Transcript Lessons Learnt About Using Blended Mode for

Based on a research carried out by
Lesan Azadi, Director, Bahá’í Academy (Panchgani)
[email protected]
Kavita Salunke, Assistant Professor, Yashwantrao
Chavan Maharashtra Open University (Nashik)
[email protected]
1
 This mode allows teachers to work with students
without regular personal meetings.
 The approach taken in the e-B.Ed is based on capability
building and co-creativity processes, using cooperative
learning/working. Hence it is both curriculum based,
and life/work centric - - following a learning/developing
path - - and its goal is to enable a learner to ‘form,
reform and transform’ oneself, and one’s group to
perform together.
2
 This presentation is based on the feedback from the
course designers, the local mentors and the students
who share their experiences regarding the strengths
and the weaknesses of this approach -- both teaching
and scaffolding, and their recommendations on how
differently the course may be designed for greater
success.
3
I-CONSENT
(Indian Consortium For Educational Transformation)
Founding members:
 Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University
(YCMOU)
 Shivaji University
 MKCL
 Bahá’í Academy
 NETRA Network for Educational Transformation
 Indian Institute of Education, Pune
4
 The Bahá’í Academy (www.bahaiacademy.org) offers
courses on Fostering Personal Development and Social
Progress to a number of reputed universities,
including YCMOU, and their affiliated colleges in
Maharashtra and beyond.
5
 The programme of Bachelor of e-education called
e-B.Ed is designed as a new educational paradigm for a
connected society in which learning working
developing is integrated. The programme is offered
through online as well as study centres. The
programme is based on constructivist theory of
education employing situated based design.
6
Six Courses of the e-B.Ed programme:
 1) Teacher as a Nurture of e-culture
 2) teacher as a change agent and network
 3) Teacher as an e-learning specialist
 4) Teacher as an e- learning Resource Developer
 5) Teacher as a content Based Techno pedagogic
 6) Teacher as an Action Researcher and Evaluator.
7
 One of the goals of the programme was to help
students develop their value system, core values
mentioned in the preamble of the Indian constitution,
in activities and programmes, and contributing to
develop a society based on equality, justice and
universal human values.
8
 “Developing moral capabilities is the concern of those
whose lives are governed by a moral purpose. In this
age of transition, moral purpose must be focused on
two paramount tasks: growing intellectually and
spiritually as an individual and contributing to the
transformation of society.” (FUNDAEC, 2003, p.15)
9
 According to Ramamurti Committee (1990),
“Education must provide a climate for the nurture of
values, both as a personalised set of values, forming
one’s character and including necessarily social,
cultural and national values, so as to have a context
and meaning for actions and decisions, and in order to
enable the persons to act with conviction and
commitment”.
10
 And Chattopadhyay Commission, 1985, has stated,
“We underscore that the primary task of the teacher is
concerned with man-making, namely the making of
the Indian of tomorrow”.
11
Other Features of The e-B.Ed Programme
 In this regard the e-B.Ed programme aimed at
bridging this important void that vastly existed in the
other teacher education programmes available in the
country. Hence one of the three components of the
first course focused on cooperative and collaborative
learning and working and building moral capabilities.
12
 The programme was offered on-line, using a network
of study/access centres, and appropriate ICT facilities.
Distributed Classroom sessions (DCs) involved audio
graphic and video inputs, group discussions and cooperative and collaborative learning activities. At the
study centre mentors were present for guidance;
library resources, infrastructure facilities were
provided as support system.
13
 Blended learning encompassed a broad continuum,
and included of face to face and online instructional
content. The blend of face to face and online material
varied depending on the content, the need of the
students, and the preferences of the instructor.
 Blended learning increased the options for greater
quality and quantity of human interaction in learning
environment.
14
 In this course blended learning offered learners the
opportunity “to be both together and apart”
 It provided a good mix of technologies and
interactions, resulting in a socially supported
constructivist learning experience. This was especially
significant given the profound effect that it could have
on distance learning.
15
 In this course the Tutor began a course with a well
structured introductory lesson in the classroom and
then proceeded with follow up materials online.
 Here blended learning also applied to the integration
of e-learning with Learning Management System
using computers in a physical classroom, along with
face to face instruction.
16
 Here the role of Tutor was critical to assist students
with computer skill and applications, help them access
the internet and encourage them to be independent
learners.
17
 For this course we used both synchronous (real time)
and asynchronous (different time) mode. Synchronous
mode was used at the time of Distributed Classroom,
otherwise it was asynchronous mode, meaning that
the instructor and the learner are available at different
times -- a benefit of self-directed blended learning
solution.
