10 Questions for Blended
Learning
Tanya Joosten, tjoosten@uwm.edu
Learning Technology Center
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

About us

TechEnhanced
Blended
Online
Traditional
Self-paced
MOOCs
Flex
Faculty development
programs and pedagogical
consultation
Technology training and
support
Evaluation and research
The LTC provides faculty
development and pedagogical
consultation, technology training
and support, and evaluation and
research of an array of course
delivery modes, including tech
enhanced, blended, and online.
What we do?

Delivery modes
TechEnhanced
Blended
Online
Traditional
Self-paced
MOOCs
Flex
Content
• Text
• Images
• Audio
• Video
Interactivity
• Discussions
• Groups
• Feedback
Assessment
• Written and oral examination
• Discursive
• Portfolio
Pedagogical considerations
For each delivery mode, there are
pedagogical considerations to be made
with regard to content delivery,
interactivity, and assessment.
The UWMLTC faculty development
program and pedagogical consultations
with our team guide instructors in
making decisions about these
considerations.

About UWM

blended
learning
is
growing

What is
blended?

“Hybrid (blended) courses are
courses in which a significant
portion of the learning activities
have been moved online, and time
traditionally spent in the classroom
is reduced but not eliminated”
(Aycock, Garnham, and Kaleta,
March, 2002, para. 1).

Blended learning:
1) courses that integrate online
with traditional face-to-face class
activities in a planned,
pedagogically valuable manner;
and,
2) where a portion (institutionally
defined) of face-to-face time is
replaced by online activity
(Picciano, 2006, p. 97).

What is
blended for
UWM?

Web-enhanced
0 - 20%
Blended
21 - 99%
Online
100%
Blended 1
21 - 50%
Online with
commensurate
reduction
in seat time
Blended 3
81 - 99%
Online with
commensurate
reduction
in seat time
Blended 2
51 - 80%
Online with
commensurate
reduction
in seat time

Why does your campus need to define blended?
Who needs to be involved in defining blended for
your campus?
What is blended? How is it different from face-to-
face? online? others?
Where will the definition live? How will it be
communicated to the community?

Why teach
blended?

What are we
doing today?

10 questions
See handout

Connect w/me
• twitter.com/tjoosten
• linkedin.com/in/tjoosten
• facebook.com/tjoosten
• juice.gyoza@gmail.com | google+
• juice gyoza | second life

Redesigning your course using
the 10 questions

Course details
• Original course design
– Organizational Communication, COMMUN310
– Original Design: Night classes, 3 hours app.
• Course Transformation
– Goal: To more effectively use valuable f2f time
– Means: Focus on task requirements and medium selection
– Experience teaching fully online and fully f2f
– New Design: Reduced class time, 45% online, 55% F2F

What goes online?
• Content Delivery
– Acquire basic content (lecture and reading)
– Assess understanding of basic content (discussion forums, rubrics, and
quizzes)

Content delivery
• What is the task?
• What type of delivery is “best”?
• What technology is available to me?
• What skills do I have?

Lecture formats

Sample text lecture

Sample audio lecture

What lecture format did you prefer? Why?
• I preferred the standard ppt w/ notes because that was
the easiest for me to access from my home computer and
was the easiest to print out.
• I chose ppt form as don't need to be online all the time.
And I can study the slides whenever i want to. It also has
the option of outlines, which helps in studying.

• I can go at my own pace and re-read things I need to,
otherwise skim things I don't need certain depth on.
• so you had to listen to the powerpoints and sometimes
people just didn’t have the time, but could read them
thoroughly and reference them better…we are online
classes because we don’t have the time or access to sit
through a lecture on a computer. But we could all work
reading a really good powerpoint through into our
schedules.

