A perfect BL event

What is important in a lecture?

Is the critical thing that you need to be sitting close to someone so you can copy their notes when you wake up? Perhaps it's important for the lecturer to know who's listening? Maybe it's the only way to get people out of bed in the morning?

Of course none of these things is relevant: what's important is getting the facts, opinions and ideas of the lecturer aired to the learners. If they can ask questions that's good, too, but doesn't often happen. The OU knew that when it started recording lectures and airing them in the small hours.

Who knows how many of these broadcasts were watched by people in their pyjamas eating jam sandwiches and doodling on the cat? Did it matter?

The essential activity was getting the information across: all else was a diversion. Dr Bill Ashraf realised this in 2006 and brilliantly re-invented the lecture by looking at the need, the learners and the media.
Dr Bill Ashraf

However, if you listen to what Judith Moritz says in this account you will see that she has
missed the point

What he did that was so clever was not the transmission of lectures to MP3 players but the follow-on activity of taking questions by text (neat) and then answering the whole audience in a blog (brilliant)!

He has preserved the essence of the lecture while not imposing an end when he walked out the theatre, but he has done far more than that. By using generation X friendly media he has started a dialogue with the students that is open-ended. Discussion and analysis of the ideas could go on indefinitely. He can refine and amplify the ideas dynamically in response to the text questions. He can clarify parts, offer alternative explanations and refute arguments. And he only has to do it once.

He has used the lecture as a launch-pad to start the learning not as a device to curtail it.
This is blended learning at its best. Simple, inspired and effective.

Ideas in brief : 4

Learners are different - even if they are on the same course. It is perfectly possible for them to get to the same objective by different paths. There is rarely a correct way to study and learn. If some of your learners like books, then let them read their way through the course. If someone else needs her hand held then provide group or individual tuition . Happy to do e-learning? - then do it that way.

It is possible to blend even within the same course and thus optimise the learning experience.

So what is blended learning, then?

In my first post I said that I was going to say what I thought blended learning was.

As Humpty-Dumpty said in Through the looking Glass: 'When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

So this is what I mean and it's quite simple really. There are three facets to BL:

• Blend to the learner
• Blend to the media
• Blend to the need

(You can check Clive's 3 facets in the archive)

1. Blend to the learner

We know we need to consider the different kinds of user. We have always known that people learn in different ways but we also need to be aware that different generations approach learning differently.

2. Blend to the media

We know there are many ways to provide 'learning interventions'. These are the items in our toolkit and vary from traditional paper-based items (everything from Abstracts to White-papers via poems) through face-2-face (Classes to Workshops) to virtual (Blogs to Wikis).

So all we need to look at is the need.

And this is probably the most interesting bit.....

3. Blend to the need

When you lose the 'command-and-control' approach to learning you take the limitations off. No course need ever be described as 'completed'. Obviously there are milestones that we may need people to get through, but it's a bit like the driving test: when you pass your driving test it just means that you are safe to go on the roads alone. It does not mean that you know everything about driving.

Take something as apparently concrete as a software programming course. Once you've studied the syntax, learned the rules, written a few toy programs and done a little project it seems like you know how to program. It doesn't. It's only the beginning. Just because you have read Kernighan & Ritchie doesn't mean we want you programming missiles.

Non-stop learning

And this is where BL comes into its own. Although it was always possible in a limited way, the rise of the Web and the explosion in peer-to-peer and community activity means that learning need never stop. We can leave the anxious trainer back in the classroom, still fretting over the loss of control over what we are learning, and now connect with the those who will take us further forward.

Tomorrow: what does a blended course look like?

Ideas in brief : 3

Often overlooked but very significant: what is the audience size? If only 6 people will go through a course during a typical year then there is little ROI in being too creative. The larger the audience the more time you should spend building a blended solution.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

We have already looked at the first of the three important aspects of re-inventing the way we do things. I have already argued that we need to consider the different types of learners in an organisation - the different generations. The next thing to look at is the tools we use.

Tools

It's tempting to think that adding new technology automatically transforms what we deliver. It doesn't. The label 'classroom' is shorthand for a style of provision that could better be described as 'command-and-control'. School teachers are often told that the definition of a good classroom technique is 'to have going on in the classroom only what you want going on'. And that's where the danger lies.

The person at the front is in control. She decides what facts will be revealed, how they will be interpreted and what conclusions will be drawn. She decides the pace and the outcome. She is the gateway to knowledge - and the gatekeeper.

Going virtual

Consider the Open University. In its early days it was given as an example of what we should be moving towards. However distance learning is not the same as blended learning. Just recording the lecturer and transmitting the lecture at 2 a.m. does not change the centralised nature of the activity. It is a bit more convenient for the student but it's still command and control. Our new generation of students will not be fooled by this.

Adding computers to the mix doesn't help either. The early days of CBT didn't change anything - in fact you could say they made it worse. It was the electronic equivalent of Moses coming down from the mountain with the ten commandments on his PDA.

Spinning a Web

The arrival of the Internet and with it, more importantly, the Web has provided the real breakthrough. The Web is fundamentally democratic and, for the first time, adds so many new tools to the toolkit that we can finally make blended learning work.

Of the 71 items in our kit, nearly 40 are electronic and nearly 20 require Internet access. In many ways these last items are the important ones. Why? Because it is the rise of peer-to-peer activity that will provide the last piece in the blending jigsaw.

Ideas in brief : 2

Make a list of the different ways people communicate within your organisation and what the rules are about their use. For example, does everyone you need to reach have an email account? Do you use the Tannoy? Can you reach your audience by mobile phone?

Ideas in brief : 1

When you start to design a new course, don't think 'How am I going to replace the classroom element?'. Start with a blank sheet and ask instead 'What do I need to achieve?'