18
Our Learning:
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Collaborative and Cooperative Learning:
 Learners learn from one another with deeper understanding &
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feel better about themselves.
Learners always interact with each other
Cooperative learning can be used successfully with a variety of
other teaching strategies
Learners learn valuable social skills, e.g. problem solving, critical
thinking, asking questions, giving direction to the group work,
resolving conflict etc. They learn communication and
leadership.
They enjoy the work and actively involve in the learning.
They learns the content joyfully without stress.
They enhance their higher order cognitive skills.
Finally students’ academic success and information retention
increase.
20
Course Design:
 Situated Learning Design and Constructivist
Approach: All the courses of e-B.Ed followed Situated
Learning Design with Constructivist approach. This
was welcomed by all the stakeholders who felt that in
this approach students learning were more effective.
 At the initial stages of the program students were
asked to identify their own situations which they
wanted to improve—situations such as classroom,
school/ institutions, or community.
21
 Learning: This has been one of the greatest strengths
of the program which makes it useful to many
categories of learners not just school teachers. This
approach has enabled learners from diverse
educational and professional background to adopt the
approach according to their social context.
 Nevertheless some believe that at times the course
should target a particular group, like teachers, so that
they can fetch good jobs after completing the
programme.
22
Mentor’s Training on Cooperative Learning:
 Using cooperative learning in F2F sessions and online
was at times a challenge because of lack familiarity of
the Study Centre mentors with each strategy. However
some simple structures such as Pair Discussion and
Team Work were used in both modes.
 Although initially it was suggested that ERA, the LMS
provided by MKCL, should have a number discussion
forums to enable each team of the students to use its
own forum, this did not happen. So the students made
their own arrangements such as E-mail etc. to carry
out team activities.
23
 Learning: To effectively implement Cooperative
Learning arrangements should be made in advance to
train the local mentors as well as provide suitable
forums in the LMS. Both mentors and learners should
be made aware of the different online social platforms
that can be adopted to interact and learn
cooperatively.
24
 Moreover students should be given one or more task
initially to learn a topic via coop. learning structures,
like think pair-discussion share, in study centres in the
presence of the mentor to master the structure and
make it more effective.
25
Collaborative Learning and Working:
 Students enjoyed completing tasks in collaboration
with one another. However it was learned that in some
cases not all group members would complete tasks
assigned to them, so there would be more workload on
fewer active students.
26
 Learning: Tasks should be distributed in a group as per
each student’s liking and ability. After defining the
responsibilities of each group member a monitoring
arrangement should observe and record how each
group member fulfils his/her part.
27
Cooperative Games:
 As an element of experiential learning Module ‘B’ of
course 1 contained a number of cooperative and
educational games. In some cases students were asked
to carry out the games with their friends or family
members whereas in some cases it was felt that the
games should be carried out during the contact
sessions.
28
 Learning: Feedback from the students indicate that
group activities enhanced learner participation during
these programmes and although they enjoyed the
games that were played outside the contact sessions,
these games would be more successful in fulfilling
their objectives if they were carried out in Study
Centres in the presence of mentors.
29
Learning Activities for Skill Development:
 At the time of designing the Courses the teams were
permitted to include as many learning activities as they
wished. The purpose was that students would receive
feedback from the course tutor to improve their
performance.
 The large number of learning activities posed problem for
the students as they did not find time to complete the
activities; even the tutors who did not find time to
comment on them. Subsequently it was announced that
submitting learning activities was not mandatory for the
students.
 In the revision of the Courses the number of learning
activities were reduced.
30
 Learning: While designing the courses, the exact
number of hours required by the student to complete a
course need to be calculated according to the
capabilities of the average students who may have a
number of challenges ; e.g. language difficulties,
technological issues, accessibility to the materials, etc.
 The learners undertaking online course are required to
possess the ability to be self-regulated and intrinsically
motivated.
 Similarly tutors are required to provide timely
feedback and , while designing learning activities they
should be able to assess the average time learners can
devote for a selected activity in order to ascertain the
selected learning outcome is accomplished.
31
Assignments For Demonstrating Skills And
Abilities:
 A similar problem existed for the assessable
assignments too. Subsequently it was decided that
each course should have only one assignment that may
have a few of sub points.
32
Practical Activities For Skill Development:
 The course included certain practical activities for
developing skills by the students. For example one
activity was to promote gender equality among one’s
extended family members or institution/community.