Audio introductions

What (else) goes online?
• Content Delivery
– Acquire basic content (lecture and reading)
– Assess understanding of basic content (discussion forums, rubrics,
and quizzes)

Sample discussion forum

Sample quiz

What goes face-to-face?
• Decreases students’ equivocality and uncertainty
• Allow for instant feedback for understanding
• Provide opportunity for higher order learning
• Presentations of group work done outside of class

What goes online?
• Building Learning Community
– Online discussion questions
– Group experiential learning activities (virtual labs)

What goes online?
• Summative Assessment
– Assess achievement of learning objectives for course (midterm and
final exams)

Sample Module Wednesday Sunday
Week 1 F2F Class
-Agenda posted
-Reading/lecture available online
-Individual project task due
Week 2 Online Class
-Discussion
post due
-Discussion responses due
Week 3 -Complete Weekly Quiz prior to
class
F2F Class
-Targeted discussion from quiz
results and discussion forum
-Group project task due

Recap: What goes online? f2f?
• Content Delivery
– Acquire basic content
– Assess understanding of basic
content
• Building Learning Community
– Online discussions and group
activities
• Summative Assessment
– Assess achievement of
learning objectives
• Decreases students’ equivocality
and uncertainty
• Allow for instant feedback for
understanding
• Provide opportunity for higher
order learning
• Presentations of group work done
outside of class

Keys to a successful transformation
• TIP 1: Avoid course and a half
• TIP 2: Promote online learning community
• Tip 3: Plan for integration.
• Tip 4: Don’t feel that you have to follow the traditional f2f scheduling
format.
• Tip 5: Assess both mediums, online and f2f.
• Tip 6: Manage student expectations

10 questions discussion

Activity: What Goes Online? F2F?

Designing a learning module
using backwards design
Learning Technology Center
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Backward Design
• Introduced by Wiggins and McTighe in
Understanding by Design (2005)
• Instructors begin with learning goals and
outcomes rather than activities
• Effective in online and blended courses
because students need more structure

Key Questions in Backward Design
• What do you want your students to do
(not just know)?
• What evidence will you accept that they
have accomplished that?
• What learning activities will produce this
evidence or documentation?

What’s in a Learning Module?
• A chunk of content
• A learning activity
• A mode of assessing student work

Module 2 Learning Objectives
• By the end of this module, students should
be able to:
– Describe the qualities of four different
academic research models
– Develop an effective research proposal for a
ten-page academic research paper

Module 2 Content for ENG 102
• Davis and Shadle’s “’Building a Mystery’: Writing
and the Academic Act of Seeking”
• Lecture outlining strategies for developing an
effective research question

Module 2 Activities for ENG 102
• Quiz over readings to demonstrate mastery of
terms and ideas
• In-class and online discussions to examine
research models and proposal-writing strategies
• Reflective journal entry focusing on “topics”
• Formal essay that proposes and justifies a
research question

Module 2 Assessment for ENG 102
• Automated, quantitative feedback on quizzes
• Holistic, overall feedback and quantifiable rubric
assessment on discussions
• Individual, end-comment feedback on reflective
journal entries
• Individual, end-comment feedback on research
proposal

Activity: Respond to Next Steps issues
Respond to one of the five questions in a group at your table. In
responding to your question, consider the elements of the
question that you find intriguing, problematic or surprising?
Post your responses to the questions at the following wiki space:
http://blend12nextquestions.wikispaces.com/

Next Steps: Five issues to address in
“perfecting” the blend
• “Course and a half” syndrome
• Re-examining course goals and objectives
• Building presence, enhancing connectivity, and
building community
• Community Building
• Managing your time and staying organized

Question 1: “Course and a half” syndrome
Now that you delivered your first blended course and
have experienced course and a half, what strategies can
one use to streamline the course and help manage
instructor workload to avoid course and a half?

Next Steps: “Course and a half” syndrome
• Focus on learning objectives and outcomes
• Take advantage of LMS reporting features
• Seek help or feedback from colleagues
• Cut approximately 20% of your course
• Join or create a community of instructors
• Keep teaching logs for reflective practice
• Use progressive and summative evaluation

Question 2: Re-examining course goals and
objectives
How can one identify and build upon the successful elements
of learning objectives in the blended model?
Specifically, was the learning environment (face-to-face or
online) appropriate for the assigned activity and
achievement of each learning objective?
Did it provide the evidence or documentation that the
learning objective was met?

