Blended learning is all about infusing technology into traditional classroom instruction. If you are an instructor in a brick and mortar classroom, you can always infuse your course with activities that use modern technology. It keeps your course from being too monotonous and boring.
In this day and age, technology will always be a part of our lives. We cannot hide from it. In fact, it may be dictating how we should be changing our learning methods too.
Using online learning to boost your classroom lessons is one way to make your students more engaged in the course. It promotes self-learning and can even give you a platform for practical lessons.
When it comes to implementing blended learning in your course, you need to concentrate on the activities that you can use. In case you plan on doing this, here are a couple of things that you may want to remember.
First of all, make sure you understand how you can properly utilize this in your course. There are so many things that you can do – from creating an online game to uploading videos and creating chat rooms online – these are ways for you to implement blended learning.
Not only that, the learning activities that you will create online should promote collaborations between students, critical thinking and even encouraging initiative learning. Not only that, whatever you do,make sure it complements the activities that you will do in the classroom as well.
Next, inform the class ahead of time. This is to ensure that they have the necessary tools and devices that will allow them to participate in your online learning activities. This would also prompt you to include this in your initial course planning for a more focused and consistent learning experience.
Before transitioning to the online part of your course, give your students adequate knowledge about what they should expect and what is expected of them. This is to ensure that the goals of the course will be met at the end of the learning process.
Here are some of the learning activities that you can use in your blended learning course.
- Case studies. Divide the class into teams and groups. Then provide a case study that they will research on and comment. Set up a forum that will allow them to share insights, add links relevant to the case study and step aside as they start learning on their own.
- Online journals. You can also encourage them to create online journals that contain relevant learnings that they got from your course. Make this a reflective journal that will give you insight on what they are learning and will allow them to track their progress throughout the course.
- Peer evaluation. Let your students post their articles, essays, and written reports online and allow their peers to comment on it. This encourages self-learning too. Being an evaluator will allow them to think beyond their expectations.
- Online game. This will be a fun activity for your students but make sure that you can control it. You can opt for the most basic of games that will allow your students to enjoy and you to encourage them to be more engaged in the lesson.
- Online open forums. Set up a forum, give a question and let your students react on it. In most cases, online forums give the impression of anonymity and that makes your students more bold in giving their opinions.
There are other activities that you can use depending on the content of your blended learning course. Choose wisely and give your students room to enjoy what you have set up for them.
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