In my last post, I highlighted the importance of being a mediator of knowledge and not just a presenter. Openness in learning is a wonderful concept, and we remember David Wiley, who defined successful teaching as sharing most thoroughly with the largest amount of people possible (see his Ted talk in my previous post).

When I talk about learning design for successful sharing, I define success as Wiley does. In her lecture, Cleveland-Innes quotes a similar challenge that the UNESCO points out, especially in going forward after the covid-19 pandemic. The changes that now had to happen quickly because of the pandemic “cannot be separated from the imperative of leaving no one behind” (p.2). How, then, can knowledge reach most people and how can we ensure that each learner is actually able to take it in?

Cleveland-Innes points to the importance of pedagogical processes in ensuring this learning success. Rather than thinking in traditional lecture settings and modeling learning environments by assuming that learners haven’t changed over the past decades, we need to think how we can best adapt to the as-is situation. Pedagogical processes are defined by igi-global.com as “systemic interaction between teachers and students aimed at achieving the set goals”.

The individual goals of the learner are also crucial to take into account when thinking about design options. Each learner has an individual goal or purpose, an aspect that the instructor can only partially influence. And each instructor brings their own set of expectations to the table. This will always influence the design of any course, possibly beyond what can be controlled. However, there are a few general challenges and aspects to keep in mind when designing a course according to the literature review “Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: A systematic literature review,” by Boelens, R., De Wever, B., and Voet, M. (2017). These key challenges are:

1. incorporating flexibility
2. stimulating interaction
3. facilitating students’ learning progress
4. fostering an effective learning climate (see also Cleveland-Innes, slide 7)

Boelens, de Wever, and Voet discuss the literature with a focus on blended learning, which during this pandemic has been mostly impossible. However, we can assume (and hope) that this is only a temporary situation, so their study is still extremely useful.

When it comes to incorporating flexibility, this review discusses especially the flexibility of time and place for the learner, but another important aspect to consider, in my opinion, is the flexibility in taking in content. Learners can view instructional videos, listen to audio recordings, and read at the same time. They can pause a recorded lecture to take notes and reflect or return to a section that they did not fully understand. This flexibility allows for effective learning for a broader variety of students and learning styles. In addition, if we consider even greater varieties of access and learners, a recorded lecture can be viewed whenever one is able to secure a stable internet connection, which would not be the case when giving a live lecture. When thinking about flexibility, access is thus one additional different aspect to keep in mind.

All studies in the literature review showed that it was important for learners to have sustained social interaction with their instructors. This seems a simple fix at first, but is a bit more complicated when thinking about resources in higher education or other contexts in which online learning becomes important. Open access material such as moocs become costly when they involve instructor feedback or contact. So social interaction will need to be navigated for each individual instance. It is possible to create moments of feedback that are pre-recorded. This may be one way of dealing with it, and many courses work with peer feedback, which is another way of creating social interaction without increasing costs.

The third challenge of facilitating students’ learning progress is, in my opinion, the greatest of these four. Access to education is only part of the package because the learning journey needs to be designed in a way that makes it possible for students who come from backgrounds where studying is not common to take in the knowledge as well. In particular, online learning requires a lot of self-motivation and self-regulation, according to the studies that Boelens, de Wever, and Voet present. Consequently, it is crucial to offer students a way of entering the course that sets them up for success.

Vermunt and Verloop suggest four strategies to help students: “orienting and planning, monitoring, adjusting, and evaluating” (see Boelens, de Wever, and Voet, 2017). While these activities all happen during the course, I think that it would be worth spending some time on designing a brief introductory course that students can but do not have to take. I imagine that this course would only take a student a couple of hours to work through, but it could include study techniques such as setting up a timeplan, descriptions of places to turn when needed, instructions on finding sources, or whatever else could be of importance to the subject area that the student will then study. This could help ensure that a student who takes their first course and is not used to learning and self-regulating is set up for success.

The final challenge named by Boelens, de Wever, and Voet is to foster an affective learning climate. According to some studies in the literature review, “Some specific ways in which instructors can contribute to a positive affective learning climate are: showing empathy, having a sense of humor, providing encouragements, directing attention to task-relevant aspects, and attending to students’ individual differences” (7). Some of these are, of course, not actually possible in an online course, especially if it is of a mooc size. However, it may be possible to work these sort of lighthearted and sociable interactions into the actual material or to pre-record videos in which a softer tone and possibly a not solely content-focused tone can be implemented. Cleveland-Innes gives a good example of this in her lecture material, where she points to the fact that she has not turned her camera on but states that she looks forward to seeing learners at a later stage. Even if things are not presented in a live format, creating a rapport with learners by mentioning that one will “see them later” can be an effective way to create an affective learning climate.

Success in learning, let’s remember, is defined as reaching as many as possible in as thorough a manner as possible. Keeping in mind these four challenges and working on continuously finding ways to meet these challenges seems a good start in any successful online learning design. To me, what seems most important is that we as instructors never get complacent. We need to continuously evaluate what it is we are doing and improve as best we can within the resources, technology, and skills available to us.

/LM