Next Steps: Re-examining Goals & Objectives
• F2F, online & integrated learning modules/exercises
• What should students be able to do
• Assessment
• Discipline-specific language, more active verbs:
– compile, create, plan, articulate, revise, apply, design, analyze, select, utilize, apply,
demonstrate, prepare, use, compute, discuss, explain, predict, assess, compare, rate,
judge, distinguish, compare/contrast, critique…
• Usually NOT ‘think critically’, ‘know’, ‘understand’…
A good test:
If it could apply to any learning module/exercise, it might be an essential learning
outcome (i.e., revise the objective!)

Question 3: Building presence, enhancing
connectivity, and building community
Sometimes we can lose the connection and our ability as
instructors to build presence in the mediated environment.
Instructors need to develop skills and strategies to meet
these needs in the blended format.
What are some ways one can successfully enhance social
presence and connectedness with students?

Next Steps: Presence, Connectivity, & Community
• Social presence
– Connection
– Community of learners
• Online relationships
– Challenges
– Community creation
• Preparation
– Trust
– Responses
– Socially intimate communication

Question 4: Community Building
Many times when we introduce a mediated environment, we
find out course design needed more opportunity for
collaborative learning for students to engage students and
assist them in building peer networks.
Where can your course lends itself in assisting students in
building community with other students? the instructor?
and, the public?

Next Steps: Community Building
• Don’t forget the basics
• Unlike a F2F course, instructor must encourage and manage
community building
• Comfort with the technology and delivery model increases
community building
• Collaborative learning opportunities increases online
community
• Active learning strategies increases online community
• Bridge course work with extra-curricular
• Build-in synchronous opportunities for peer interaction and
group work

Question 5: Managing your time and staying organized
Many students enroll in blended courses because of the flexibility associated
with time shifting. At the same time, they may overbook their schedules or not
allocate time for studying.
• What strategies did students employ to balance their schedules and
manage their in- and out-of-class time effectively?
• What effective instructional strategies can one employ to help students stay
on track?
• Are there any additional strategies one could implement the next time the
course is delivered to help students stay organized, assessed student
readiness, and manage student expectations?

Next Steps: Managing your time and staying organized
• Course Scheduling: Manage time carefully
• Explain and inform
• Keep good records
• Manage student expectations

Course evaluation
Learning Technology Center
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Why is evaluation particularly important for
blended and online courses?
• The experimental mood: blended and online courses are
different than face-to-face
• Ideally, “experiment” ensures that we come as novices to the
blended or online course structure
• Pedagogical experiment argues that we demonstrate academic
rigor in the online environment
• Progressive evaluation permits making changes throughout
course – before, during and after the course is offered

What tools can be used to evaluate a blended or
online course?
• Evaluation checklist
• Evaluation can involve yourself, colleagues,
or students

What do we want to evaluate?
• Learner Support
• Course Organization and Design
• Instructional Design and Delivery
• Integration of Face-to-Face and Online
Activities (blended only)
• Student Assessment
• Student Feedback

Learner support
• Not a significant issue in traditional face-to-face
courses
• Student self-assessment: is s/he likely to succeed
as an online or blended learner?
• Acquiring the technical skills and requisites
• Knowing what to do when troubles arise

Course organization and design
• A basic syllabus affords a contract between
instructor and students
• The use of modules to organize course activity
is more pronounced in online and blended
courses
• The course Web site is a visual representation
of the learning goals and activities

Instructional design and delivery
• A relationship between learning objectives
and learning activities
• A progression towards critical thinking
• Ongoing efforts to develop an online learning
community of peers

Integration of face-to-face and
online work (blended only)
• If course redesign is not completely thought
through, there is a tendency to favor the face-to-
face over the online.
• Running two modes of instruction parallel and
independently is a sure recipe for the course-and-
a-half syndrome
• Each form of learning must affect -- extend,
elaborate, intensify – the other

Student assessment
• The online environment lends itself to frequent, low-
stakes assessment with ample feedback
• Traditional forms of assessment offer little
information about the learning taking (or not taking)
place
• Rubrics help both instructor and student apply
abstract knowledge to disciplinary practice

Student feedback
• Like student assessment: frequent, low-stakes, and
information-rich
• The simple “reality check” is an extremely valuable
tool
• The students find their voices within the course
• The community of learners benefits from a give and
take between instructor and students

Ensuring quality on campus
Blended faculty development program
Certificate in blended teaching
Lazirko award
Users group
Program council