The topic for last two weeks is design for online and blending learning. As a teacher who has never taught online course, this topic is quite challenging for me, since I don’t have any experience of online teaching, either any idea of the difficulties teachers might encounter. however, on the other hand, I also learned a lot through the discussions of my PBL group.
As a student, of course I have taken some online courses. My old experience of taking online course showed that students who taken online course are not as active in-classroom course. Hence, interaction between teachers and students, as well as between students become less. It seems also that teachers have less control towards students’ concentration than in-classroom course. If I am going to teach an online course, how should I do to avoid these disadvantages?
Our PBL group focus on The Five Stage Model as a basis, and The Five Stage means: 
This description of the model from Salmon (https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html)
Together with the article A pedagogical model for e-learning:”The five-stage model of online learning” by Gilly Salmon, recommended by our facilitator Allan, I got a better idea how about how to design for online and blending course. There are so many good tips in this article and I highly recommend you to get a read if you are interested in the five stage model.
Besides, our PBL group also discuss about emotions. Personally I consider that emotion is very important in the teaching and learning process and I even take emotions as motivation in my teaching. Positive emotion can stimulate students’ interest and enthusiasm in the subject. According to Elmgren and Henriksson (2018), “a student who is intrinsically motivated is more likely to appreciate challenges and does not get as easily discouraged in the face of setbacks” (p. 59). Thus, when designing a course, it is good to take students’ emotions into consideration.
Since I do not have any online course at the moment, I would like to write down some ideas and inspirations for myself from this topic.
Designing a blended online course:
- find out students’ expectation
- work on study content
- material
- intended learning outcomes
- teaching and learning activities (including self-study activities and assessment activities)
How to handle troubles
“Gilly Salmon has some suggestions to handle troubles in e-learning:
- If a participant seems to be in trouble (spotted either by non-contribution or cries for help), an e-moderator should offer immediate help, or direct the participant to a source of help (especially if the problems is technical).
- The e-moderator should ask the participants a few pointed questions aboutexactly what they are trying to achieve and what they perceive the problem to be before offering help. Try also to establish what they know already. Then offer a way forward.
- If this does not solve the problem then very much more explicit instructions should be given, perhaps through another medium of communication. It may even be necessary to get someone to sit with the student and go through what to do – to bring in local face-to-face help.
- No “dependency” should be set up, however, and as soon as the student shows signs of taking part, he or she should be directed back into the group e-tivities. The participant may need a little more acknowledging and praising than average for a while. ” (summary from IT Learning Center)
A step-by-step guide to designing blended online courses. Blog by eThink. https://ethinkeducation.com/blog/step-by-step-guide-designing-blended-online-courses/
Elmgren, M. & Henriksson, A. (2018), Academic Teaching. Studentlitteratur
IT Learning Center: A pedagogical model for e-learning:”The five-stage model of online learning” by Gilly Salmon. https://itlc.science.ku.dk/english/papers/model/
Salmon, G (2013) The Five Stage Model. [Homepage] http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html
