Design and Assessment for Hybrid Courses: Insights and Overviews

Technology is influencing education, providing new delivery and assessment models. A combination between online and traditional course, the hybrid (blended) course, may present a solution with many benefits as it provides a gradual transition towards technology enabled education. This research work provides a set of definitions for several course delivery approaches, and evaluates five years of data from a course that has been converted from traditional face-to-face delivery, to hybrid delivery. The collected experimental data proves that the revised course, in the hybrid delivery mode, is at least as good, if not better, than it previously was and it provides some benefits in terms of student retention

Teaching and learning in live online classrooms

Online presence of information and services is pervasive. Teaching and learning are no exception. Courseware management systems play an important role in enhancing instructional delivery for either traditional day, full-time students or non-traditional evening, party-time adult learners enrolled in online programs. While online course management tools are with no doubt practical, they limit, however, live or synchronous communication to chat rooms, whose discourse has little in common with face-to-face class communication. A more recent trend in online teaching and learning is the adoption and integration of web conferencing tools to enable live online classrooms and recreate the ethos of traditional face-to-face sessions. In this paper we present the experience we have had with the adoption of the LearnLinc® web conferencing tool, an iLinc Communications, Inc. product. We have coupled LearnLinc with Blackboard®, for the online and hybrid computer science courses we offered in the past academic year in the evening undergraduate and graduate computer science programs at Rivier College. Twelve courses, enrolling over 150 students, have used the synchronous online teaching capabilities of LearnLinc. Students who took courses in the online or hybrid format could experience a comparable level of interaction, participation, and collaboration as in traditional classes. We solicited student feedback by administering a student survey to over 100 students. The 55% response rate produced the data for this paper\u27s study. We report on the study\u27s findings and show students\u27 rankings of evaluation criteria applied to hybrid and online instructional formats, with or without a web conferencing tool. Our analysis shows that students ranked favorably LearnLinc live sessions added to Blackboard-only online classes. In addition, how they learned in live online classrooms was found to be the closest to the hybrid class experience with regard to teaching practices they perceived as most important to them, such as seeking instructor\u27s assistance, managing time on task, and exercising problem solving skills

How do Students Choose and use Technology for Collaborative Learning?

In this case study, 86 physiotherapy undergraduate students studying a third year module, chose a blend for a collaborative task. Data was focused in capturing the students’ experience, and included interviews, questionnaires, and observation of both face-to-face and online activity. The students held strong views on collaborative learning that included inclusivity, valuing difference, democracy and the importance of all group members participating fully in decision making. All groups used a similar range of technology. They highly valued the classroom technologies provided in a specialised collaborative classroom that included computers and data projectors that enabled a group to visualise their output and connect to their online group sites. They used the online environment (the University’s managed learning environment) largely as a repository, ‘offloading’ some of the organisational components of collaboration and for knowledge acquisition that enabled them to use the face-to-face meetings for interaction and co-construction of knowledge. They did not use the asynchronous facilities for discussion, more for basic information giving, in common with other studies on undergraduate students. Students also wanted their education and social sites e.g. Facebook kept separate. The process undertaken in completing the weekly tasks had clear stages which included individual and group components. The students’ experience reflected aspects of both of the two major metaphors of learning ‘acquisition’ and ‘participation’. Students organised their use of technology to enable them to maximise interaction when they met faceto- face. The implications for practice include, creating more dedicated high technology classrooms, introducing technologies in a structured way earlier in the course and tutors modelling their use

Making the Connection: Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance and Its Relevance to the Use of a Virtual Classroom in Postgraduate Online Teacher Education

This study explored the use of the Web-based virtual environment, Adobe Connect Pro, in a postgraduate online teacher education programme at the University of Waikato. It applied the tenets of Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance (Moore, 1997) in examining the efficacy of using the virtual classroom to promote quality dialogue and explored how both internal and external structural elements related to the purpose and use of the classroom affected the sense of learner autonomy. The study provides an illustration of the complexity of the relationship that exists between the elements of Moore’s theory, and how the implementation of an external structuring technology such as the virtual classroom, can have both positive impacts (dialogue creation) and negative impacts (diminished sense of learner autonomy). It also suggests that, although Moore’s theory provides a useful conceptual “lens” through which to analyse online learning practices, its tenets may need revisiting to reflect the move toward the use of synchronous communication tools in online distance learning

