I want to blend students independent of place, but in the same interactive teaching process. Traditional young students can study on campus, but together with second-chance learners at learning centres, work places or at home. I am going to begin a design study on this subject. Experiences, examples, ideas, references?
I had that experience while studying for my doctoral studies. The University had satellite centers for off campus students that linked into our live classes in a smart classroom with video-conferencing equipment (Polycom - brand name). We also had speaker phones in the classroom for those students who were not able to make it to class because of "snow storms." They would call into the classroom and listen/participate to and in the lecture via the speaker phone. Outside of the latter, you can use web-conferencing software (e.g., Blackboard Collaborate) that allows for one-many communication live or synchronously via the Internet. That said, one collaborative activity that builds students' critical thinking and collaborative skills is the Asynchronous Debate. Here's a link to a conference paper on its use and successful results: Conference Paper Debating: A Dynamic Teaching Strategy for Motivating Student...
Best regards,
Debra
Thank you Debra!
Yes, it is setups in this direction I am thinking of. I think there is much experience out there, but this is complex and not very much researched on. A difficulty is to scaffold a working interaction both within the local classroom and with students in other locations - and this without making the situation of the teacher (and students) so complicated. If the ongoing activity is a one-way lecture without questions, it is of course easy to record or broadcast, but such an activity is nowadays hardly worth a dedicated classroom in the first place.
A risk is that both classroom students and remote students are not interacting as long as videoconference is ongoing - and then after the sessions is over, local students try to get help from the teacher, and remote studet s are left to themselves.
I just wanted to add a few points on top of Debra's useful suggestions. I believe blended learning ideas and approaches are well researched and can be used in such contexts. For example, you may refer "Community of Inquiry(CoI)" model to further inform or frame your design with researched models. As Anders already pointed out, the main issue that would be helpful for such a case is ensuring interaction between two groups to construct learning. Of course, this is the challenging issue as well. I would say maximizing the 'social presence' in the learning process is important. Hence, designing and incorporating asynchronous projects/ activities (individual, paired, group) together with online discussions from every angle would promote interaction and ensure effective learning.
Anders:
The interaction between the instructor and the students at the remote centers is not difficulty. The both classes see each other via a wide plasma screen situated in the classroom. You develop a protocol for communication that can include the students raising their hands to share questions/comments or the instructor pausing to accommodate questions from either side. At the end of the video-conferencing session, the instructor can also accommodate questions from the "remote" students accordingly or post up a Q&A forum for that week's topic so that any further questions can be answered. A more recent development is the video wall that is described in this link:
https://library.educause.edu/~/media/files/library/2017/12/eli7151.pdf
Many thanks,
Debra
Hi! Thanks! Yes, live question tools as Slido or LIve Question Tool (from Harvard) are very useful, and some representation of remote and classroom students is also important. If there is only one remote student, or two, I find KUBI (from revolverobotics.com) very useful, but I am not convinced about the live video wall for representing many students.
My experience is that it is not easy anyway. For entusiastic teachers trying new things it is - but as a normality in a program with many teachers, it is more difficult. Students often become more shy than usuaL, which shows in different ways.
In a classroom, a student is physically present and can make a good impression just sitting quiet and looking in the back, but a remote student that hides from the camera in a learning centre studio is really non-present. I think Luciano Floridi is right when he says that "presence" in the informaiton society is INTERACTION primarily, not physical presence. I just want to get that to work, without too much hardware in specially equipped classrooms - when it is intended to be a new normal ways of doing things, not an experiment.
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