Mikaela and I must be on the same wavelength this week, because my BlendKit reflections on interaction fit perfectly with her most recent post on making classes engaging. The think-pair-share structure she describes is very effective: it gets students interacting with the content, with each other, and then with the instructor, which is a research- and time-tested way to improve content and skill mastery, raise student engagement and enjoyment of class, and even promote long-term student retention in a particular field and in higher education in general.
As I mentioned at the beginning of August, I’m trying out a resource designed to help instructors redesign courses for hybrid or online delivery: BlendKit 2011. I’ve been working through Week 2, on blended interactions. Basically, the principle is to take the kind of face-to-face interaction that Mikaela described and figure out how to complement it with online tools that are also engaging. The BlendKit home page includes several readings on the subject and also prompts participants to complete learning activities. This week, the activities were to design a schedule, a syllabus, and one module of content with an eye toward how and when learners will interact with the content, with each other, and with the instructor. As I worked on my soon-to-be blended course materials, I noticed several things:
First, it was hard to think about interactions isolated from content. I kept ending up back in my course materials, even heading back into electronic databases to search for updated journal articles to share, and then remembering that I was supposed to be thinking about interactions. It’s easy for me to focus on interactions alone when I consult with faculty because I don’t have the background in their fields. But when I work on my own courses, my view of the forest (the way the course runs as a whole, especially for students) gets obscured by the trees (the content specifics). If you are working on a course redesign, please don’t get discouraged or sidetracked when this happens to you! This is one of the benefits of peer review or a structured learning experience such as BlendKit 2011. Finding a colleague (or a faculty developer, such as Mikaela or myself) to look at your hybrid course during or after the design, but before students experience it, means you can have access to an educated but somewhat removed perspective to help you re-focus on what students are doing.
That led me to the second reflection: I realized that it was much easier for me to plan for the interaction of my face-to-face course components than for my blended course components. My experience designing and teaching online classes has been valuable, but my years of experience teaching face-to-face still outweigh it. I often use the face-to-face think-pair-share experience that Mikaela described, but I am now also thinking about how to help students engage with the content and with each other in between the face-to-face sharing, maintaining the momentum. This can be particularly valuable for large-enrollment courses in which face-to-face class sessions simply cannot be long enough to allow all students to interact with each other and with the instructor in whole-class discussions.
At any rate, I’m still recommending BlendKit 2011 as a resource for designing interactive and engaging hybrid courses. Even when I end up using different templates, or when the structure pushes me out of my comfort zone, it’s worth it because it helps me identify gaps and think creatively of new ways to promote student learning. Redesigning courses for hybrid delivery requires redesigning the way we think about teaching.
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“… it was hard to think about interactions isolated from content. I kept ending up back in my course materials, even heading back into electronic databases to search for updated journal articles to share, and then remembering that I was supposed to be thinking about interactions. It’s easy for me to focus on interactions alone when I consult with faculty because I don’t have the background in their fields. But when I work on my own courses, my view of the forest (the way the course runs as a whole, especially for students) gets obscured by the trees (the content specifics).”
What an excellent insight, Rosemary!
As you’ve implied, I think that it is best not to view design tasks as wholly independent of each other (e.g., setting the stage for interactions vs. selecting content for student engagement). As you’ve noted, considering such tasks individually is helpful insofar as it identifies gaps/blindspots, but there is clearly an inter-relatedness to many design tasks.
That being said, I agree that peer review and feedback (or instructional design consultations) during the design/development process can help one get outside one’s own head.
Thanks for your continued reflection on the BlendKit Course materials. I love hearing your insights!
Kelvin