by George Lorenzo

In 2004, blended learning - also referred to as "hybrid" and "mixed-mode" - seemed to move prominently into the forefront of discussions and research about online education. Educators have covered this topic extensively in recent years, but in 2004, it seemed like an unequaled amount of books, research papers and conference sessions on blended learning was published and presented. Also, recent past issues of Educational Pathways in 2004 have included special feature articles on blended learning - see the March, April and May issues, for instance.

So, why cover this topic any further? The answer is because blended learning is an important topic related to where educational technology, in general, is heading. It aims to please all higher education stakeholders - students, faculty, and institutional administrations - by offering the best of online and face-to-face teaching and learning environments. Institutions that learn how to provide blended learning courses and programs sensibly and effectively will save dollars, use their physical space intelligently, generate better student learning outcomes, and satisfy more faculty and students.

Blended learning for this article is defined simply as a course in which a segment of face-to-face seat time has been replaced by an online teaching and learning environment. However, there really is no official definition of blended learning (more on this at the end of this article). That became evident to me in late April of this year, when I attended a special invitation workshop about blended learning that was sponsored by the Sloan Consortium and hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago. About 40 educators, all with strong education technology related experience, representing about 20 institutions, attended the workshop. Over two days, an enormous amount of discussion was generated about blended learning. I taped and transcribed this entire workshop, and what follows are some of the highlights.

One third of the workshop was a session on the faculty perspective of blended learning. This session began with the following rhetorical question posed by Anthony Picciano, professor in the graduate program in Education Leadership at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY): Is blended learning the beginning, middle or end in the evolution of online learning?

In other words, do traditional faculty, who have taught only face-to-face, typically move to online teaching through a first-step blended learning course and then ultimately move to teaching in the fully online mode? Or, is it the opposite of this, with faculty who have grown into veteran fully online instructors now moving back to the classroom experience, but in a blended modality? Or are faculty somewhere in the middle of these two scenarios?

Regardless of when faculty may or may not move to blended or fully online, Picciano identified a good number of comparisons and strategies related to the adoption and implementation of blended and/or fully online teaching and learning environments.

For example, depending on the discipline, moving to a fully online environment typically entails a more detailed and rigorous development process when compared to moving to a blended environment, where the challenging teaching and learning elements appropriate for face-to-face interaction can stay in the live classroom and thus not require conversion to the online modality.

However, it probably goes without saying that what ends up in the online environment of a blended course must be designed well, especially with regard to communications and interactions. Picciano said faculty and designers need to ask themselves some basic questions, such as how are students going to interact with faculty, how are students going to interact with each other, and how are students going to interact with the content.

Also, social presence and community building are key elements that need to be built into the design of a blended course. In a fully online course, building community is much more of a challenge. However, in a blended course, the face-to-face class segments allow faculty to easily incorporate activities that build community that can be transferred over to the online environment.

In any kind of course, building knowledge is important. In addition to faculty publishing and sharing their knowledge, they should also build on the knowledge that their students have. Picciano said, for instance, that "reflection is extremely powerful in the online mode and, I dare say, much better than in the face-to-face mode." Yes, of course, the excitement and spontaneity one finds in a live classroom are lost online, but when students and faculty communicate online in writing, asynchronously, the end result is typically a more apparent and detailed representation of their knowledge than a instinctive response in a live classroom.

It was suggested that a large lecture-hall course comprised of several hundred students would not work well in a fully online environment but might work out extremely well in a blended environment if, for example, 50 percent of the course is conducted as a live lecture and 50 percent is reserved for online discussions that can be broken up into smaller groups of no more than 20 students and facilitated by teaching assistants.

In the fully online modality, testing is often a real challenge because of issues concerning cheating and the authenticity of unseen students being assessed. In a blended environment, testing can be conducted in a proctored classroom environment, thus making such online testing issues disappear.

Picciano mentioned that, for many faculty, moving multimedia to the online environment is a "difficult task." In particular, getting video clips copyright cleared for presenting online poses a new set of challenges not found in the live classroom. There are also technical and cost issues that come with publishing multimedia online, all of which can be eliminated by presenting such multimedia elements (with the right audio/visual support) of any given course in the live classroom.

Programs of study that require students to obtain live professional experience, such as in nursing, education and social work disciplines, do not work well in the fully online environment. For example, the effective use of video conferencing techniques for teaching practicums and/or nursing and social work internships are perhaps in the far-off future instead of the present or even near future. Picciano said that "clinical experience is something where faculty need to go out there and see what their students are doing in the real world, with real students, with real patients, with real families that need help."

Some disciplines are more complicated to convert to online than others. Chemistry, biology, physics, and statistics, for instance, are all inherently difficult to teach online and may be more appropriate in the face-to-face environment. However, some creative faculty, such as Deepa Godambe, assistant professor of chemistry at William Rainey Harper College, have developed effective blended learning environments in such courses.

