[Warning: live blog, could be typos]
Designing blended learning is about making good decisions, Clive Shepherd told delegates at the Charity Learning Conference 2012.
He said that there are difficult judgements to be made based on specific situations – you cannot make an algorithm to create a blended solution.
He shared a set of three decision areas to focus on prior to designing a blended learning programme.
1. Select strategies
- Exposition – pass info on – dominant force is subject expert who delivers things to people.
- Instruction – leader is an instructor or designer of instructional learning. A definite set of objectives and process for reaching them and ways of assessing progress. Bring people to an end point.
- Guided discovery – planned experiences for people to gain insights.
- Exploration – creating an environment to explore – role of the curator, collaborative and peer driven
We have to use these strategies to design a blended solution i.e. decide what is a good strategy for a particular part of the learning.
2 Social context in which we want people to learn
- Learning alone
- Learning one to one
- Learning in a group
Useful to mix the social context at different stages in the programme.
3 Select the media
- Learning face to face
- Learning through offline media
- Learning through online media
Likely to mix these depending on different parts of the programme.
Always consider points one and two before thinking about technology, Shepherd said. And think about the three Ls: The learning, the learners and logistics.
