Haruni:

I am blended learning champion for my department on campus and have learnt a few lessons since we started officially in 2012 that can be useful in answering you question. I hope you find the attached helpful in this regard.

Many thanks,

Debra

Conference Paper Championing Blended Learning in Higher Education: Reflection...

We should see Blended learning beyond using a particular method. It can be combination either face-to-face, online, or e-learning. OR combination of any of the three.  In my own personal opinion and as expert in online application development blended learning is learning at the learner convenient .

 Dear Debra

Two things can add a little confusion:

Planned approach and online strategies as seem to dominate the discussion on the paper. What exact should be know to be a planned approach? Is blended learning an approach or strategies? Is blended learning advances from technologies or? Are e-learning and online learning different when we talk about BL?

Kind regards

Haruni

You might be interested in the attache papers:

Hi!

Neither e-learning or online learning deserve the label "leanring", as "Face-to-face-learning" does not deserve it either. This is about tools for learning, not about learning itself.

There will never be a unified definition of "Blended learning" before we all forget the term altogether. It showed up more massively around 2004 and is on the way back in use it seems. Ultimately I think we must understand it as the integration of ICTs into the normality of teaching and learning, as once print also was integrated - not without discussion and problems.

Both "place" (blend classroom-distance) and "media type" (blend of anything "e-" with anything older and analogue) are poor or limited levels of abstraction for understanding this integration, and doing own designs. Try "TIME MODALITIES"" instead, like how ICTs enrich our blend of synchcronous and asynchronous modes/media/places in a teaching and learning process (Vygotsky´s "obuchenie"). This time perspective is more constructive, but not the only possibility. In this case we do not have to discard or think very differently of books or classrooms in our "blends". A classroom is a synchronous tool (as desktop conferencing also is) and a book is an asynchronous tool (as a web text or animation /simulation). Our basic teaching learning process stays similar, but tooled differently - during the time it changes altogether. Remember McLuhan: "First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us", We are re-ontologizing the world as information, not as things, to talk with Floridi. Concerning time as a model, see my paper below 

Article A time based blended learning model

Please see my paper in my profile titled Pellas, N. & Kazanidis, I. (2014). Online and hybrid university-level courses with the utilization of Second Life: Investigating the factors that predict student choice in Second Life supported online and hybrid university-level courses. Computers in Human Behavior, 40(2), 31-43.

Kind regards

NP

Hi Haruni, 

I am working on an online and blended learning paper now. So far I can say there's no single definition of blended learning, It can be the combination of face-to-face and online learning or a combination of face-to-face learning and different media formats, or even a combination of different pedagogical approaches. Hence, you can make the decision of which definition to use based on the purpose of your research. Also some scholars use online learning and e-learning interchangeably, thus, there is no one definition.

Hi Haruni,

I have done significant research regarding this issue. I encourage you to engage with the following. Regards, Kevin

Larkin, K., Rowan, L., Garrick, B. & Beavis, C. (2016) Student Perspectives on First Year Experience Initiatives Designed for Pre-service Teachers in their First Weeks of University Study. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 13(1), 1-14. Available from http://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol13/iss1/7

Larkin, K. & Jamieson-Proctor, R. (2015). Using Transactional Distance Theory to redesign an Online Mathematics Education Course for Pre-Service Primary Teachers. Mathematics Teacher Education and Development 17(1) p. 44-61. Online First. http://www.merga.net.au/ojs/index.php/mted/article/view/193

Larkin, K. Jamieson-Proctor, R. & Finger, G. (2012). TPACK and pre-service teacher Mathematics education: Defining a signature pedagogy for Mathematics education using ICT and based on the metaphor ‘Mathematics is a Language’. Computers in the Schools - Special Issue: Technology and Signature Pedagogies.

Larkin, K. (2014). Restructuring a pre-service teacher mathematics education course to develop Mathematics Content Knowledge (MCK) and Mathematics Pedagogical Content Knowledge (MPCK). Paper presented at STEM 2014: STEM Education and our Planet: Making Connections Across Contexts, Vancouver, (July 12 - 15). Acknowledged as Best Paper Award at this conference.