We all want to eat that perfect meal or taste that delicious drink, and when it comes to teaching, we want to offer that perfect course where students learn and get new understanding, that changes their thinking. The problem is that we all have different tastes, and the same goes with learning, we learn in different ways. All educators strive for perfection, but usually the time limit hinders us and the know how. Here are some tips that can make the blended learning more effective, all based on our discussions in the great PBLgroup8!

Blended learning is considered to be an effective pedagogy, it has its challenges though, which are: adding flexibility (both time and space) stimulating and establishing interaction, ensuring students’ learning processes by facilitation, and fostering an motivating learning climate (Boelens et al. 2017). This increased flexibility implies, that learners can control the time, place, path, or pace of learning. In blended learning we need to consider existing connection issues that students may have. E.g. we should provide transcripts of videos and recorded meetings using software such as Otter.ai, ensure documents and images are compressed sufficiently to save data. The educator should identify students who are struggling and try to have one-to-one consultations to pinpoint what is impeding their learning. One method for making sure the student have understood the topic is according to Crouch and Mazur (2001):

1) Student answer a quiz independently first

2) Two peers discuss their answers together and try to argue what they have answered correctly (hence they need to articulate their understanding).

3) The students get a second chance to take the quiz based on their discussion but still without any feedback from the teacher.

4) Lastly, the teacher gives the students the right answers and arguments for those answers.

The syllabus should also be adaptive, in case the course seem to be too difficult for the learners, the pace can be decelerated and some topics can be sacrificed from the end of the course and only the advance learners can go through that material. One can try, in order to motivate the learners, to assign tasks to students to be completed outside of class/meeting times, reward them for completion (e.g. unable to move to the next portion of the course if they do not complete). This function, I think, most of the LMS` are supporting. According to Dr. Marti Cleveland-Innes , getting to know students, form relationships with them, will increase their motivation. E.g. email students before the course to get feedback from them, and welcome them to the course. This makes the students feel that their opinions and thoughts are valued. (Cleveland-Innes, 2021)

During this topic on blended learning we used the Wakelet https://wakelet.com/ for the ongoing groupwork and Perusall https://perusall.com/ for reading and commenting on a chapter from a book. It was like collaborative reading. This is for sure things I will plan and use in my upcoming courses, that mainly are going to be on-line.

The Open Network Learning- course is coming to an end, and I feel that I am just now getting started! My head is full of ideas how to improve my courses, and I feel ashamed that I did not have this knowledge before. But like I said in the beginning, the perfect meal is served after a lot of cocking, the same goes with the perfect drink, you need to know the exact amount of different ingredients, and also the way they should be mixed. You need both knowledge and practice to become a master.

References

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, 1-18.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2017.06.001

Catherine H. Crouch and Eric Mazur. 2001. Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Cleveland-Innes, Marti. Webinar, 28.4.2021. https://kauplay.kau.se/media/t/0_2fudtovu