Student-Centered Pedagogy

Blended Learning - University of Central Florida
Dziaban, Hartman, Moskal (2004)
Pedagogical Approach

• Blended learning should not be a matter of time spent in class vs. online ("ratio of delivery models")
• Should combine the effectiveness of socialization in the classroom with "technologically enhanced active learning opportunities of the online environment"
• Redesign should incorporate: a shift from instructor-led lecture to student-centered instruction in which students would be "active and interactive learners."
• Interaction should be increased between student/instructor, student/student, student/content, student/outside resources.
• Include interactive formative and summative assessment mechanisms
• Instructors must become "designers of active learning environments"
• Instructors must be "more facilitative in their teaching."
• Used Carl Rogers model of the facilitative teacher who gives the "instructional environment precedence over information transmittal."

Enriching Student Experience through Blended Learning
University of Central Florida - Albrecht (2006)

• New technologies are changing quickly, providing new potential for blended learning
• "Blended learning labels the shifting venue and communication patterns that have occurred in culture. We have moved from lecture halls to homes, cars, and ipods offering anytime, anywhere delivery while increasing interaction as well."
• "The impact of these changes on learning depends to a large extent on faculty transformation of content and interaction to the newer technologies."

Hybrid Learning: Maximizing Student Engagement
Campus Technology
Ruth Reynard 5/23/2007

Maximizing Student Engagement

Reynard defines dynamic learning environments as those that "heighten interaction at all levels and keep students engaged in the process through self-direction and response" (Reynard, 2003). Typical course design is "linear and conventional" with "preset expectations about content, interaction, learning products (e.g. assignments, quizzes, essays), and evaluation."
In a dynamic learning environment "students are free to explore, interact with, comment on, modify, and apply the set content and additional content they discover or create through the learning process, and all of this leads to the outcome for each individual student, which therefore, customizes the learning process for each student." Reynard feels that dyanmic learning can be more relevant and applicable to real life. Students can progress through a course of study "in an ongoing dynamic process of learning relies upon a variety of inputs, learning supports (scaffolds), and interaction."

• Hypertext changes teaching and learning by providing students with the ability to explore and retrieve texts for courses and maximize their customized choices in the process (Dwight & Garrison, 2003).
• Hybrid offers immediate intervention by instructor
• Hypertext provide scaffolding and learning support for students
• Other supports could be additional links, synchronous chat sessions, self-reflection opportunities, asynchronous discussion, and collaborative knowledge building opportunities.
• Hybrid courses "maximize the students' potential for reaching a high level of learner autonomy through self-directed choices, and customized application or outcome."
• Dynamic interaction can happen online or in the classroom in a different form of interaction.
• F2F class meetings may be used for scaffolding learning rather than for conventional instruction
• Online classes can provide "online material, online learning resources, and time to reflect, interact, and produce learning objects or evidences of learning."
• F2F class time does not have to be passive with students just listening to lectures.
• F2F class time should provide "dialog, group work, or lab work or demonstrations of practice."
• Internet tools can be used to provide content through hyperlinks to text, multimedia resources, online discussions, chats, personal blogs, wikis, etc. "Throughout the process of exchange, content is worked on and applied by the learner. The more varied the inputs, the more likely that students will engage with content more effectively."
• Research shows that "students look for teacher intervention more directly in an online environment than in a face to face environment" (Moore, 1993; Reynard, 2003).
• "When learning is self-directed, students know exactly when they need the instructor and why."

Key strengths in hybrid model:

• Relevant learning scaffolds (including instructor intervention, collaborative knowledge building, and meaningful, self-directed research).
• Heightened interaction (with self, with instructor, with other students, and with content).
• Transformative learning outcomes (applied directly to relevant practice).

Multimedia Learning Design Pedagogy: A Hybrid Learning Model

Tsoi, Goh, and Chia (2005) discuss a hybrid model of teaching using multimedia that is meant to engage learners in "meaningful learning. They refer to this model as clearly different from the "traditional transmit/receive" approach to teaching and learning.

The model has three phases in a cycle:

• Phase 1: Exploration - what did you do?
• Phase 2: Concept invention - what did you find out?
• Phase 3: Concept application - how will you apply it?

Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle:

• concrete experience - focuses on "doing"
• reflective observation - focuses on "understanding the doing"
• abstract conceptualization - focuses on "understanding"
• active experimentation - focuses on "doing the understanding"

Visit the Sloan Consortium WIKI Articles on Learning Effectiveness