Blended Learning Workshop: mapping digital literacies and thinking about pedagogical design to align technologies to needs and learning outcomes

1. Blended Learning
DTS ProgrammeWorkshop – May 2015

2. Overview
• Comments on the HEA article?
• Defining blended learning
• Location and time
• Constructive alignment
• Your experiences of blended learning
• Digital literacies
• Digital learners
• Digital visitors and residents
• Designing a learning event with technology
• Academic practices
• Some useful educational technologies (‘edtech’)
2

3. HEA Review of Blended Learning Experience (2006)
Use of blended learning (Ch 2)
• VLE as repository
• Support for academic practices
• Holistic use
Theories of learning (Ch 3)
• Associationist
• Constructivist
• Situative
3

4. A common definition
Face-to-
face
Online
4
Blended

5. An unhelpful dichotomy?
Face-to-
face
Online
5
Blended
Human
Technology-
mediated

6. Supporting interactions – where and when
Experiential
Outside
class
In class
6
Synchronous use
- poll
- answer board
- Twitter
- webinar
- Skype
Asynchronous use
- video / podcast
- wiki / blog
- Office 365
- forum (Bb/FB)
- e-portfolio
- curation

7. Aligning technology use with learning and teaching
7
Learning outcome Activities Assessment
Monitor, evaluate and
reflect on your teaching
and the learning of your
students
• Seminar on reflective
practice supported by a
group blog
• Sharing progress updates
with mentor
• Gather student feedback
using online polls and
VLE access logs
• Formatively assessed
through:
• mentor observation
of teaching
• tutor comments in
the blog
• Summatively assessed in
a reflective report
including a discussion of
student data (including
ethical issues)
(Inspired by Rogerson-Revell 2015)

8. Digital literacies

9. Digital learners

10. Digital learners
• ‘Digital natives’ Prensky (2001a, 2001b)
• Technologically deterministic “othering of youth” (Herring 2008)
• A “dangerous opposition” (Bayne and Ross 2007)
• Uncritical assumptions
• Savvy or superficial users?
• Little attention to international students, mature learners, and disabilities
• Second-order digital divide (Brotcorne et al. 2010)
• An alternative metaphor
• the digital visitor/resident continuum (White and Le Cornu 2011)

11. Digital lecturers

12. Mapping digital behaviours (White & Le Cornu 2011)
Internet as a tool used to fulfil a
specific goal (e.g. looking up a
Wikipedia entry or a news website).
Visitors are not ‘less’ digitally literate.
The visitor’s instrumental behaviour
has value in education contexts since
it is goal-oriented.
Internet as a place which gives
residents “a sense of being present
with others… with the effect of
foregrounding a sense of digital
identity”.
‘Residents’ contribute and share
information (e.g. by creating or
responding to a blog post or tweet)
and develop social networks in the
process.
12

13. Mapping your digital residency profile
13
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=126&v=MSK1Iw1XtwQ

14. An example
14

15. Digital literacies (JISC 2014)
15

16. Alternative models of digital literacies
16
van Dijk & van Deursen (2014)Beetham & Sharpe 2009, 2010

17. Coffee break

18. Design task

19. Digital pedagogy: aligning technology
• Select a learning event (course, module, or lecture)
• List the intended learning outcome(s)
• Consider student needs
• Select a technology
• What issues for you?
• What issues for students?
• Fit for purpose?
• Present to your group
19

20. Types of technology
In-class
interaction
• Clickers
• AnswerGarden
• GoSoapBox
• Socrative
Groupwork
• Facebook group
• Group blog
• Forum
• wiki
• Trello, Asana
• Padlet
Curation
• Delicious/Diigo
• Mendeley/Zotero
• Scoop it
• Paper.li
• Flipboard
Multimodality
• Video
• Screencast
• Podcast
• Skype
• Webinar
20

21. In-class interaction:AnswerGarden
http://answergarden.ch/view/173465

22. In-class interaction: GoSoapBox
22
https://app.gosoapbox.com/

23. 23

24. Groupwork: Padlet
24
http://padlet.com/daveowhite/visitorsandresidents

25. Groupwork:Trello project board
25
http://trello.com

26. Curation: Diigo (social bookmarking)
26

27. Curation: Paper.li
27
http://paper.li/tag/edtech

28. Multimedia: podcast
28
https://soundcloud.com/nicholas-pegg/ukip-shipping-forecast
Note: I hope this podcast will not offend anyone.This podcast is a spoof of the BBC’s
shipping forecast based around the blunders of UKIP party members in 2014.

29. Multimedia: Example screencast (on QR codes)
29
https://youtu.be/RoMjtYqsQ_0

30. In summary
• Align technology to learning outcomes, activities and assessment
• Consider where and when to use learning technologies
• Starting small is OK
• Start introducing technology in the first year
• Map your strengths and play to them
• Play to your students’ strengths too
• Consider the professional value of technology for students’ future careers
30

31. 31

32. References
• Bayne, S., and J. Ross (2007) ‘The ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’: a dangerous opposition’. In Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher
Education. Brighton.Accessed from: http://www.malts.ed.ac.uk/staff/sian/natives_final.pdf.
• Biggs, J.B. andTang,C.S. (2011) Teaching For Quality Learning At University:What the Student Does. 4th ed. Maidenhead:Open University Press.
• Brotcorne, P., Damhuis, L., Laurent,V.,Valenduc,G., andVendramin, P. (2010) The Second Order Digital Divide:Synthesis of the Research Report [online]
Namur, BE: Foundation Université-Travail.
• Herring, S.C. (2008) ‘Questioning the Generational Divide:Technological Exoticism and AdultConstructions of OnlineYouth Identity’. In Buckingham, D. (ed)
Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 71–92
• Mayes,T. and de Freitas, S. (2007) ‘Learning and E-Learning:The Role ofTheory’. In Beetham, H. and Sharpe, R. (eds) Rethinking Pedagogy in the Digital Age.
London: Routledge, 13–25
• McLoughlin, C.E. and Alam, S.L. (2014) ‘A Case Study of Instructor Scaffolding UsingWeb 2.0Tools toTeach Social Informatics’. Journal of Information
Systems Education 25 (2), 125-136
• Prensky, M. (2001a) ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - Part I’. On the Horizon, 9 (5), 1–6.
• Prensky, M. (2001b) ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - Part II: DoThey ReallyThink Differently?’. On the Horizon, 9 (6), 1–9.
• Rogerson-Revell, P. (2015) ‘ConstructivelyAligningTechnologies with Learning andAssessment in a Distance Education Master’s Programme’. Distance
Education 36 (1), 129–147
• Sharpe, R., Benfield,G., Roberts,G., and Francis, R. (2006) The Undergraduate Experience of Blended E-Learning: A Review of UK Literature and Practice
[online]York: Higher EducationAcademy.Accessed from http://wales.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/archive/blended_elearning_exec_summary_1.pdf
• Van Dijk, J.A.G.M. and van Deursen, A.J.A.M. (2014) DigitalSkills: Unlocking the Information Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
• White, D.S., and A. Le Cornu (2011). ‘Visitors and residents: a new typology for online engagement’. First Monday, 16 (9). Accessed from:
http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/3049
32