Maximising Social Interactions and Effectiveness within Distance Learning Courses: Cases from Construction

Advanced Internet technologies have revolutionised the delivery of distance learning education. As a result, the physical proximity between learners and the learning providers has become less important. However, whilst the pervasiveness of these technological developments has reached unprecedented levels, critics argue that the student learning experience is still not as effective as conventional face-to-face delivery. In this regard, surveys of distance learning courses reveal that there is often a lack of social interaction attributed to this method of delivery, which tends to leave learners feeling isolated due to a lack of engagement, direction, guidance and support by the tutor. This paper defines and conceptualises this phenomenon by investigating the extent to which distance-learning programmes provide the social interactions of an equivalent traditional classroom setting. In this respect, two distance learning case studies were investigated, covering the UK and Slovenian markets respectively. Research findings identified that delivery success is strongly dependent on the particular context to which the specific distance learning course is designed, structured and augmented. It is therefore recommended that designers of distance learning courses should balance the tensions and nuances associated with commercial viability and pedagogic effectiveness

Hybrid Course Delivery: Impact on Learning and Assessment

Technology is influencing education, blurring the boundaries of delivery modes. A combination between online and traditional teaching style, the hybrid/blended course, may present a solution with many benefits. This paper provides definitions of the different delivery approaches, and then evaluates four years of data from a course that has been converted from traditional face-to-face delivery, to a hybrid system. It is determined that the revised course, in hybrid delivery mode, is at least as good, if not better, than it previously was

Maximising social interactions and effectiveness within distance learning courses : cases from construction

Advanced Internet technologies have revolutionised the delivery of distance learning education. As a result, the physical proximity between learners and the learning providers has become less important. However, whilst the pervasiveness of these technological developments has reached unprecedented levels, critics argue that the student learning experience is still not as effective as conventional face-to-face delivery. In this regard, surveys of distance learning courses reveal that there is often a lack of social interaction attributed to this method of delivery, which tends to leave learners feeling isolated due to a lack of engagement, direction, guidance and support by the tutor. This paper defines and conceptualises this phenomenon by investigating the extent to which distance-learning programmes provide the social interactions of an equivalent traditional classroom setting. In this respect, two distance learning case studies were investigated, covering the UK and Slovenian markets respectively. Research findings identified that delivery success is strongly dependent on the particular context to which the specific distance learning course is designed, structured and augmented. It is therefore recommended that designers of distance learning courses should balance the tensions and nuances associated with commercial viability and pedagogic effectiveness

Distance and virtual distance: Preliminary results of a study of interaction patterns in synchronous audio graphic CMC and face-to-face tutorials in beginners’ language tutorials

This paper presents preliminary results of a larger study of interaction patterns in beginners’ language tutorials held at the Open University. The tutorials are voluntary, supplementing a distance learning course in German as a Foreign Language. Tutorials are offered in two versions: traditional face-to-face tutorials in a classroom or online tutorials held through an internet based audio-graphic conferencing system. Interaction patterns are compared between the two modes of presentation, between different tasks performed by students and between different tutors initiating the same task. Results of the completed study will be published in 2005 / 06

Online Learning in Graduate Health Programs: Andragogy, Lecture Preference, and the Effectiveness of Synchronous and Asynchronous Participation

Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, graduate health programs have undertaken greater utilization of online learning, employing synchronous and asynchronous online lectures as a replacement for traditional face-to-face instruction. Although supported in previous literature as a method at least equally effective to traditional learning, online learning has been a source of frustration for students and instructors expecting face-to-face instruction. This dissertation project seeks to explore (1) the ways in which principles of andragogy have been implemented in graduate health programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) the factors that contribute to preference for online method of lecture participation (synchronous or asynchronous) among graduate health students, and (3) if one method of online lecture participation (synchronous or asynchronous) is superior for students enrolled in traditional style graduate health programs and if it is in the student’s best academic interest to choose, based on preference, between synchronous and asynchronous lecture. This project includes a review of literature, a survey, and a post-test only quasi-experimental design to explore the preferences and performance of physical and occupational therapy students enrolled in graduate programs at a Midwestern university