Reports received from the students were encouraging
as they could carry out these assignments in a variety
of situations.
33
 Learning: Practical activities are welcomed all the time
by the students. The practical activities carried out
during the contact sessions after the DCs have also
been well received and completed by the students.
34
‘Service Learning Activities’ For Capability
Building And Creating
Social Common Wealth:
 In addition to Learning Outcomes, all the courses had
Developmental Outcomes too. In this course students were
asked to design and carry out community projects called
Service Learning Activities.
 Students were free to have individual projects or work
together as a group.
 As a result students identified their own situations to
improve through their Service Learning Activities.
 Feedback received from the students indicated that they
had learned a lot from both their practical and their Service
Learning Activities. In fact some considered Module B to
be a turning point in their life.
35
 Learning: Service Learning Activities play a major role
in developing students’ capabilities and motivating
them to engage in rendering meaningful community
services.
 The choice by the student to select his/her situation-community, school or classroom etc -- made the
service learning activities more successful. Also at the
same time freedom to choose the issues on which they
wanted to work passionately, like gender equality for
community, made it more successful.
36
Clarity And Simplicity Of Language:
 The language issue posed a challenge to the students who
said that in certain courses the assignments were
ambiguous, instructions were not communicated clearly,
questions were not comprehensible enough, or sometimes
they felt parts of the assignments were not related to the
course as concepts were not explained before.
 After communicating the problem to the concerned
course-teams certain clarifications were provided to the
students that helped some of them.
 A number of students who came from the vernacular
background had the difficulty to understand the reference
material that they felt was too hard to grasp. Those who
studied in groups were able to overcome this problem, but
there were some who did not.
37
Learning:
 Checking the content, including the activities and
assignments, as well as uniformity of the format of all the
courses before uploading them on the course LMS is highly
essential. In that connection a group of three team leaders
have been identified to take care of this matter for the
subsequent launch of the programme.
 In case of hard language used in some of the study
materials, simplified version of the same material or other
teaching aids, such a spoken tutorials and a lexicon of hard
words, have been prepared to be provided to the next batch
of the students.
 Indeed prior to launching of any programme in full scale, a
pilot study can be carried to check the quality and validity
of the programme developed.
38
Essential Readings:
 In their eagerness to provide students with more
knowledge of the course content, in at least one course
students were given too many references as their
essential reading, a total of about 350 pages for about 3
credit-points.
 Some of these references were rare and since they were
copyrighted it was not possible to photocopy and
distribute them among the students.
 Hence in most cases students could not study all those
pages and had to depend on fewer other learning
resources that were provided of ERA or could be
shared through email for that particular course.
39
 Learning: A good learning from this problem was that
we should identify the minimum required essential
readings and try to find suitable OERs for as many
components of the course as possible. This is now
being considered by the course-teams when designing
their courses.
40
Distributed Classrooms (DCs):
 Software and issue in Internet connectivity: SABA, a
localized LMS platform, was used for interactivity
during DCs that would normally be held every 2 or 3
weeks. On an average each course had about 3-4 DCs.
 Unfortunately during the DC sessions the Internet
connectivity wasn’t always smooth due to the diverse
internet facilities available among the students. This
problem was especially greater for those who accessed
the Internet from home. Their facilities ranged from
simple dial-up to broad band kind. At times audio was
not heard or students could not come online.
41
 Learning: Since DCs play an important role in their
blended mode used here care should be taken that the
software used should be user-friendly and efficient
and Internet connection should be reliable.
42
 Some students believe that having the video along
with the audio, if connectivity was smooth, would have
made the DCs more effective. In any case every DC
session could be recorded and be made easily available
to the students - - may be through YouTube - - for
future use so that students who are unable to attend
the DC don’t miss the lectures; other technological
issues, like internet connectivity or power cut, could
also be taken care in this way.
43
 Another important learning about making DCs more
effective was to communicate in advance to all the
students and mentors the timetable for the DC and the
handouts that would be discussed in the DC.
Whenever this was done the DC would be more
fruitful and activities carried out properly.
 In fact a well planned DC can ensure that the lectures
and presentations in the DC would relate to the
activities and assignments students are supposed to
undertake in the next few weeks.
44
 It is also necessary that after the DC session, tutor
should remain in touch with the students who had
difficulties during the session through email,
Discussion Forum and other means to ensure that no
student has missed the opportunity to benefit from
the session.
