During the past two weeks of topic 4 (Design for online and blended learning) it is evident that Online learning is something that each and every institution will have to adapt soon or later. For Teachers/Lecturers this can be a demanding task to implement in their teaching and learning pedagogy.

I think my PBL Group and I finally got a broader better understanding of all the nitty gritty that needs to go into designing an online program or blended learning. According to Cleveland-Innes and Wilton (2018) Blended learning refers to “the use of traditional classroom teaching methods together with the use of online learning for the same students studying the same content in the same course.” I believe the main purpose of blended learning is to enable effective and memorable learning for learners and in doing so this will help teachers engage more with students and encourage collaboration.

In my line of work/career I run workshops on academic writing, referencing and post grad support as the need arises or per request. All these workshops used to run face to face before the Lockdown. This pushed/tapped into my greatest fear of going online and using/exploring collaborative tools to run my workshops. For this to commence I needed to outline a few steps for my online workshops to be successful. So I decided to go with Gilly Salmon five stage model which “provides a framework or scaffold for a structured and paced program of e-tivities” (Salmon, 2013).

These stages are namely: access and Motivation, online socialization, information exchange, knowledge construction and development. In a nutshell at a teacher/lecturer you need to be sensitized to these stages as it assists with scaffolding and structuring your blended learning. An in-depth explanation of how the model further illustrates these 5 stages please do click on the this link: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html by (Gilly Salmon, 2013).

The reason why I chose to go with this model is because it is a simplified guideline on how to incorporate online learning in your course and also has illustrative videos to assist teachers. We all know it can be frustrating when you trying to venture into blended learning especially if this would be your first time, it is so easy to find yourself in the deep end. It takes time and patience and lastly Gilly Salmon 5 stage model to master online and blended learning.