching in a hybrid format. When F2F time has been cut in half, it means that the remaining classroom time is precious and must be used wisely.

As you are structuring your lesson, unit, or course, first you will need to think about the assessments that students will have to successfully complete at the end of your unit. This concept of "starting with the end in mind" (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) suggests that the teacher needs to start with either designing the assessment or becoming familiar with the pre-existing district or school assessment. Ideally, the assessments will gather together the skills and understandings that students should acquire by the unit’s end.

The good news for teachers who are interested in implementing blended learning is that, at the K–12 levels, both the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments (which are designed to align with the Common Core State Standards) have at least some assessment items that must be taken in screen-based environments. Both also feature multi-step assessment items that are similar to many of the kinds of tasks you will probably want to include within your hybrid space and also work well for gathering formative asses...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Blended—or Hybrid—Learning
• Encore Divider
• Encore
• References
• Related Resources
• About the Author
• Copyright