We are approaching the end of this course and the last “real” topic addressed designs for online & blended learning. In my PBL group, the sentence “I think everything could be taught online” has been said a number of times, which I think is amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that everything should be taught online. However, I think that this sentence entails the realisation that there are many different ways to generate effective learning experiences, both online and offline, and that we should not always stick to the familiar way but constantly challenge whether it is actually the best way to teach.

“Blended learning inherently demands a fundamental rethinking of the educational experience and presents a challenge to traditional presentational approaches” [2]. This phrase is from the book Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry by Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes and Garrison, which I find very useful. It reminds the reader that blended learning is more than adding online components to offline activities. Ideally, blended learning is a synergy of offline and online educational experiences. Facilitating blended learning needs insight, creativity and practise – and possibly also willingness to learn on the educator-side.

I am still more of a student than an educator myself and with this discussion on how to implement blended learning, I kept on asking myself whether I commonly experienced the implementation of traditional ways of learning as effectively done. In my experience, this has always been very educator-, situation- and topic-dependent. However, a course had been good, whenever the educator cared and listened well. And I guess this is what the emotional presence in the Community of Inquiry theory is all about – individualising the learning experience. It sensitises the educator to the needs of the participants. If the workload is too large, both for participants and educators, the learning experience will suffer from it. Also, if not everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done, the learning experience will suffer from it. The Five-stage model by Gillies Salmon [3] is a simple guide to prevent educators from overwhelming participants and themselves. The steps are obvious but crucial – and I think stage 1 and 2 (access and motivation + online socialisation) are skipped too often, also in the offline teaching context. In the online context it is simply more obvious if participants do not manage to access the video platform – I believe you see why… I wonder why we tend to move past these stages too quickly? Is it not “academic” enough? We need to remember to take one step at a time…

Coming back to “I think everything could be taught online”, I hypothesise that this is a product of stage 4 of the Five-Stage model. We have been guided through Stage 1, Access and Motivation – although not without a little confusion on how to set up the blog and why we are taking this course. The pandemic quickly made us realise how timely it is. Stage 2, Online Socialisation, was encouraged and developed over time. Stage 3, Information Exchange, was fostered with readings for all topics and interesting discussions. I think that the group works might not necessarily have resembeled knowledge construction (topic 4), we have separated our tasks too much for that. However, realising new ways of how to do your own teaching work online or blended has been a product of stage 4 and we are equipped for stage 5, the development and reflection phase – an ongoing process from now on?

What I take from this topic, and possibly the course, is that it does not really matter whether you teach offline, online or both but that it is important that you know what, how and why you are doing it a certain way. And that being open to new ways and input from others can create an environment, in which every participant can blossom.

References
[1] http://untblendedlearning.weebly.com/conclusion.html
[2] Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press.
[3] https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html