Blended learning, a teaching format in which face-to-face and online learning is integrated, nowadays is an important development in education. Little is known, however, about its affordances for teacher education, and for domain specific didactical courses in particular. To investigate this topic, we carried out a design research project in which teacher educators engaged in a co-design process of developing and field-testing open online learning units for mathematics and science didactics. The preliminary results concern descriptions of the work processes by the design teams, of design heuristics, and of typical ways of collaborating. These findings are illustrated for the case of two of the designed online units on statistics didactics and mathematical thinking, respectively.
Whereas blended learning can deliver several benefits to students in highereducation, their achievement depends on how exactly it is designed. A participatorydesign is recommendable to try to meet the needs of all stakeholders. ThePersuasive System Design-model can be used to motivate students during theonline part of the course. In the design there has to be an optimal blend betweenthe different parts of the course. A participatory design is used to design ablended learning course of autobiographical reflection for second year socialwork students. The blended course was developed in six meetings with aworking group, including all stakeholders (students, teachers, instructional designers,educational experts and professionals). Almost all techniques of the firstthree categories of the PSD-model were used in the design of the blended course.None of the techniques of the fourth category ‘Social Support’ of the PSD-modelwere used, mostly because they touch on the personal process of autobiographicalreflection. It was considered helpful for teachers to have a protocol thatassists them in blending the different parts and this in turn could stimulatestudents to be engaged in the different parts of the blended learning course. Inthis study, we found that the participatory design approach may lead to anengaging blended learning course that encourages the use of persuasive technologywith an optimal focus on content, target group, context and ethical aspectsof the blended course. We suggest adding a new fifth category ‘Blended LearningSupport’.What do you want to do ?New mail
Presented at the Essence International Conference, Alcoi – Sept 22 2015. The link refers to a youtube video recording of the presentation. This presentation describes a project for online and blended learning.
