The fourth topic of #ONL202 has been instructional design for online and blended learning, and has much evolved around the CoI (Community of Inquiry) model (https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model/). My previous blog post dealt with the addition of a fourth presence,  the emotional presence, which I still find valuable in online teaching, even though current pedagogical theory views that presence as contained within the social and the cognitive presences.

Blended learning and student autonomy

Blended learning has been defined as “the organic integration of thoughtfully selected and complementary face-to-face and online approaches” (Vaughan et al, 2013, page 8). The concept thus views the face-to-face and online teaching instructional activities as complements that are to be carefully selected to support students to reach the learning objectives. The blended approach potentially enables a larger flexibility for the students in choosing the time, space, path, and pace of their studies. This was mentioned as one of the four key challenges of blended learning in the review by Boelens et al (2017). They reported that flexibility in terms of time and space was frequently mentioned in the reviewed articles, while flexibility in path and pace was more uncommon. Furthermore, the decision on the actual blend was often taken by the instructor, rarely allowing the students to select the format of the learning activities that would suit them.

This seems to be contrary to the approach in the Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2011), that state that the primary barrier to fostering expert learners is inflexible, “one-size-fits-all” curricula. Instead they suggest three principles: Provide multiple means of Representation, of Action & Expression, and of Engagement in order to enable learners with all kinds of challenges and preconditions the possibilities to choose the activities that suit them. The importance is highlighted in one of the “checkpoints” of UDL Guidelines version 2.2: Optimize individual choice and autonomy.

The aspects of flexibility and student automony in choosing activities are found also in the CoI literature. For example, Fiock (2020) in her comprehensive list of instructional activities states that the choice of activities should adhere to the seven principles of good practice of online learning of Sorensen & Baylen (2009), where the last one is:

7. Respect diverse ways of learning, a principle ensuring instructors are developing and implementing a wide variety of instructional strategies to meet the diverse population of students (p. 71).

Within the blended learning approach there thus seem to be ample scope for personalized learning and differentiated instruction, so students should be able to form their own blend of activities that suits their learning styles and circumstances.

References

Athabasca university homepage. CoI framework. Accessed 2020-11-09 at https://coi.athabascau.ca/coi-model

Boelens R, De Wever B, Voet M. Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review 2017; 22: 1-18.

CAST. Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.0. Available 2020-12-22 at https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

Sorensen CK, Baylen DM. Learning online: Adapting the seven principles of good practice to a Web-based instructional environment. In Orellana, Hudgins, Samonson (eds). The perfect online course: Best practices for designing and teaching (pp. 69-86). Charlotte, NY: Information Age Publishing, 2009.

Vaughan ND, Cleveland-Innes M, Garrison RD. Teaching in Blended Learning Environments – Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry. AU Press, Athabasca University, 2013.