By Thomas Cavanagh (Assistant Vice President, Distributed Learning, University of Central Florida)
Welcome to the Morning Blend, our occasional blog dedicated to exploring the many facets of blended learning. As time goes on, we hope to use this space to create a forum for ideas related to blended learning from the leading thinkers—both domestic and international—in the field.
Let’s start with the basics. What is blended learning? Quoting from elsewhere on this Blended Learning Toolkit website, “Blended courses (also known as hybrid or mixed-mode courses) are classes where a portion of the traditional face-to-face instruction is replaced by web-based online learning.”
As time goes on, we hope to unpack various models of blending courses, as well as look at some of the nuts and bolts of course construction. For now, however, let’s ask an even more fundamental question than what is blended learning, specifically, why blended learning?
As the NGLC website states, a “2006 American Council on Education study showed that 78% of undergrads worked at least part time while enrolled…These students work an average of 30 hours a week. The economic reality is that many still cannot afford to go to college full-time and when faced with juggling work and school commitments, work often wins out.”
The common mental model of the online learner is an adult, non-traditional student going back to school for a career advancement or change. He/She has work and family responsibilities that interfere with school. Such students need online learning as an essential means of educational access.
Yet, considering the ACE study cited above and observing the behavior of the “traditional” 18-24 year undergraduates here at UCF, I am wondering if the “traditional” label is even relevant anymore. Certainly such students exist. Yet, their numbers continue to decrease. Recently quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter J. Stokes, executive vice president of Eduventures, states that only about 15% of students are the typical 18-22-year-olds living in dorms. Another 15% are full-time students of the same age who live off-campus.
That means that 70% of the college-going population is “non-traditional.” And, even the traditional students want non-traditional flexibility. Students who want to be a part of Greek life or participate in intercollegiate athletics or join clubs or otherwise engage in the campus experience can more easily do so via the added flexibility of blended learning.
While gathering information in support of an article about this type of student behavior, we reported that in Fall 2010 8,827 UCF students took both face-to-face and blended classes concurrently. During that same term, approximately 2,700 UCF students took all three modalities of face-to-face, online, and blended courses at the same time.
UCF began its eLearning initiative in the mid-1990s with an exclusive focus on completely online courses and programs. However, within a year we realized that 75% of the students taking online courses were local and also taking traditional, face-to-face courses. Thus, our blended learning initiative was born and the centralized unit created to manage it was dubbed the Center for Distributed Learning (not “Distance Learning”).
What is the experience on your campus? Are you seeing the blurred boundaries of traditional vs. non-traditional and online vs. campus-based students? Feel free to comment below.
14 Comments
Peter Dimock says:
Jul 12, 2011
I teach at the University of Minnesota in a graduate professional program. Many of our students are returning to complete a Master’s degree after many year of working the the field as an undergrad. They lead extremely busy lives and are often working part or even full time in additional to attending on campus classes. We are beginning an initiative to offer blended learning courses as part of the curriculum. There are many obstacles to this effort not the least of which is faculty literacy with online tools and development. In addition, many students are older and not technologically savvy so they have a learning curve to overcome as they begin to experience a new learning environment. As the educational technology coordinator of this effort, I hope to gain from what others have learned along the way.
Karen Levy says:
Jul 15, 2011
You bring up really valid concerns. Having worked at a seminary that offered online courses for Catholic Deacons (average age 62) we ran into this very “digital literacy” question. I created an orientation disc – modularized by the types of assignments they would have throughout the program. Each began with a pre-test – the activity itself – email an attachment, post to the forum discussion … if they could “do – perform” the activity, move on to the next module, if not, here are the instructions with screen captures on how to do…then perform the activity. For some people, this orientation took less than 1/2 hour (one part was to find a proctor) for others, this took a few weeks. But, in the end, they were each prepared – from a technology perspective to fully participate in Master’s level education for their ministries.
Sharon Bittle says:
Jul 28, 2011
I actually attended graduate school at UCF and most of my classess were online. I am a nontraditional student, returning back to school after 25 years. I was not looking forward to the online classes that I took but it was necessary and part of the grant program I was in. I am an educator, work fulltime, and lived 2 hours from the Orlando campus. I had a couple of blended courses and one face-to-face. The online classes were a godsend to me and the one face-toface class was the darkest time. I had to leave work early to drive and then return home about 10:00. I found the face-to-face course interesting as I have been out of school for some time (about 25 years). The conduct of the younger more traditional student was curious. Although it was a face-to-face class, they spent their time sitting in the back row with their computers open surfing the web and “multitasking” during the class.
As a professional developer, I have found that there are various levels of expertise in terms of particpants’ skills in online learning, but I find that there are more and more who are comfortable at our orientations and can easily navigate the online world. I find that I am spending less time with the simple tasks involved in teaching individuals how to access our online platform and more time focusing on the actual activities and objectives of the course.
Kevin Reeve says:
Jul 30, 2011
About 5 years ago I actually ran a report out of our Banner system that showed that the large majority of the fully online students were also taking fully online courses. However as actual degree programs are no available vs just courses, that is shifting. As administration asks for data regarding online vs traditional classes we are finding it very hard to distinguish the two in many cases. Yes a course may be on-campus and meet face-2-face but there are some that could be totally classified as online. They do almost everything online, but do get together face-2-face.
