Day 5. Blended Learning models

Today the class was mainly dedicated to read and comment some of the cases of study of the book Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation edited by Brian Tomlinson and Claire Whittaker. 

In pairs we read one chapter and talked about it, we read seven chapters in total. Then, separately, we joined one person of the other pairs and talked about our chapter. In the end we told each other about the seven chapters. The last part of the activity was the discussion about the conclusions. So these are the principles learnt about Blended Learning:

• Online learning means less work for the tutor than blended learning.
• Blended learning increases the motivation and the autonomy.
• There is no right 'mix', it is always based on the needs of the students.
• The online stuff is the theory, the face-to-face stuff is the practice and that means flipped classroom.
• The results are similar to traditional learning.
• There is a very strong relationship between the teacher and the students on online courses.
• Retention is higher.
• Technology is optional in a face-to-face class.
• It is very demanding.
• It achieves more.
• The teacher needs to receive feedback from the students continuously.

Two important ideas that we have to keep in mind are:

• Build the language around dialogues and avoid the temptation of keeping throwing more grammar, vocabulary, etc.
• The aims have to be clear and organised. Keep it simple.

An experiment in class: the business illusion.

In this video you have to count how many times the people wearing white pass the ball. Most of us got the times right but we missed the gorilla, the changing of colour of the courtains and that one of the players on the black team left the room. Just a few of us noticed the changes. So, what does this mean applied to learning? It means that:

• There is a narrow focus when blended.
• Multitasking is not evolved.
• Task designing must improve, we can repeat things, but from a different position.
• If you work collaboratively maybe someone will see the gorilla.  

Merdev explained the technology tool Quizlet that enables students to create six types of activities: flashcards, learn, speller, test, scatter and gravity. You can create classes and folders to keep what you create. There is also a mobile version. If you don't have type to create the activities, you can find what somebody else has done and you can take somebody else card. It is not necessary to create things by yourself. we can watch two tutorials on Russell's website. Click on the picture.

 

I talked about how the VLE Schoology works. I showed the benefits of Schoology and how this VLE is more well-organised. Maybe we were a little exhausted and nobody asked questions, probably as we are focused on Edmodo they don't want to mix two virtual learning environments. Russell thinks that this VLE is more for adult students. I totally agree with him, I think it is directed mainly to adults and business or companies if you don't want to use Moodle. Probably, the thing is that Schoology is a little bit more complex than Edmodo, but it is not really difficult to use.

We can also watch to some webinars on Schoology. Click here.

If you can't decide which VLE you want to use, I recommend visiting these two blogs that compare Edmodo, Schoology, the first blog and Edmodo, Schoology and Google classroom, the second blog.