This time I want to start my blog post with the end of it because there is just such an abundance of concepts and findings I want to reflect today. Thats why I am going to share directly my main personal findings about the question how to Design for online and blended learning:

• Interaction or interactivity is everything: Student – Student, Teacher – Student interactions, to learn collaborative and in networks is crucios.
• It is all about Course Design: to have it constructed for interactive learning processes and to use different methods and tools with the ability to promote interactivity about the learning subject and socially.
• To be touchable is a key for success: As a teacher and as a Student we are invited to act as authentic as possible in an online environment.
• Providing Support is decisive: Everybody involved has to be technical supported and can support the others (teachers and students). Because technology is complex and in a pedagigical process as well.
• Learning must be purposeful and constructive: Learning is not anymore only contentfocused, it is about being involved in a cognitive process of constructional and purposeful, meningful learning.
• The roles are changing: In this transformation from the classical teaching and learning concepts to Online- and Blended Learning concepts students and teachers become learners, and both are responsible for the teaching process. Thats why the role of teachers and the engagement of the students are changing in an high degree.

Let me first illustrate the very important element of interactivity. Because interacitivity seems to make the difference between highend and lowend Online-Learning concepts. I would say interaction is first of all driven by our emotional needs for being loved and somehow feeling of togetherness. Bates (2020) remembers us in his latest blog post that one of the best ways children learn to read is through parents reading to them in bed. He explains that this is a clear face-to-face synchronous learning activity and the fact of feeling love/togetherness and intensity makes it so powerful. Even though we are not supposed to be so close to our students, the human contact and interaction is so elementary also in educational contexts and becomes the most important aspect in online educational settings. Students and teachers have the emotional need for experiencing the togetherness, to be loved and thats why Cleveland-Innes mentionend “authenticity” as the second of three keys to highend Online Education in her webinar during our ONL-Course. The third key is the technical support. Guess what was the first? It was interactivity. In her video tutorial in the same course she proposed to define the “Learner engagement” as a KPI for educational design. Further on interaction nourishes the cognitive confrontation with what we are going to learn and how we are going to think and decide later on.

The Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute of economic and social studies in Switzerland developped in a future study this year a infographic which illustrates how we are going to meet each other in future. They outlined four modes of meeting: physical, digital, hybrid and virtual and three different forms: One to One, One to Many and Many to Many. The graph shows me that there is much more variety possible in an online education than in a physical learning setting. Best would probably be a combination of online and physical meeting as it is possible in Blended-Learning Concepts.

Interacitivity has to be enbedded in a intentional course design considering the emotional needs for the feeling of togetherness and personal authenticity and the technical equipment and support. Boelens, De Wever and Voet (2017) showed in their literature review the four key challenges to the design of blended learning and mentioned the interactivity as one of it. The four challenges are: 1. Incorporating flexibility, 2. stimulatin interaction, 3. facilitating students to learning processes and 4. fostering an affective learning climate.

There are a variety of concepts for designing Online- and Blended Learning courses. I deepened the following ones also suggested by our ONL Course:
1. Community of Inquiry model developped by Vaughan Norman, D., Cleveland-Innes Martha and Garrison Randy from Athabasca University Canada
2. Five stage model developped by Salmon Gilly, a consultant and facilitator for learning futures.
3. The 7Cs of Learning Design by Gráinne Conole from the University of Leicester
4. The design book for online learning written by educators from 8 finnish technical Universities and published by Aalto University
5. Backword Design by University of California, Davis
6. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) about student inclusion

Two interesting movements / organisations I came accross during this topic which I want to share also with you because I think they are worthwhile having a look: OneHE Community and espically their support in community building activities and the student generated content.

In the community of Inquiry there are described three parts of presences: the social presence, the cognitive presence and the teaching presence. It is a framework for highend online education to help students for deep learning and understanding. I am not going to explain this model in this blog post because there is so many good literatures about it but you will notice I already started using the technical terms.

Salmon Gilly postulates that students need to be supported through a structural developmental process like her “Five Stage Model” for learning successfully and happy. She developped a five stage model as a scaffold which offers students essential support in an online learning process. The basis is that students need access and purposeful reasons to take part. Her five steps are first the access and motivation, second the online socialisation, third the information exchange, fourth the knowledge construction and fifth the development. During all stages there is on one hand the need of E-Moderating and on the other hand a technical support. The intensity of interaction declines, it should be the most in the first two steps and it become less in the following steps. But the social and cognitive presence is important in all stages. I like Salmon talking about “E-tivities” instead of “acitivities” to make the bridge from presence to online teaching. She describes the tasks as follows in the table.

