Blended Learning in a Mobile Context: New Tools, New Learning Experiences?

2015 ◽  
pp. 219-233
Author(s):  
Gavin Dudeney ◽  
Nicky Hockly
Author(s):  
R J Singh

This article reports on the use of blended learning in higher education. Blended learning has become popular in higher education in recent years. It is a move beyond traditional lecturing to incorporate face-to-face learning with e-learning, thereby creating a blend of learning experiences. The problem is that learning in higher education is complex and learning situations differ across contexts. Whilst there is face-to-face contact at some institutions, others offer distance learning or correspondence learning. In each context, the mode of learning may differ. The challenge is to cater for various learning opportunities through a series of learning interactions and to incorporate a blended approach. The aim of this study was to examine various ways of defining blended learning in different contexts. This was done through an examination of experiences of the use of blended learning in different higher education contexts. The study presents a case of blended learning in a postgraduate course. The experiences from all these cases are summarised and conclusions and recommendations are made in the context of blended learning in higher education in South Africa.


Author(s):  
Sandhya Devi Coll ◽  
David Treagust

This paper reports on blended learning environment approach to help enhance students’ learning out comes in science during Learning Experiences Outside School (LEOS). This inquiry took the nature of an ethnographic case study (Lincoln & Guba 1985; Merriam, 1988), and sought to establish ways of enhancing students’ LEOS. The context of the inquiry was a private rural religious secondary school in New Zealand. The New Zealand Science Curriculum is based on a constructivist-based view of learning which provides opportunities for a number of possible learning experiences for science, including LEOS, to enrich student experiences, motivate them to learn science, encourage life-long learning, and provide exposure to future careers (Hofstein & Rosenfeld,1996; Tal, 2012). However, to make the most of these learning experiences outside the school, it is important that adequate preparation is done, before, during and after these visits. Sadly, the last two decades of research suggest that activities outside school such as field trips have not necessarily been used as a means to improveschool-basedlearning (Rennie & McClafferty, 1996). This inquiry utilised an integrated online learning model, using Moodle, as a means to increase student collaboration and communication where students become self-directed, negotiate their own goals, express meaningful ideas and display a strong sense of collective ownership (Scanlon, Jones & Waycott, 2005; Willett, 2007). The digital space provided by Moodle allows students significant autonomy which encourages social interactions and this promotes learning and social construction of knowledge (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lewin, 2004).


Author(s):  
Caroline Sutton Clark

From 2006 to 2014, the professional US company Ballet Austin hosted an ambitious biennial competition, New American Talent/Dance, as an experimental platform to support “emerging” choreographers. However, after five seasons of this competition and despite self-reported success in meeting project goals to provide new learning experiences for participating choreographers, dancers, and audiences, Ballet Austin suspended the event. The reasons behind this decision, along with the insights gained through the process of producing these shows, reveal dimensions of US contemporary ballet in practice. This chapter illuminates how ballet pedagogy often fails the needs of contemporary ballet artists in the education of both future choreographers and the dancers who work with them, impacting not only the lives and careers of these artists but also, more generally, field aesthetics and development. The research further describes how audiences judged emerging choreographers, an analysis that may inform future lines of inquiry with regard to contemporary ballet and the sustainability of the field in the United States.


Author(s):  
Dora Andrikopoulos ◽  
Matina Katsiyianni

How can classroom teachers maximize the learning potential of their students? How can teachers, at the same time, attend to their students' differences? Students' readiness, interests, and learning profiles are the main targets for successful and meaningful learning. This chapter discusses all the above-mentioned characteristics of learners and focuses on the different approaches and instructional models in a Mathematics classroom. Having in mind a flexible learning framework that accommodates the needs of today's learners, the authors discuss and present applicable classroom instructional techniques, techniques that offer unique opportunities to fully amalgamate pedagogy by modifying learning experiences in the three areas of content, process, and product. The reader of this chapter will also get the chance to be exposed to the i2Flex methodology, which is a type of blended learning and has been born and developed at ACS Athens, Greece.


