MOOC Blended Learning Post 2: Interacting in the Blended Learning Environment

The second reading for this course centered on the concept of human interaction in the blended learning environment: student-student, student-instructor, and impliedly student-self responses to self directed study.  It explored different roles the instructor as the architect of the learning experience can arrange: concierge instructor who makes sure you know all the available resources, the artist instructor who puts everyone in the same room and comments publicly on everyone's progress, curator instructors who set up scenarios and specific environments designed to have a certain effect, and network administrative instructors who try to create learning groups to facilitate reinforcement.


Other important concepts that were introduced--which I thought were sharp ideas, is the notion of recognition in the learning process.  They didn't say it this way, but my sense was they were trying to express that learners want credit and reinforcement that they're doing well--how do we, as learners, know we're making progress.


All the instructor postures in the first paragraph achieve that notion (that we must accomplish a level of learner feedback that keeps learners engaged--feeling like they're making progress and not wasting their time) in a different way.  But I think if you consider those instructor strategies in terms of "how do I make sure that the student is getting feedback, correction, reinforcement, and satisfaction from their efforts in a way that makes sense and maintains engagement" then it becomes clear what the significance of those strategies is.


One thing I noticed and found kind of interesting is that, at this point in the reading--(consistent with my first blog post) is there's nothing specifically "blended" (as we think of virtual learning vs. instructor led) about any of these concepts.  In fact, the artist (Atelier) instructor who has all the students working in eachother's presence and walks around highlighting the innovative and interesting artwork of each of the other students in the presence of the others, is conceptually, a specifically physically-present instructor led training.


So on one hand, the reading might be explaining these different notions of instructor role with the unspoken, implied meaning that we shouldn't forget these types of instructor strategies and to look for ways, through technology, that we can achieve the feel of these instructor models as we build our blended courses.  Maybe an implied charge not to let the Atelier instructor strategy die as we create blended learning courses.


Another thing that occurred to me, if we assume that this discussion is intended to capture a survey of Human Interaction in the Blended Learning Environment--we've completely ignored half of the equation.  We read about how these different instructor strategies accomplish human interaction and "learning" but it seems like we fling the term "learning" around without a definition.  We seem to assume that "learning" is "learning" as if there's only one kind of learning.  It seems like one of the most definitive aspects of instructor strategy depends heavily, with almost mathematical functionality, on the type of "learning" we are doing.


It could be said that:


Educational learning (how to think about things): e.g., learning math--how we quantify our environment--seems "educational" and amenable to certain kinds of instructor strategies that say, Training learning (how to do things): e.g., playing guitar, seems "training-y" and would require a completely different instructor strategy to be most effective.  I think we should recognize that "learning" is a multi-dimensional concept.  It might be worth spending almost as much time analyzing the type of learning (defined however you want) our course will attempt to facilitate, BEFORE we begin to explore the instructor strategy we try to emulate with our blended learning strategy.  I think if we omit our analysis of the type of learning involved in the course we're developing, our consideration of instructor strategies and learning models is of arbitrary significance.


As we explore the different instructor strategies, and how to replicate them virtually, the content of our learning is (in my opinion) the most important factor in deciding which instructor strategies for human interaction we choose for any particular course.

I'm taking a blended learning MOOC.


As I did the reading I developed an appreciation for how Canvas, and other educators including those at the University of California Irvine, define blended learning.  As I processed their writing, I visualized a continuum with traditional face-to-face instruction on the left and on the right was pure virtual where you never see your instructor, but the materials and assignments are available online and you learn by following instructions and working at your own pace.  On that continuum, the roles and responsibilities and expectations changed, different strengths and weaknesses of the learning modes bounced around in my head.


Then something occurred to me.


I think that we have always been doing some form of blended learning we just didn't think of it that way because we didn't have computer platforms that told us we were learning without the physical presence of our instructors.


Back in the day, we did blended learning but we didn't have computers we had text books and spiral notebooks.  In law school, we had to read the assigned chapters before class and arrive prepared to discuss--and lead a discussion, if we were unfortunate enough to be called on that day.  As an engineer I attended lectures and went home to solve problems that were in my book and I read the book to understand how to form the equations and model the physics with math.  If we can mentally discount the significance of a computer screen, and agree that the essence of the blended learning is that we are using tools: books, computers, papers, reading assignments, lab experiments, and other tools outside the direct supervision of a live instructor, I think we can agree we've been blended learners since kindergarten.


Whether anyone agrees with me or not, I think it still remains an interesting exercise to contemplate the new ways technology is enabling us to deliver training and education.  Whether or not we call it blended learning and discuss it as something different than we've been doing all along, the exercise of deliberately engineering the delivery of information and experience to the student, via different platforms is a worthy endeavor.  Staying mindful of the diversity of student learning capacities, the means that the information can be delivered and engineering the social experience during the learning--including offering individual students meaningful choices about how they experience the learning, all seem to be productive ideas.