Blended learning is the buzzword of modern education. The traditional style of classroom teaching is not enough to achieve the learning objectives. The online learning has taken over the classroom teaching and a new approach called blended learning is emerging across the world. Blended learning integrates classroom teaching with online education to create a compelling learning experience.
This post explains the key elements required to design a great blended learning course:
Identifying the learning objectives
The learning objectives are the statements that tell, what the students should have learned on the completion of a program. What skills, knowledge and attitudes a student should be able to demonstrate? Learning objectives can be created for the complete course or each module separately. The learning objectives help students and teachers to understand where they need to focus on and what topics you need to cover in each module.
While creating learning objectives, the creators should be clear on how to blend the digital education with the traditional forms of teaching. The creators should also incorporate the training tools and activities needed to be a part of the course.
Assessments for measuring learning objectives
The educational coordinators also need to create the assessment activities to measure the success of a course. It involves the process to measure, how the students demonstrate the skills, attitudes and knowledge required. The assessment activities are directly related to the learning objectives created in the first step.
The nature of the assessment activities depends on the level of the skills and knowledge required for meeting the learning objectives. The problem-solving activities and quizzes are good examples of the assessment activities. Also, the students must use the higher order thinking skills to evaluate and study the progress of learning.
Planning all the activities of course
While creating the learning activities, the creators need to incorporate all the tasks that students need to complete. It is essential to include all the necessary activities in the training course, to meet the learning objectives and goals. The learning activities include readings, lectures, videos, online discussion forums, individual assignments, collaborative assignments and group activities.
The students can quickly read the content and attend the lectures in an online environment. It is essential first to include the learning activities that are essential. Once you add the most important learning activities, you can also include the ones that are nice to have.
The Sequence and Environment
Determining the sequence and activities is the final step in designing a blended learning course. It involves grouping and scheduling of all the activities and modules of a session. The program creators should create a sequence of all the modules and activities in each module. Moreover, you need to determine the online environment for every activity and assessment.
For the online activities, it is better to make notes to determine which tools you need for each activity. Also, you should lay out the developments required to get the activities online. For example, recording the lectures, entering the questions for a quiz, creating the student groups etc. is necessary for obtaining the activities online.
Final Words
The step by step model mentioned above in this post is based on the backward design approach. The model is helpful in assigning the course goals learning objectives with the activities and assessments of the course. The steps given in this model will help you to identify the goals and create learning objectives. Using the above steps one can quickly determine the assessments, plan the modules of a course, and develop the sequence and environment for the learning activities.