 Finally students should be instructed to log in at least
fifteen minutes prior to the beginning of the DC
session to check their connectivity and voice quality.
45
 Study Centres: Although the technological
requirements of study centres were announced earlier
one of the study centres did not have UPS to provide
backup in case of failure of electricity supply. In that
centre often students could not join the DC due to this
problem. Similarly another study centre had the
problem of insufficient headphones for the students.
46
 Learning: Centres should ensure that the minimum
infrastructure facilities are available to conduct DC
sessions.
47
Problem Of Large Cities:
 There was one study centre in Mumbai where students
resided in different parts of the city. Since Mumbai is a
very large city with heavy traffic it was very difficult for
a number of students to regularly join the Distributed
Classroom and F2F sessions that were held at an
Education College. Midway through the course it was
suggested that students could join DC from home but
should go to the Study Centre during other weekdays
to interact with the mentors. However this would
mean that the students could not meet their peer
group members to interact with.
48
 Learning: The problem remained unresolved till the
end of the course. Probably having more than one
Centre in such large cities would facilitate
participation at the DCs. But this involves more
logistics, finance, etc.
 Access to minimal facilities continues to be a challenge
for majority of learners and institutions in India.
Geographical and social barriers often impede
participation of learners and are major obstacles for
quality online education.
49
The Programme Learning Management
System (LMS):
 ‘ERA’ LMS: The ‘ERA’ LMS provided by the MKCL is
quite elaborate and a powerful tool used by thousands
of students every year. However since it was not
designed for this program, there were certain
difficulties faced by the students and/ or mentors and
tutors. Some of these problems were human related
and some technical:
50
 Students’ teething problems: Some of the students who
joined the program had inadequate IT literacy at the
start to the extent that at times a student would call the
technical support of the MKCL asking very basic
questions about computer operation. In contrast there
were some students who were quite well versed with IT.
 As a result of this situation it has been decided that in
the next launch of the programme there will be a one
month computer literacy module before course 1 begins.
That will indicate the minimum IT literacy requirement
that all students should have before joining the
program.
51
 Uploading problems: A number of students faced
problems while uploading their assignments on ERA.
They needed technical assistance to do so; some of
them sent their assignments by email to the tutors.
 It was later on learned that submitting assignments
through emails was unacceptable because University
required all the submission records through ERA, which
was the official LMS of the program. So assignments had
to be resubmitted through ERA, adding to the workload
of both the students and tutors.
52
 E-portfolios: Some of the activities and assignments of
the program required the students to post their answers
to their respective e-portfolios. However ERA did not
have e-portfolios for the students until much later
during the subsequent semesters.
53
 Submission Deadlines: Deadlines for a number of
assignments had to be extended several times. However
ERA would not allow extending deadlines more than
two times. On the other hand being an open and
distance learning course it was announced that students
had two years to four years times to complete the course.
ERA did not have this provision.
54
 Learning: It may be difficult to get everything right in
the first place, so the tutors, mentors and students
should be flexible and ready to adjust to the
difficulties. This needs to be pointed out when similar
pilot implementations are going to be there. Even
though technology has its benefits, many a times, it
pose difficulties which cause discomfort among the
learners. Hence course tutors must be aware of the
technical difficulties faced by the learners and
alternatives should be provided to minimize the
difficulties.
55
Course Teams and Experts, Programme Mentors,
Tutors:
 Series of workshops to design the courses: ‘Course Teams’
refer to a group of experts who have designed the various
Courses of the e-B.Ed programme. They normally play the
role of Tutors/Mentors. Each Course Team is headed by a
Team Leader. During a period of nearly four years there
were a series of workshops conducted in Pune, Nashik,
Mumbai and Panchgani involving course teams, experts, a
group of nearly 40 educationists, and international
resource persons to brain storm, share experiences and
learn new approaches to design and implement this
programme that was innovative and ‘unique’ in a number
of ways.
56
 The designing process of making this new programme
went far beyond the usual ‘cut and paste’ approach.
This was a hard task and needed a lot of unlearning
and relearning to take place, and a lot of effort to reach
unity of thought in fulfilling the challenging tasks. The
result was the feeling, among all the partners, that
they were transforming themselves first and that they
were truly benefiting by being part of this process.
57
 Learning: The vision of educational transformation,
challenges of innovation, and the opportunity for
learning and building their own capacity created a
driving force and lasting motivation that kept the
group working together year after year. It resulted into
a win-win situation for all the partners who developed
their own capacities and carried new abilities back to
their own institutions.
