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Quality Assurance in Blended Learning

Focus Question

Am I ready to deliver this course?

Objectives

After completing all of this week’s activities, you should be able to:

  • Complete the development of your blended learning course
  • Recognize factors associated with high quality blended learning courses
  • Identify to-do items necessary for a successful launch of your blended learning course

Readings

If you haven’t already done so, please select the online/offline version of the BlendKit Reader that is best for you. In addition to the individual chapter linked below, the complete reader is available as an ebook (epub or Kindle formats), pdf, or in HTML.

This Week’s Chapter

Chapter 5: Quality Assurance in Blended Learning [html file; size=26kb]

Highlights

Even if you’re pressed for time, this chapter is short enough that you should still be able to skim it in its entirety.

 Reading Reaction

Document your reaction to this week’s reading  in your blog or other public platform.  If you are participating in the BlendKit course, you may enter your reaction in the Reading Reaction: Chapter 05 activity in the Canvas BlendKit course.  Bloggers, if you want to earn a badge for this activity, please enter the direct URL to your blog posting in the Week 05 Blog activity in the Canvas BlendKit course.

DIY Project Tasks

Our final week’s development tasks are deceptively simple. In a nutshell, you’re going to finish developing your blended learning course and get ready to teach it. This is not something you are likely to accomplish in one week! However, you can certainly make a personal to-do list of items you decide that you need to complete prior to the beginning of your course. To that end, we’ve provided a couple of tools to help you get started:

  1. Blended Course Implementation Checklist [pdf file; size=101kb]
    This is actually three checklists in one! Divided into Before the Course, During the Course, and After the Course sections, these to-do items should be a good starting  point for you to create your own set of action items. While the items provided are based upon lessons learned from many blended learning courses, only you can decide the items that are important to you.
  2. Blended Course (Self-Assessment)/Peer Review Form [pdf file; size=1.3MB]
    There is no substitute for collegial dialogue with other instructors to get ideas to improve one’s teaching, regardless of modality. However, we offer this review form to you to share with a trusted colleague in the hope that it may facilitate such a helpful conversation. Most of the criteria included focus upon course design, but one additional section is provided on items that can only be observed once the course is underway. We suggest that you invite your trusted colleague to visit both the face-to-face and online portions of your blended course at some point during the academic term. You might also find it helpful to use this form as the basis for a self-assessment prior to teaching your first blended learning course. The form may be completed electronically or printed for completion by hand.

Blogging/Social Networking

Post to your blog your reflections related to this week’s activities. For a list of ideas to blog about or for help getting started, please see the BlendKit Course blogging resources. To earn a badge, please enter a direct URL to your blog posting in the Reading Reaction: Chapter 05 and Week 05 Blog activities in the Canvas BlendKit course.

Do you have a favorite quote about quality? Consider posting it or any thoughts related to the readings, the DIY tasks, or any related topic via Twitter. If you’re using Twitter, please include the hashtag #BlendKit2017.

Have you found a good resource on quality assurance in general or as related to blended learning? You might consider using the Diigo social bookmarking site to bookmark (and comment upon) any helpful web resources you’ve found this week. These might be links you followed from the course materials or resources you found on your own. If you join the BlendKit “group” on Diigo, you’ll be able to share bookmarks directly with the group. You might consider taking a look at this brief Flash-based tutorial on Diigo groups if you haven’t used Diigo groups before.

What does “quality” look like in a blended learning course? Consider taking a digital photo or screen capture of a component you believe is essential for a high quality blended learning course. Post it to Flickr, and tag it with  “blendkit.” (See blendkit tagged items on Flickr.)

If you are participating in the BlendKit course and wish to earn a badge for contributing to our information stream during Week 05, please submit the direct URL to your social media posting in the Week 05 Info Stream assignment in the Canvas BlendKit course.

Commenting

Take a few minutes to read the BlendKit Course blog postings of others, and leave behind a comment or two. You may find such blog postings by exploring the list of blogs posted by other participants. (You can find tips for making blog comments on Grammar Girl’s web site.)

Recorded Real Time Session

Watch the recording on YouTube.

Have Feedback?

How was this final week of the BlendKit course?  Please don’t hesitate to send an email to the BlendKit team at anytime. However, we’d also love to compile everyone’s quick feedback via the Week 05 Feedback Form. Please consider taking a moment or two to let us know how the BlendKit Course is going for you.