Model for an Interaction Assessment Strategy in Hybrid Learning Including Web 2.0 Resources

Who being a Hybrid Learning teacher in the Web 2.0 era has not made him/herself ask this question: “Are students working effectively while they are not in face to face class?” Sometimes the questions are asked but he/she does not have the knowledge to create an Interaction Assessment Strategy that could provide this information. The authors present in this chapter a Model that provides the steps and data that should result in a much better teaching/learning process. Thus, the Model presents the questions that should be made, the data model that should be worked on, the visualizations that should better fit each type of data and the process of analysis teachers could make to improve different features, such as: the way of presenting information to the students through the year, prevent students’ dropping outs and failures, and generally improve the pace of teaching.

The Polyphonic Model of Hybrid and Collaborative Learning

This chapter presents a model for hybrid and collaborative learning based on an analogy with musical polyphony, starting from Bakhtin’s ideas of dialogism. The model considers different voices (participants) inter-animating and jointly constructing a coherent tune (a solution, in problem solving), enabling other voices to adopt differential positions and to identify dissonances (unsound approaches). This chapter introduces also software tools, which visualize the discussion threads in a chat and the influences that an utterance has on the subsequent ones. Such tools help both teachers and learners to evaluate and enhance the learning process. The model helps to understand how learners inter-animate when they participate to collaborative chats for problem solving or other learning activities, including Hybrid Learning.

Hybrid Teaching and Learning of Computer Programming Language

Teaching and learning computer programming has created significant difficulties to both teacher and student. Large class size is one of the major barriers to effective instruction. A well-designed pedagogy can make the instruction most effective. Hybrid teaching and learning combines face-to-face instruction and computer-assisted instruction to maximize students’ learning. This chapter will share the authors’ experiences in City University of Hong Kong (CityU) as they teach computer programming courses with large class size by hybrid learning model. Evaluation has showed that hybrid teaching and learning provide great flexibilities to both teaching and learning of computer programming. The students’ academic results have been significantly improved in computer programming courses.

Knowledge Management for Hybrid Learning

The merging of knowledge management and hybrid learning has gained more and more attraction and has been put in the focus of interests lately, for the simple reason that both areas can benefit from each other. As a result, this chapter deals with knowledge management for hybrid learning. This chapter begins with a short introduction, followed by a brief clarification showing our understanding of hybrid learning. Afterwards, knowledge and associated attributes are defined precisely – definitions are derived and taxonomies for knowledge are described. This section closes with a first reflection on knowledge in the context of hybrid learning. Subsequently, the authors take a closer look at knowledge management by introducing different schools of thought and models for knowledge management. Opportunities to delve deeper into the subject individually are offered passim. The main part of the chapter provides a comprehensive view of knowledge management for hybrid learning. The described features range from general conclusions to theoretical aspects, exemplary projects, and finally practical aspects – previous deliberations are brought together, current insights concerning the research perspective are described and tools as well as techniques which foster knowledge management for hybrid learning are presented. Finally, a critical reflection as well as an outlook and some thoughts concerning future issues conclude this chapter.

Ramping up to Hybrid Teaching and Learning

Hybrid learning models attempt to create an environment that can harness the best parts of both face-to-face and online modes of content delivery. The creation of these environments can be achieved in a very straightforward manner. However, the challenge is to develop these environments so that they fit the needs of the students, the abilities of the instructors, and also the nature of the content, all of which are numerous and varied. Deciding what elements to put online and what elements to deliver face-to-face presents a significant challenge, as the number of tools available to instructional staff will increase significantly over the next decade. Once the means of delivery are understood, it is possible to take the idea of hybrid teaching and learning environments one step further by first making the most of online and face-to-face delivery separately and then using them together when the need arises.

Medical Hybrid Learning Tools

This chapter describes original modalities of combining traditional methods and technologies in medical learning with good results. The electronic tool is TESYS, a non-commercial e-learning platform designed for completing and improving traditional medical learning by using new methods. Traditional learning is thus blended together with e-learning, offering the students and teachers the possibility to permanently evaluate the learning and teaching process. Besides the usual functions of an e-learning platform, TESYS includes elements of originality. The first one is a database with medical images collected during the process of diagnosing patients, which also include other useful information (diagnostic, treatment, evolution) in order to complete the currently limited number of images found in university courses and medical books. The second element of originality is the content-based visual query module designed for this multimedia medical database, which uses features that are automatically extracted from images (color, texture, regions). The content-based visual query used both in the e-learning and e-testing process stimulates learning by comparing similar cases along with their particularities, or by comparing cases that are visually similar but with different diagnosis.

Deployment of a Web Based Critiquing System for Essay Writing in Hybrid Learning Environment

This chapter describes the use of a Web-based essay critiquing system and its integration into in a series of composition workshops for a group of secondary school students in Hong Kong. It begins with a review and application of the hybrid learning approach, followed by a description of latent semantic analysis, a methodology for corpus preparation. Then, the distribution computing architecture for essay critiquing system is described. It explicates the way in which the system is integrated with a writing pedagogy implemented in the workshop and the feasibility evaluation result is derived. The positive result confirms the benefits of hybrid learning.

Blended Learning Systems

Distance learning has come a long way since Sir Isaac Pitman initiated the first correspondence course in the early 1840s. Today the growing role of globalization calls for new and innovative learning systems for management education. To meet these challenges the traditional classroom model for delivering executive business education is giving way to a more holistic learning paradigm in which both the pedagogical and andragogical focus are on knowledge acquisition and management decision-making. The one-size-fits-all educational approach of the past is being supplanted by customized, web-based learning systems. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a blended learning system that combines the best of both web-based learning and time-honed classroom practices for delivering cost-effective graduate management education.

Pedagogy Reconsidered in a Multimodal Blended Environment

Blended course delivery has wide applications across diverse educational settings. By definition, it is multimodal and involves multiple delivery formats. However, scant research has examined the impact of multimodal, blended delivery on university pedagogy. This chapter makes the case for close examination of the theoretical and pedagogical foundation of blended learning and proposes that research is needed to establish and validate the constructivist principles associated with blended learning. A longitudinal analysis of surveys and in-depth interviews with instructors from a distance education graduate school in the United States identified and contextualized features of learner-centered pedagogy linked to blended learning.

Designing Blended Learning Communities

This chapter seeks to highlight the unique characteristics of blended learning communities and the special design consideration they call for. The blended nature of a community is reflected through the interplay of the online and offline dimensions of a community and the mix of various media in support of community-wide interaction. The authors introduce the notion of blended learning community based on related literature on learning community and blended learning and put forward design guidelines for building such communities. Further, a pilot study was conducted to test out the proposed design principles in the context of pre-service teacher education with blogs as the main vehicle for online communication. The authors’ work can contribute to a deepened understanding of learning communities situated in the blended media environment and provide a set of design principles for their development.