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Hybrid Learning: Challenges for Teachers
by Ruth Reynard
Transformative learning outcomes (applied directly to relevant practice). Each course I designed included Web logs (blogs) as self-reflection spaces for each student, online discussion, knowledge building space using Learning in Motion's WebKF software to support group project work, synchronous chat discussions based on course readings, and in class sessions. All course content was available freely through the course, and students are encouraged to develop individual bibliographies from their own research and include those in their blogs. Students exchanged additional readings and external website links through the online posts and reached new knowledge through the WebKF environment. Group projects worked through a collaborative knowledge-building process, chat planning, and final presentation to the class. These projects demonstrated democratic methods of research, design, and production, using every member of the group. The group projects linked the online knowledge building to real life applications of practice. Final exams were in the form of individual research papers that included self-reflection from the blogs and the self-researched bibliographies that supported a direct application of the learned concepts in a real life and meaningful context. These often helped students to realize the relevancy of the course for their specific interests, and it was often not until their learning has been summarized and synthesized and applied through this paper that the students appreciated the learning that had taken place. In other words, simply to have tested students on course concepts would not have had the same benefit as their individualized application through the paper. Also, the paper would not have had the same relevancy to their professional life without the prior engagement and interaction with course content that had taken place throughout the course.
Increasing Learner Autonomy
Learning autonomy is a dynamic, multidimensional process in which learner and instructor are equally active. The challenge to reach learning autonomy is for students of all ages: learning how to learn for oneself is the foundational challenge of all education. In a hybrid model that maximizes student self-direction, content choice and organization and heightened interaction, students become central to their own learning process. This, in turn, increases autonomous learning skills and students become more aware of how they learn, what they want to learn, and how they need to apply their learning to their own life.
The Bottom Line
While there may be financial benefits and program benefits for educational institutions to pursue more hybrid delivery, I would suggest that this model of delivery is one in which the actual learning context can be improved for both teachers and students. Teachers can become more connected and more aware of each student, and students can become more aware of their own learning and take more responsibility for it.
