Promising Practices in Blended and Online Learning

I stumbled upon a white paper from iNACOL today titled Blended Learning: The Evolution of Online and Face-to-Face Education from 2008-2015. Reflecting on my own journey with online and blended learning from 2008 to now, I can see how transformative online learning has been during the past 7 years.

I finished my asynchronous master's degree in Educational Technology from MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, KS in July of 2008. Immediately after, I had to take some courses through a different institution to get my ESL endorsement. I was not a happy camper to move from asynchronous instruction to synchronous video-style conferencing at a facility that was over 40 minutes away from my house! Fast forward to the summer of 2009 and the institution that I received my ESL credits from had found a new virtual classroom product; however, they took the classroom and moved it online. It was still synchronous and you were still expected to attend at the time of the class. I survived, but I hated it. Since then, I have moved into a very niche position at a community college in Iowa and help students all over the state take courses online to meet requirements to graduate from their high school.

What I experienced from moving from an asynchronous course to a synchronous course is not best practice for online and blended learning. Online and blended learning is not taking the traditional classroom and moving it online. This is still a top down approach, where teachers are the keepers of information and they are flicking it out to their students. A true blended learning approach allows the students to inquire, investigate, present, collaborate, and reflect (iNACOL 2015).

In addition, online and blended learning is more than adding a few computers or devices to the classroom. Online and blended learning teachers are guides, coaches, mentors, and concierges. They invite students to use technology to find answers and collaborate with others. Sean Cornally, in his blog, Think, Thank, Thunk, writes These Misconceptions Are Keeping School in the 1960's. In this post he talks about how students are creating authentic communication with the greater community of Cedar Rapids and understand that their instructors at Iowa BIG don't have the answers.

I hope that we see continued growth of Iowa BIG for the foreseeable future, because as we are an economy built on information and services, we need future leaders capable of acquiring information, analyzing data, and applying new information in novel ways (iNACOL 2015)