Weeks starting 12 & 19 November 2018

Topic 4 was another topic that I was especially excited about because I was going to learn the details around designing for online and blended learning. In my teaching context, which is predominantly contact, face-to-face teaching, I want to incorporate more blended learning. Our current teaching model is based on blended learning but I believe that I have been doing the minimum required and I want to develop more of this in the new academic year.

I can easily identify with Salmon’s, Five Stage Model. I think that I am already implementing stages one to three quite well. I need to focus on developing stages four and five. Stage four is to encourage/facilitate discussions and collaborative interactions between students in the online space and stage five is students gaining benefits from the online learning, learning integration into their own context and then reflecting. (Salmon, 2005).

As this is a relatively new space for both my students and I, I acknowledge that I will have to fulfill the following roles, as identified by Berge (1995):

• Pedagogical role – I will need to create discussions which will based mostly on activities applying the theory to a real-life, practical situation.
• Social role – This would be easier for me as I see the students in face-to-face sessions on a weekly basis. This would provide me with an opportunity to explain and encourage collaborative discussions and participation in the online space.
• Managerial role – This is where I need to be very clear in the expectations on students – objectives, clear goals, timelines and guidelines.
• Technical role – This would be my greatest challenge and focus of development as I would need to make my students comfortable with our learning management system, tools and software. I would need to learn more about these technicalities but I am fortunate that I have a very supportive work environment.

So, now it’s looking forward to the 2019 academic year to get started…

T