Godambe gave an interesting presentation at the workshop that covered how she converted a 100-level Chemistry for the Health Sciences course to the blended environment. For example, she had her students conduct relatively simple concept-based lab experiments at home, such as mixing calcium chloride with baking soda in a bottle of water and noting the reaction. Other lab experiments that taught important techniques and activities that Godambe felt students should observe together in a class were completed in a live classroom with her at the helm. Additionally, Gobambe built a sense of community online through discussion forums related to the at-home experiments as well as to the reading assignments she assigned throughout the semester. She also put audio on her online lecture notes along with interactive question and answer exercises. Finally, the last lab of the course was held in a live classroom, where Godambe had her students apply what they had learned virtually throughout the semester to solve a mock murder mystery, which was both fun and a great learning experience. She said she has had "very positive feedback on this course, so much so that our department and our division keeps wanting me to do this more and more."

Another part of the workshop covered institutional strategies. The purpose of this segment was to get a better sense of where all the institutions in attendance were, collectively, in relation to the emergence and institutionalization of blended learning. The discussions revolved around presentations from five institutions that are committed to building and sustaining blended learning courses: The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (UWM), City University of New York (CUNY), and the University of Central Florida (UCF).

A brief synopsis of each institution, in order of duration of institutional commitment, are presented as follows:

Most of UIC’s blended learning initiatives were implemented by faculty on their own without awareness or participation from their departments, the colleges, or the institution, said Mary Niemec, UIC’s interim associate provost for external education. However, beginning in the Fall of this year, UIC entered into phase one of a blended learning initiative (UIC uses the term hybrid) without putting a number on how many courses might be moved to the blended environment. "At this point we are approaching it from a what-makes-sense-per course basis," said Niemic.

RIT’s Online Learning Department has hosted what it refers to as a Blended Learning Pilot Project since Fall 2003. During the first academic year of the project, 26 traditional face-to-face courses were converted to the blended learning format. These courses were taught by 25 faculty members. Due to its initial success, the pilot has been extended into the 2004-05 academic year and will include up to 50 RIT faculty members. Karen Vignare, senior research analyst for Online Learning Services at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said that the Online Learning Department is "looking at how to mainstream this and align the institution to provide more support," as well as how the department will deal with colleges and work with new academic and discipline-oriented issues that continue to arise as the pilot moves forward.

UWM also uses the term "hybrid." Its Learning Technology Center’s (LTC) foray into blended learning began in 1999 with a two-year grant from the University of Wisconsin system (see the April 2004 issue of Educational Pathways for more about the UWM project). Bob Kaleta, UWM’s LTC director, said that three goals were achieved: 1. Develop a web-based resource, 2. Develop a model faculty development program for teaching blended courses, and 3. Took a group of faculty from 17 campuses who were teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels, and different course sizes, ranging from small seminar courses to large lecture courses, and assist them with moving their traditional courses to blended. "This is something we are continuing to do but now also with faculty at other campuses across the country and even internationally," said Kaleta, adding that LTC was visited by educators from England who wanted to learn about blended learning.

George Otte, director of instructional technology at CUNY, said that at the largest urban university system in the country (CUNY has 20 campuses and about one quarter million students) "we have hybrids coming out of the wazu." He added that "there is nothing different about the people who teach online and who teach in the classroom. We have models at every single campus, in every single discipline, at every level of instruction. Now the challenge is how to become organized, how to get programmatic, and how to move from faculty experimentation to real balance for the institution (see the June 2003 issue of Educational Pathways for more information).

Otte described a number of critical issues related to the adoption of blended learning at CUNY, including the synchronization of faculty and administration expectations and motivations, providing incentives for faculty, removing obstacles to their participation, and clarifying issues such as intellectual property and workload.

UCF has a current student population of 42,000 that is expected to rise to 60,000 students by 2013. UCF refers to blended courses as "mixed-mode." The adoption of blended learning courses at UCF is being seen as a way to manage the institution’s rapid growth by helping to increase efficiencies related to the utilization of classroom space - something which UCF is still struggling with despite having offered 925 blended course sections this past academic year. "It is defusing throughout the university, and it is having an impact on all kinds of areas of institutional policy, activity and experience," said Joel Hartman, UCF’s vice provost for information technologies and resources. "We think of this as an engine for transformation via the institution" (see the March 2004 issue of Educational Pathways for more information).

The workshop also had a segment that covered student perspectives. Some points of interest are listed below:

Positive perceptions of blended learning include convenience, reduced logistic demands, increased learning flexibility and technology-enhanced learning. Plus, students who were changed by their blended learning experiences say that they learned to interact more, become a self-paced learner and spent more time studying.

- Chuck Dziuban, director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness (RITE) at UCF

Using more course management features in a blended course equates to more satisfied students. "Just because you (faculty) are doing a hybrid, don’t say that this is an opportunity to discuss things online as well as in class, or I’m not going to put a lot of content online because I am going to be meeting with you. This is never an either/or choice. It is always both. The students expect a full-featured, high-level use of the course management system (CMS). . . The single most written comment from students is that they like these courses because they learn how to deal with the technology."

