Exploring Blended Learning, Present and Future (Recorded Future Trends Session)

On Thursday, August 2nd, it was my great pleasure to by the featured guest on Bryan Alexander's Future Trends Forum. We had a lively discussion, exploring blended learning. We explored questions from session participants and bought a few folks up ‘on stage' to engage with us and the audience.

Here is the recorded session:

In this dialogue, we explore:

• Why has blended learning taken off in recent years and become so popular?
• According to studies, blended learning tends to be somewhat more effective than online learning or traditional learning alone
• How can schools help support the move toward blended learning?
• How do you motivate faculty to engage in blended learning?
• Blended learning as a ‘gateway' for faculty to go fully online
• The potential for blending essential traditional classroom elements* into the online course environment to increase engagement and retention *(specifically, face-to-face verbal dialogue and social learning aspects).
• Handling push back from those who feel technology does not belong in the classroom
• What kinds of content should be online and what should be face-to-face?
• … and more!

I also put up this resource page to provide tools for exploring blended learning further.

Bryan's weekly sessions feature a wide variety of guests and they are conducted on the highly interactive Shinding platform. On Shinding, participants can:

• Submit questions via a chat function or with a Question function
• Connect directly with each other and have a ‘breakout' session with one or more of the other forum participants (this is a highly unique function I have yet to see in any other platform like this)
• Come “up on stage” and join the dialogue (another unique function). This can be facilitated using a “Raise Your Hand” function, which lets the hosts choose participants to bring to the top area of the screen (where they can be heard by all forum participants), or by putting up a “Podium” area which allows users self-select themselved to be on stage.
• Chat with the entire group using a traditional chat function

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