Learning & Mind & Brain

Hybrid learning: the next big change in online learning?

 

Despite all the hype about MOOCs, hybrid learning is probably the most significant development in e-learning – or indeed in teaching generally – in post-secondary education, at least here in Canada. I am seeing many universities (13 in six months so far) developing plans or strategies to increase the amount of hybrid learning. The University of Ottawa for instance is aiming for 20% of all sections to be hybrid within five years (which its Board feared was ‘too timid’ a target.) UBC has just started a major development called its flexible learning initiative which aims to radically transform first and second year undergraduate teaching and reach out to new markets. Hybrid learning is a cornerstone of its strategy.

The primary criticism of what I will address in this chapter is that success is process-defined rather than outcomes-defined.[1] Without outcomes measurement we cannot measure success, we can’t focus our efforts toward that success, we can’t become more competitive and efficient, we can’t plan for change and improvement, and we can’t define what you want to accomplish as a result. All this is true, and yet there is no measure of outcome or success that can be derived from designer and user motivations, or even from the uses to which MOOCs are put. The only alternative is to identify what a successful MOOC ought to produce as output, without reference to existing (and frankly, very preliminary and very variable) usage.

 

These outcomes are a logical consequence of the design of the MOOC. The same is true of a hammer. This tool is defined as a hand-held third-class lever with a solid flat surface at the business end. Anything that satisfies these criteria will, as an outcome, have the capacity to drive a nail into a piece of wood (whether or not any hammer is ever used in this fashion). It has to be under a certain weight to be hand-held, above a certain mass, and of a certain length, to be a lever, and of certain material and design to have a hard flat surface.

Enjoying Stanford’s Coursera MOOC on Human-Computer Interaction but (oh the irony) the screen design and pedagogy of the many videos, is awful. Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to use, has good content and I’m getting what I thought I’d get - a reasonable course. It is very video heavy, which is OK; let’s face it most HE courses are lecture heavy - at least they’re not an hour long, I can watch these when I want, repeat them and, in Coursera fashion, I get a bit of formative assessment during the videos, something students rarely get in real institutions. But it could have been so much better.

MOOCs will not replace or even undermine Universities. In fact, they are likely to make our Universities even more important as the future keepers of cultural capital. No one wants to see our University system fail or crumble. Then again, many want to see aspects of the closed ‘ivory tower’ reshaped into something a little flatter, more open and accessible. There are genuine worries about insularity, quality of teaching, cost, access and relevance. If we can reposition academe as more open, transparent and relevant, that could be to the benefit of us all. There are seven components to this narrative.

Fascinating graphic,a sit shows that nearly 42% of the target audience for MOOCs are not the developed world. It also raises an interesting question. Who is it for?’ are four words that tease out a MOOC strategy or lack of strategy. For most it is a marketing exercise in terms of the brand, a way of reducing internal costs on high volume courses, a way of recruiting potential students (directly or through their parents). Yet others see it as a way of flushing out funding from Alumni or presenting an ‘accessible’ face to Government. For MOOCs, several target audiences have emerged: 1. Internal students on course – cost savings on volume courses 2. Internal students not on course – expanding student experience 3. Potential students national –major source of income 4. Potential students international – major source of income 5. Potential students High school – reputation and preparation 6. Parents – significant in student choice 7. Alumni – potential income and influencers 8. Lifelong learners – late and lifelong adult learners 9. Professionals – related to professions and work

10. Government – part of access strategy

I was wrong.

 

One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was "corrupting my soul."

 

It's a been a year now since I "surfed the web" or "checked my email" or "liked" anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I've managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I'm internet free.

 

And now I'm supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems. I'm supposed to be enlightened. I'm supposed to be more "real," now. More perfect.

The most complex structure in the universe (that we know of) is the three pound mass of cells within your skull called the brain. The brain consists of about 100 billion neurons, which is about the same number as all the stars in our Milky Way galaxy and the number of galaxies in the known universe. Like any complex machine, the brain contains a lot of parts, each of which has subparts, which themselves have subparts, all the way down to the “nuts and bolts” — the neurons. In this Cheat Sheet, you find information on the key parts of the brain and the role and function of neurons, the cells that make up the nervous system.

 

It's now 20 years since the WWW was brought into the world, and to celebrate,The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has recreated the website that launched it. 

 

CERN is not only preserving the original site, but also a range of information and artefacts associated with the origins of the web, including Tim Berners-Lee’s original proposal for the web.

Ralph Nichols, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, had a haunting feeling: His students weren’t listening. So he did what any good researcher would do: He studied students’ listening skills.

It was a simple test. With the help of school teachers in Minnesota, he had teachers stop what they were doing in midclass and ask kids to describe what the teachers were talking about.

You might imagine that wiggly, distracted first-graders had the toughest time with the test. That’s precisely why you need to read on. Yes, turn off the TV and read on.

Surprisingly, 90 percent of first- and second-graders gave the right answer. But as kids got older, results plummeted. By junior high, only 44 percent answered correctly; about one in four high school kids succeeded. Clearly, they had better things to think about.

The truth is, the older people get, the more their listening comprehension sinks. Making matters worse, studies show that people wildly overestimate how good they are at listening. Now, do I have your attention?

Plenty of studies examine this phenomenon. While listening is the core of most of our communications—the average adult listens nearly twice as much as he or she talks—most people stink at it. Here’s one typical result. Test takers were asked to sit through a ten-minute oral presentation and, later, to describe its content. Half of adults can’t do it even moments after the talk, and forty-eight hours later, fully 75 percent of listeners can’t recall the subject matter.