- George Otte

Temper your usage of CMS features by adding technology gradually. "Choose one or two things you think are going to have the biggest impact and do them well. Generally add things as you feel comfortable with the technology and you see good instructional value coming from that. Don’t do everything."

- Steven Sorg, UCF’s vice president and director of distributed learning

One professor at UCF teaching a blended course struggled with the idea of his face-to-face course now having an online element until he reversed that thinking by viewing his blended course as an online course with face-to-face enhancements. The general notion here is that viewing a blended course as simply an add on is fatal and that there must be a seamless circle applied in terms of what happens online and how it flows back to the classroom.

- Steven Sorg and Bob Kaleta

Addressing the issue of today’s students referred to as "digital natives" or "millennials" (those born between 1981 and 1994) - how can we compete with their daily lives? "Kids are playing X-Box live where they plug in a headset and play games with people anywhere in the world in virtual environments that are much better than anything we’ll ever be able to create with academic dollars . . . it’s going to be hard to compete with the gaming world."

- Terry Keys, director of
instructional technologies,
Monroe Community College

The following sample of comments came from a small group of students who participated in a panel question and answer session at the workshop:

"Students are a lot more comfortable participating. You don’t see the other students, so you feel freer to ask a question."

"Faculty need to stipulate clear objectives, i.e some type of rubric that helps students realize what is going on in order to help them focus more . . . Teachers needs to realize that these courses need to be simple and interactive."

"Teachers need to be interacting constantly with the students. It’s very important that you get involved, otherwise it is going to be downhill form here, especially as technology goes up. As technology goes up, so does the opportunity to better communicate with your students."

"In the online portion, I need faculty who have more commitment over a long period of time, who can participate in the discussions regularly. He or she has to be consistent in participation and discussion over the whole semester."

"Evaluating your team as a member should not be taken seriously. A lot of times people just do not get along. I think a teacher should take these evaluation from student peers with a grain of salt."

"There are two levels of interaction. One level is the student participating in the course, and the instructor’s responses to the comments students make. The other level - which may be more in the future - could be allowing the students to be involved with the layout of the content. It could be possible to have students be more involved with laying out the objectives of a course."

"In one class the professor proposed topics and topic objectives and then the students taught each other. You learn more that way because you are learning from someone at your level. Everyone is on a equal level, and you don’t feel that you are underneath somebody because they are a professor."

As with most wrap up sessions of any academic workshop or meeting, all participants agreed that more research needs to be done, more sharing of effective practices needs to be facilitated, and the question of how institutions and departments can optimize teaching and learning needs to be explored in more detail.

Workshop facilitator Burks Oakley, associate vice president of academic affairs for the University of Illinois, added that "making a clear articulation and itemization of the benefits of blended learning to all of the stakeholders," needs to be developed. "If we are going to go back and convince provosts, presidents, or whomever to make an investment in this - to go to our faculty, to go to our students, parents, and legislators, and make the argument to move in the direction of blended learning, then we have to make that itemization and have the research data behind it."

One aspect of the workshop that seemed to never get resolved was coming up with a definition of blended learning. Oakley, however, came up with one that sounds credible and succinct: "A blended learning course combines online and classroom learning activities in an optimal way to improve student learning outcomes."

Finally, Hartman added a positive spin to the entire workshop when he said that " this is one of the few tools we have ever found that has pervasive reach, that has produced positive energy. . . Blended learning is the booster rocket that will take us to the next place, and I think it can be a better place. . . In fact, to worry about a definition implies that it’s so different that it needs a special name. My thought is that victory would be that we don’t need to figure out what to call it."

See list of "hybrid" courses.
www.dln.cuny.edu/

Dziuban, C., J. Hartman, M. O. Niemiec, B, Oakley, G. Otte, A.G. Picciano, and R. Schroeder. 2004 Sloan-C Workshop on Blended Learning in Higher Education. In press. The Sloan Consortium, 2004

Klein, R. From F2F to Online to Blended: Ten Lessons I Learned. RIT Online Learning Department, 2004. http://online.rit.edu/faculty/

Sloan Consortium. ALN Principles for Blended Learning Environments. Sloan-C View, May 2004.
www.sloan-c.org/publications/view/v3n4/eecreport.htm.

Sloan-C Community
The purpose of this site is to develop a community of inquiry around important topics in online learning. Sloan-C premium members can join a variety of online special interest groups (SIGs), including one titled "Blended Environments" that is in an early development phase.
http://community.sloan-c.org/

Note: The Sloan-C Community is open to Sloan-C members and to people who register for Sloan-C online events. For more information about becoming a Sloan-C member, visit www.sloan-c.org/aboutus/help.asp. For more information about Sloan-C online events, visit www.sloan-c.org/workshop/index.asp.

UW-Milwaukee Hybrid Course Web site
www.uwm.edu/Dept/LTC/hybrid.html