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The Blended Learning Landscape
1. The Blended Learning
Landscape: Opportunities in a
Digital Age
La Trobe University Learning and Teaching Colloquium
5th December 2013 - Melbourne
Professor Mike Keppell
Executive Director
Australian Digital Futures Institute
Director, Digital Futures - CRN
1
6. Flexible learning
n Flexible
learning”
provides opportunities
to improve the student
learning experience
through flexibility in
time, pace, place,
mode of study,
teaching approach,
forms of assessment
and staffing.
6
7. Blended Flexible Learning
n Blended
and flexible
learning” is a design
approach that examines
the relationships
between flexible
learning opportunities,
in order to optimise
student engagement.
(Keppell, 2010, p. 3).
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12. Learning Designs
Enabling blends
These address issues of access and equity and add
flexibility.
!
Enhancing blends
These focus on incremental changes to the pedagogy
in both the face-to-face and online components.
!
Transforming blends
Transformation of the pedagogy. Major redesign of
teaching and learning e.g. online PBL.
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13. Forms of Blended Learning
Activity-level blending
!
Subject-level blending
!
Degree-level blending
!
Institutional-level
blending
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18. Europe - Digital Agenda
Scoreboard 2012
n
73% of households had access to the internet
n
A lack of skills is the second most important reason
for not having access to the internet
n
Only 53% of the labour force - confident that they
had sufficient digital skills to change jobs.
n
Age, gender, and education remain the key
challenges. Older people, women, those with lower
levels of education tend to have lower level digital
skills.
n
http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digitalagenda/files/scoreboard_digital_skills.pdf
!
!
!
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19. Literacy is a contested
concept
n
There is currently no universally accepted
definition of media literacy, information literacy,
digital literacy, or even of “media” itself.
n
The digital divide is much more than a ‘technology
access’ divide; without the skills to use the
technologies an even greater divide emerges – the
information literacy divide.
n
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/
unesco_mil_indicators_background_document_2011_final_en.pdf
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20. Wheeler Digital Literacies
n
Social networking skills
n
Transliteracy skills
n
Maintaining Privacy
n
Managing Identity
n
Creating content
n
Organising and sharing content
n
Reusing/repurposing content
n
Filtering and selecting content
n
!
!
Self broadcasting
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/what-digital-literacies.html
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22. Literacies
n Literacy
is no longer “the ability
to read and write” but now “the
ability to understand
information however
presented.”
n Can't
assume students have
skills to interact in a digital age
n Literacies
will allow us to teach
more effectively in a digital
age (JISC, 2012)
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28. Spaces for Knowledge
Generation
n Physical,
n
blended or virtual ‘areas’ that:
enhance learning
n that
motivate learners
n promote
authentic learning interactions
n Spaces
where both teachers and students
optimize the perceived and actual
affordances of the space (Keppell
Riddle, 2012).
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43. Seamless Learning
Seamless learning
occurs when a
person experiences a
continuity of
learning across a
combination of
locations, times,
technologies or
social settings
(Sharples, et al,
2012).
48. Forward-looking Feedback
n Students
need to receive appropriate feedback
which they can use to ‘feed forward’ into
future work.
n Feedback
should be less final and judgemental
(Boud, 1995)
n Feedback
should be more interactive and
forward-looking (Carless, 2002; Keppell 2005)
n Feedback
should be timely and with a potential
to be acted upon (Gibbs Simpson, 2004)
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51. Managing institutional change through
distributive leadership approaches:
Engaging academics and teaching
support staff in blended and flexible
learning
M. Childs, M Brown, M. Keppell, Z Nicholas, C.
Hunter and N. Hard
n http://www.slideshare.net/mkeppell/csu-
report-jov3hrtd05082013
n http://learningleadershipstudy.wordpress.com
52. Principles
n
Innovation (in BFL and DE) needs to be aligned to
institution vision, and the institution needs to
manage the tensions that can exist between
alignment (to vision); and creativity and
innovation.
n
Good practice in BFL and DE needs to be
manifested through sustainable, consistent and
supported opportunities (Childs, Brown,
Keppell, Nicholas, Hunter and Hard, 2013).
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53. Principles
n
Regardless of the strategy or activity, commitment
to approaches that enable academics to take time,
collaborate, share, network and connect are
the key to innovation in BFL and DE. (Childs,
Brown, Keppell, Nicholas, Hunter and Hard, 2013).
n
Keppell, M.J., O’Dwyer, C., Lyon, B., Childs, M.
(2010). Transforming distance education curricula
through distributive leadership. ALT-J, 18:3, 165 178.
n
http://www.slideshare.net/mkeppell/2010-altjkeppell
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55. New Mindsets
n Focus
on the opportunities of
blended learning at the activity,
subject, degree and institutional
perspective.
n Continually
examine the
affordances of emerging
technologies for learning
purposes
n Privileging
learning-oriented
assessment
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56. New Mindsets
n Privileging
diverse places of
learning as opposed to a
singular place of learning
n Privileging
mobile learning and
teaching access to enhance
seamless learning
n Embedding
digital literacies into
all aspects of learning, teaching
and curriculum
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