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In Chapter One of Teaching Online - A Practical Guide, I was impressed by the different styles of online teaching. I had never before thought about the differences between a hybrid course and a course taught entirely online. An entirely online class is great where you have a multitude of students from different parts of the world participating. A hybrid class could be useful in a traditional campus-style university where a teacher "gives students the opportunity to review the material before coming to class" (p. 10). If a student can be relieved of taking a lot of notes during class, it could be beneficial to his or her total understanding of the curriculum. I could use blogs this way in my Business Technology Class, by having students read information at their leisure.
In Chapter Two I was impressed to learn that a person could design an online class for free by going to www.blackboard.com and setting up your class. This could be especially useful in a low-tech high school or university, or say if you were consulting in a third-world country where many resources are not available. Some of the benefits at Blackboard include: "You can control who accesses your course and who doesn't, You can create course syllabi and course notes simply by typing in your information online, You can create online quizzes, You can divide your students into private study groups who members can chat" (p. 30)
3 comments:
I was interested in your mention of hybrid classes, because I took a hybrid course to get certification as a WorkKeys Job Profiler. There is a bit of information about the training at:
http://www.act.org/workkeys/jptrain/
It differed from the usual concept of an on campus-online combo in that the participants were from a large geographical area. We participated in 6 weeks of synchronous learning sessions followed by an intensive 4-day on-site training session in Denver. That offers a different model for hybrid learning.
Did you try to go to Blackboard and set up a class? I was very interested in the potential, so I poked around a little on the site and couldn't figure out where to go. Is that opportunity gone, or didn't I look hard enough?
Great dialogue and questions! First, each of you will be setting up a course in Blackboard this semester as part of our course. If you want to play around with it ahead of time, check out coursesites.blackboard.com.
Second, I was really pleased to see you make the connection between hybrid learning and potential for your own classroom, Maggie. Consider the final project in our class--you may want to think about integrating an online component or communication tool in your work. Just an idea :)
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