Blended by Design: Designing and Developing a Blended Course

8:30am-12:00pm at Paradise Valley Community College, Room E150
July 7 - 10, 2008
(participants must attend all sessions to receive 13 hours of FPG)

This 4-day, hands-on learnshop will provide participants with all the necessary tools to develop a blended course.

Instructional Goals
The program objectives enable participants to:

Produce a plan for designing a blended course or redesigning an existing course as a blended course,
Adapt a syllabus for use in a blended course,
Learn strategies that will help students be successful in blended courses,
View and evaluate different blended course models,
Develop ways to establish community in online asynchronous discussions,
Identify ways to present content online,
Identify the learning objectives for your blended course,
Develop an online activities to use in your blended course,
Describe design elements that should be applied to online group or team work,
Describe and incorporate classroom assessment techniques into your course,
Collaborate with peers from a variety of disciplines,
Leverage their background and proficiencies as successful educators to become highly effective in the principles and practices of blended instruction,
Integrate research-based, proven techniques and strategies relating to learning theory to develop a successful blended environment, and
Develop high quality blended learning materials and strategies that can be immediately applied.

Rationale
The blended model of instruction, where a significant amount of the course learning activity has been moved online, making it possible to reduce the amount of time spent in the classroom, allows students and faculty members to combine the best of face-to-face and online interaction.

New teaching opportunities:	Faculty can teach using a variety of online and in-class teaching strategies, which make it possible to achieve course goals and objectives more effectively. The hybrid model allows faculty to develop solutions to course problems and to incorporate new types of interactive and independent learning activities that were not possible in traditional courses.
Student engagement:	Instructors report that they feel more connected with their students and are able to get to know them better since they communicate both online and face-to-face. Hybrid environments have the potential to increase and extend instructor-student and student-student connectivity and to build relationships even more so than in traditional or online courses. Discussions started in class are continued online and online interaction often carries over into the traditional face-to-face classes. Integration of out-of-class activities with in-class activities allows more effective use of traditional class time. Students who rarely take part in class discussions are more likely to participate online.
Increased student learning:	Faculty believes that their students learn more in the hybrid format than they do in traditional class sections. Instructors report that students write better papers, performed better on exams, produced higher quality projects, and were capable of more meaningful discussions on course material when reflecting online. Students are better able to master concepts and apply what they have learned compared to students in sections of their traditionally taught courses. Students may develop higher-order skills of critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to apply theoretical models to real-world data.
New pedagogical approaches:	Learning to teach a successful hybrid course leads to using more participatory and student-centered learning activities. Teaching a hybrid course transforms the teacher-student relationship to be more centered on student learning. Instructors found that their role as teacher changed from being the "sage on the stage" to become more facilitative and learner-centered.
Documenting the process as well as the product of learning:	Many instructors report that their course management system has increased their pedagogic efficiency because of its ability to organize the course and automate some basic activities such as quizzes, grading, and surveys. All the discussion threads, course documents, announcements, and grades are easy to find, refer to, and print if necessary. It's far easier to document online group work and participation for purposes of assessment.

Source: http://www4.uwm.edu/ltc/hybrid/faculty_resources/advantages.cfm

Facilitators
Dr. Veronica Diaz is the Instructional Technologist at the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (mcli). In that capacity, she works with faculty professional development and growth and leads various programs that promote the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. Previously, Veronica served as the Learning Technologies Manager for the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona where she was responsible for the College’s teaching and learning initiatives, Principle Investigator of the HP Technology for Teaching Grant, and the Eller Tablet PC Initiative. Veronica has over 10 years of teaching experience in various subjects including various business, education, and counseling courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. Active in the field of eLearning and teaching innovation, Diaz is the chair of the EDUCAUSE Advisory Committee on Teaching and Learning and has presented seminars on faculty use of instructional technology and intellectual property policies for distributed learning environments.

Dr. Jennifer Spink Strickland earned a doctorate in the field of Educational Technology in Cultural Studies in Higher Education from The Ohio State University College of Education. She currently works as the Instructional Technologist at Paradise Valley Community College within the Maricopa Community College District where she works with faculty, staff, and district wide employees to promote and integrate technology into learning centered teaching and learning. She focuses on assisting faculty in utilizing emerging technologies to help facilitate creative; engaging learning experiences for students.

For more information contact Veronica Diaz at 480.731.8300 or email at veronica.diaz@domail.maricopa.edu.

Faculty Professional Growth

This Dialogue Day will be submitted for pre-approval of 13 clock hours Faculty Professional Growth non-academic advancement.