58
 Mentors’ training: ‘Mentors’ refer to the local guides
available at the Study Centres where students would
gather for DCs or visit anytime for guidance. It was
observed that students from the study centres that had
trained mentors performed better compared to the
students from other Centres.
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 So in other words Study Centres where mentors could
guide students and give them confidence in a way that
made them feel they were not left alone to venture into
the course material but always had a mentor to look up
to in time of difficulties performed really well.
 The other Centre’s difficulties were further increased
due to poor Internet connectivity because of which
even the guidance provided to the students during
Distributed Classrooms were not fully received and
since all tutors were not active on the Course
Discussion Forum, many concepts were not
understood by them.
60
 Learning: It is learned that training mentors prior to
start of each course is highly essential so that despite
all the technological challenges, students will still be
in a position to clarify their doubts.
61
 Tutors’ response to students’ queries: ‘Tutors’ refer to
subject experts who would normally interact with the
students through DCs, email or Discussion Forum.
They are responsible to comment of students
submissions and evaluate their assignments.
62
 Learning: Whenever tutors responded swiftly to the
questions of the students sent to them by email the
result was students’ greater motivation and
completion of the activities on time. More than
anything it helped the student to go on with his/her
study smoothly without any breaks, thus finishing the
academic work on time and submitting it getting full
fledge confidence and sense of achievement. On the
other hand delays or no response by a mentor would
cause frustration for the students and her
demoralization. This point was brought to the
attention of all the mentors during consultation
meetings.
63
 Additionally some students felt the need for debate or
motivating lectures beyond the curriculum. That may
indirectly help the students in developing a positive
approach towards the course, and motivate them to
sustain and complete the course fruitfully.
64
 Periodic consultation meetings of the Course Team
members and Experts to resolve issues: During
implementation of the program very often it was felt
necessary to have all the course-team members or
team-leaders come together for consultation. Such
gatherings would clear the air about many issues and
bring about more unity of thought.
 Nevertheless certain topics would come up a number
of times and different conclusions would be reached
and certain tasks had to be done from the scratch by
the team-members. At times this redoing involved
some fundamental issues such as integration of the
courses, consistency of all courses, evaluation system,
mentors’ training, DCs, etc.
65
 For example the expected outcome of students’
performance was not well defined at the beginning and a
system was not in place to compare or to measure their
performance. The levels of achievement - - basic,
professional, excellence, creativity-- were formulated later
to accommodate all the types of students’ performances for
evaluation.
 Another issue was that the number of tutor was not
consistent for various courses. This created mixed impacts
on certain courses. In the same context the entire
programme was never presented as ONE and the latter
assignments did not have much connection to the earlier
courses.
66
 Learning: This matter points out to a basic exercise
that could have been carried out at the initial stages of
conceptualizing the whole program. Creating a
“framework” through consultation of all the partners
could properly have been the answer.
67
 Such a “framework” could have addressed issues such
as the basic philosophy binding the e-B.Ed partner
institutions, the rights and responsibilities of each, the
principles and values governing their working
relationships, the methods and approaches of the
programme, the role of learning and developmental
outcomes in the overall development of the students,
assessment and evaluation, recognition and
certification, course design, mentors’ training,
technological support, financial matters etc.
 Such a framework would have made the course to look
like a ‘whole’ rather than pieces joined together and
would have fostered more consistency among all its
components, reduced the chances to redo the same
thing, and provided a focus satisfactory for all.
68
Conclusion:
 Considering its content and methods and the
consortium approach taken by the partners, the e-B.Ed
programme marked a bold step in transforming the
programmes of Teacher Education (B.Ed) in India.
Although it started with a pilot run as a humble
beginning, it was a very courageous step involving
about 15 institutions of higher learning, both public
and private, and some NGOs who worked together
with great confidence in the form of 40 educationists
for about four years before the programme was
launched. The support of the Commonwealth of
Learning was crucial to the entire operation.
69
 This unified action met with great success in its pilot
run, as a good number of the students exceeded the
expectations of the programme designers who had to
keep raising their yard sticks and create more spaces
for the interested students to become more creative.
70
 Despite various challenges that it faced, the partners
remained confident and kept an open mind to learn
and improve. The instances that have briefly been
mentioned here are some of the important lessons
that may prove to be useful to other enterprising
educationists who may aspire to stretch the limits of
teacher education programmes in open and distance
mode beyond the conventional approaches and make
them oriented towards building students’ capabilities
for personal change and educational/social
transformation.
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