Reflecting how I experienced the interactivity in our ONL course there are two aspects I want to mention. The first is that the course started with tasks of getting connected (stage 1 of the model from Salmon), presenting and getting to know each other (stage 2 of the model). The connecting aspect was the content, only in the third week we really started to discuss content-related themes. Sinead Whitty a colleague I was in a breakoutroom duing the webinar with Cleveland-Innes put it so aptly: “As online course designers/teachers/facilitators we have to create a place to be.” The second is that in the way the course was designed I felt picked up and supported by the course facilitators. One detail which is worth to mention ist that our course facilitator Alastair offered us during the first two or three weeks to be earlier in the Zoom-Meeting, if we have questions to discuss individually. At the beginning I used this offer once. And now ten weeks later I just started offering this possibility to the students in my course as well. Just to be more tangible for the students like it would be in a physical classroom where we can talk to each other before or after the lessons. And I do experience the social connections with the members of my Learning Group just become natural. We are sharing course-based content and personal experiences in an informal way and it doesn’t have to be supported by the facilitators anymore, even though I appreciate that our facilitators Anya and Alastair are an active part of our group chat on in our Whatsupgroup and supporting our content-related group discussions.

The role change for teachers is the first thing I realized during the emergency to deliver online course during the actual corona pandemic. I have to think about much more structural things for online education, for example to decide which part of the course is being held synchronous and what are going the students to learn independently asynchronous and what kind of material and support they will need for their study time and how manage time at all. Below you see a spontaneous answer from a colleague and me during our first PBL-Group Meeting relating this topic.

Huber (2014) points it out in a short educational video that it is vital to be really organised, that the time is managed and the material is all upfront. Hodges and others present us an helpfull overview of the moderating variables for online learning design options: Modality (fully online, blended (over 50% or 25 – 50% online), Pacing (self-paced with open entry and opend exit, class-paced or a combination, Student -Instructor Ratio, Pedagogy (expository, practice, exploratory, collaborative), Role of Assessment, Instructor Role Onlne (active instruction online, small presence online, none), Online Communication, synchrony and source of Feedback (automated, teacher, peers). Reflecting the design options, I have to admit that I wasn’t aware so far about the pacing in my courses. A colleague of our PBL-Group, a colleague said in one meeting: “students like to login and tune out”. And our group facilitator underlined that we must invest more in the asynchronous collaboration. Because this is important for integrating the different needs and capacities of our students. As I am still very focused on the class-paced rhythmen I will try to be more open in future. Bates (2020) writes that as well that not all synchronous learning activities have this feeling of togetherness and intensity. This might be a main criticism of Zoom lectures delivered synchronously individually to students in their homes; there is little sense of ‘togetherness’ or intensity – although, as always, a skilled instructor may be able to design his or her teaching deliberately to achieve these affordances.

I am wondering if there will be a tendency for teachers to specialize in directions like course design, technical support, coaching, social facilitator, instructor, content expert and so on. Or do we have to be engaged in any of these elements for online and blended education? I don’t know, I only know that I found out the last months that I enjoy teaching based on different competencies, I enjoy the variablities for course design in a blended or online-learning environment and I enjoy learning online in a highend designed course like the ONL is one. I am facing the challenges and on the same time I feel the joy to teach in these new concepts.

How to trigger students at the start of a learning process? This was my pain so far and Marti Cleveland-Innes answered my question in the Webinar of the ONL Course in November 2020 in the following way. We really need a trigger action to get involved the cognitive presence of the students. There are two intentions about a trigger action:
1. to get attention
2. to give students something to do
How can we realize this? For example, with humor, a joke, an animation, a video, a provocative question. It is important to trigger the emotional site, the feelings of the students and then let them discuss the trigger question.

Being intentional in the course design and eanable deep learning and presence in all three presences of the COI Framework (social, teaching and cognitive presence) are keys for Blended and Online Education I conclude.
– What are your tips and experiences for a blended or online course design? I am looking forward to you sharing so we can learn from each other. Thank you!

Sources:

Bates, Tony. 2020. Why sex is more fun than swotting: further discussion on asychronous vs synchronous learning. https://www.tonybates.ca/2020/11/26/why-sex-is-more-fun-than-swotting-further-discussion-on-asynchronous-vs-synchronous-learning/. accessed at 28.11.2020

Boelens, R., De Wever, B. & Voet, M. 2017. Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: A systematic literature review. Educational Research Review. 22. 1 – 28. https://www.academia.edu/34199576/Four_key_challenges_to_the_design_of_blended_learning_A_systematic_literature_review accessed at 17.11.2020

Cleveland-Innes, M. 2020. Webinar to discuss Community of Inquiry (CoI) including emotional presence as a framework for designing flexible, networked and community-based learning. online in the ONL course on 25.11.2020

Gottfried Duttweiler Institute of economic and social studies. 2020. Infographic. Wie wir uns in Zukunft treffen werden. https://www.gdi.ch/de/publikationen/trend-updates/infografik-begegnungsorte-der-zukunft-1-teil. access at 28.11.2020

Hodges, Ch., Moore, St. Lockee, B., Trust, T. Bond, A. 2020. The Difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning. accessed at 18.11.2020

Huber, Lesa. 2014. Keys for effective Online Teaching”. University of Indiana. https://canvas.ucdavis.edu/courses/34528. accessed at 28.11.2020

Salmon, Gilly. o.D. The five stage Model. https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html. accessed at 15.11.2020

Vaughan, Norman, D. Cleveland-Innes, Martha. Garrison, Randy, D. 2013. Teaching in Blended Learning Environments. Creating and sustaining Communities of Inquiry. Au Press. https://www.aupress.ca/books/120229-teaching-in-blended-learning-environments/. accessed at 15.11.2020