Author(s):  
Ilga Prudnikova

A review of current and past theories of cognitive development focusing on the role of experiential learning is linked to implications for practice as well as to current Latvian policies and national directions. As can be seen, learning through practice is made up of several phases of experiences which impact on the student’s with disabilities motivation, skills and attitudes which lead to new learning. As well the subject, Home Economics and its Technologies is used as an example of an experiential learning structure which utilises previous experiences to enhance current and future learning


Comunicar ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (34) ◽  
pp. 163-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Honorio Salmerón-Pérez ◽  
Sonia Rodríguez-Fernández ◽  
Calixto Gutiérrez-Braojos

The main advances in education and the current expansion of training models are due to the incorporation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as pedagogical elements arising from the socio-cultural approach. Communication is an essential element in the processes of teaching and learning in this educational approach. Therefore, ICTs offer us an excellent innovative support, allowing use to make use of such virtual learning environments as Collaborative Computer-Assisted Learning (CSCL), which enables communication, mediation and knowledge construction. Virtual communication is one of the essential elements in blended learning, and it is even starting to play an important role in traditional teaching environments. In this regard, we consider that a contribution from different teaching and learning experiences in virtual scenarios (Synergeia; BSCW; Moodle…) is necessary. In this article, we describe several cooperative and collaborative computer-mediated learning experiences with students of different educational levels. The results and conclusions on Collaborative Computer-Assisted Learning experiences reveal an improvement in motivation, academic performance and the development of social and communication skills, regardless of the use of cooperative (cooperative learning techniques) or collaborative learning. Los principales avances educativos y el actual auge de los modelos de formación se deben a la incorporación de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación, así como a la aplicación de elementos pedagógicos provenientes de aproximación sociocultural. Desde este enfoque educativo, la comunicación es un elemento esencial en los procesos de aprendizaje y enseñanza, por tanto, estas herramientas, entendidas como artefactos tecnológicos de producción cultural, ofrecen un excelente soporte innovador, permitiendo contar con entornos virtuales de aprendizaje, como las ofrecidas por las plataformas para el aprendizaje colaborativo mediado por ordenador (CSCL) que favorecen la comunicación, la mediación y la construcción compartida del conocimiento (coconstrucción). La comunicación virtual es uno de los aspectos esenciales en la formación a distancia como también lo es la formación semipresencial (blended learning), que comienza a adquirir un importante papel en contextos presenciales que utilizan estos entornos como instancias complementarias destinadas a extender la clase fuera de las fronteras del aula. En este sentido, es relevante un aporte de las diversas experiencias telemáticas de aprendizaje que usan modalidades de aprendizaje cooperativo o colaborativo en entornos virtuales. En el trabajo que presentamos se organizan y describen experiencias de aprendizaje cooperativo y colaborativo mediado por ordenador con estudiantes de diferentes niveles educativos. Los resultados y conclusiones de dichas experiencias evidencian una mejora de habilidades sociales, habilidades comunicativas, motivación y rendimiento académico independientemente del tipo de modalidad de aprendizaje compartido.


Author(s):  
Pusfika Rayuningtya ◽  
Ika Fitriani

Motivated by the growth of social media throughout the globe, including in Indonesia, educational practitioners need to be creative and make use of this opportunity to boost up the learning goals, for example making use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Line, and many others (social media) in educational settings. Among those social media, Instagram has increased its popularity, particularly in Indonesia, with its 22 million users. It is an online platform in which users can share their stories via uploaded photos. Recently, it is not merely used as photo story sharing but also online shopping, news updating, and video conferencing. As Instagram offers promising features, this study explored how this platform was applied to improve the students English written competence, focusing on reading and writing. This study is action research that investigates the use of Instagram as a social-and-educational medium that offers beyond new language learning experiences in the project called InstaGlish, Instagram English. The data were collected from the classroom observation during the project, students' Instagram photo posts, captions and comments, and students' reading and writing scores after project implementation.  A questionnaire and direct interview to the students were also carried out to give a more thorough and deeper understanding of the students' responses toward how effective InstaGlish helps them learn and induce their English. In addition, the findings of this current study were expected to give fruitful insight on how to use social media not merely as the fun-without-meaning activity yet fun-and-meaningful new learning experiences.


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