Tony Picciano says:
Aug 5, 2011
I would like to add to this conversation the idea that blended learning will be the future of higher education in this country. In the space of about twenty years we went from essentially 100 percent face-to-face instruction to about 75 percent fully online. Unfortunately we do not have good data on the extent of blended learning in higher education but it is clear that much of what we do will be integrated with technology to deliver some part of most instruction. In ten years we might even see the term “blended learning” become an anachronism. The challenge in 2011 is to make sure that what we do in blended learning is done well. Furthermore, we need to build our research base to document and verify the value of this approach.
Ann Palazzo says:
Oct 1, 2012
I teach both online at one of the largest online colleges in Ohio (Columbus State Community College). Last year I converted one course, Writing Creative Nonfiction (which is currently taught both online and face-to-face) into a blended course. In my experience, it’s the most effective format for my students. I am able to solicit “deep dive” discussions about course readings on our discussion board, but students are also able to experience the spontaneous collaboration of face-to-face workshops. Data at the college indicates that blended courses have a higher rate of success as compared to face-to-face or online courses, but this may be because we’ve been slower and perhaps more methodical and selective in moving to this format.
Ashish Dutt says:
Apr 15, 2013
I taught for an year in a university in Kuala Lumpur while completing my Master’s in Computing. During this time i got interested in tools/interfaces that could enhance the learning skills of both the educator as well as the student. Now after completing my M.Sc, i am searching for a suitable research topic in this field.
My research interest is the usage of technology to develop quality technical courses so as to facilitate employability.
Your suggestions or idea’s are most welcome.
Patrick R. Pearce, Sr. says:
Apr 21, 2014
I formerly taught 4 fully online classes as an adjunct at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Although the classes were online, I was available in a computer lab (my full time position). So the classes were in effect, blended. The classes were offered in the College of Education, so my students ranged from first time college attendees to seasoned teachers. The main challenge was to get the students to read the content. They kept trying to complete the work without reading the instructions. Most failed miserably. I hope to discover ways to make the content more engaging, so they will read it.
Santiago Rodriguez says:
May 15, 2014
I am a high school student at Summit Public Schools, a all computer environment. I have been exposed to some of the most ground breaking chater schools in San Jose. And once i got used to The module my school was using i relied it was flawed. The majority of students were either extremely failing or had all A’s. I my self have currently a GPA of 3.3, yet i feel deeply disturbed that i am able to achieve these grades without feeling i have learned the matieral.
R. Scott Harrington says:
Jun 19, 2014
As a new Adjunct Instructor at my particular school, I’m already finding this blog to be very helpful and insightful. This is a whole new world to me, being on the “teaching” side of education. I guess you’d say I was a “traditional” undergraduate student and 20 years later, a “non-traditional” graduate student, having earned my Masters in IT last year – wholly online!
I now have homework to seek out this information about our student population. Interestingly, my first IT course coming up is a hybrid format, but I’m seeing it may fall into the category of “blended learning.”
Rahul Malhotra says:
Aug 3, 2014
An interesting article indeed. I have also come across a very good article which is a real life example of 15k Educators and Learners who are using blended learning model to engage, communicate and share with their learners. The name of the platform is http://www.flinnt.com. And the article is (link no longer available).
Wendy Kilfoil says:
Feb 23, 2015
I work at a university in South Africa. We have many poor students who are forced to work to support themselves and therefore miss classes. They then rely on often inadequate course notes posted by their lecturers or perhaps help from fellow students. We also have many world class athletes who attend training or sporting events out of the country and thus fall behind with their classes. For both groups of students blended learning would be a matter of staying in the program or dropping out. We have lecturers who teach sections of large classes and every year every one of them repetitively draws the same diagram on the board when they could have developed one good animation and posted it on the LMS and spent the time in class differently. From my perspective as head of an academic development unit, we find that many lecturers say they don’t have time to attend training let alone develop blended learning environments. I’d like to be able to develop training they could do in their own time and model good blended learning practice for their sakes and the sake of their students.
Carina Eksteen says:
Mar 2, 2015
At the same university in South Africa as Wendy I experience that students need more flexible time. I am involved in teaching a health professional course that require of students to be almost full time on campus due to the integration of theory and the development of practical and clinical skills. Students for various reasons need more flexible time to as you have indicated above, earn a living and also participate in other activities such as provincial and national sporting events. If the training of health professionals need to be changed to online courses it will require major, major changes in curriculum design, the way courses are integrated amongst various health professional courses. However starting a blended learning course on small scale is a step in the direction of making health professional courses also more flexible.
Dr. Betty McDonald says:
Mar 6, 2015
Hi Wendy
Greetings from The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. We were both H.H. Humphrey Fulbright Fellows at Penn State University in 2003/4 and I also visited your university in July 2007.
We have similar issues regarding the productive use of instructor time. Surely it’s much easier to post the graphic on an LMS rather than draw it on a whiteboard several times. Perhaps time management training may help.