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Simmons College instructor Madalaine Pugliese describes her design process for blended learning courses in this case study featuring short video clips, complete text transcript, and actual example documents from Pugliese's design/teaching practice. Of particular note are the sample course schedules from the "traditional" and blended formats of her course and her storyboarding process for blended learning course design using index cards.

Increasingly, faculty who teach an online course may not be the ones who actually designed the course. Thus, current measurements, especially those that focus on course design and innovation, are not appropriate tools for assessing these faculty members. Instead, the authors assert: "We must look at the actions performed by the instructors within the course." The objective of the authors' study was "to identify a set of criteria that would yield objective data easily examined by supervisors and peers during an online course observation and serve as a balance to the more subjective data gathered from student surveys." The authors identified six questions to be used as a starting point for evaluating online instructors. These questions are copied below verbatim: Has the instructor logged in at least an average of every other day? Has the instructor posted a biography of at least a paragraph, in addition to contact info? Has the instructor posted announcements at least weekly? Is there evidence that the instructor answers student inquiries in two days or less? Does the instructor participate in discussion forums where appropriate? Does the instructor provide feedback on assignments? This article is an excellent resource because it clearly delineates between design and instruction. It also provides the six very concrete questions to use when evaluating instructors.

Blended learning course design entails more than simply converting content for online delivery or finding ways to supplement an existing face-to-face course. Ideally, designing a blended course would begin with identifying learning outcomes and topics, creating assignments and activities, determining how interaction will occur, and selecting the technologies to best achieve those learning outcomes.

A robust, faculty-driven resource site from Oregon State University supporting the development of hybrid courses. Design documents excerpted from the work of OSU faculty and short mini-presentations on hybrid design are just a couple of the features of this site.

Perfect kind of resource I'm looking to collect and be able to share with faculty colleagues on my campus. Examples (or maybe testimonials!) from real, live faculty members are often so much more powerful than hypotheticals.

This is a great resource that I had yet to discover so thank you for sharing! I agree with the individual above that examples from faculty members are so much more powerful. Even having this in video form than written form brings so much more conveyance of the experience.

I have found this study case quite interesting. I thing it will be especially useful for those who (like me) have used the ADDIE method for their f2f course design.

Blended learning does not simply involve shifting portions of face-to-face instruction Faculty Focus is a free e-newsletter and website that publishes articles on effective teaching strategies for the college classroom. This articles explains the re-conceptualization of the learning process in a hybrid course, as well as, detailing the steps of the ADDIE method (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation).

e-learning challenge which asked course designers to share their favorite examples of quotes, phrases, and questions they don't like hearing. The examples are moving, so prepare to smile, chuckle, and possibly cry. I espacially like Jason Morris infografic: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47068554/eLearning_Hero_Challenge.png

Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.

"Using Blooms Taxonomy to Design E-learning"

Looks at learning theories and how they relate to design for online learning - behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism Also liked the section on deeper learning principles

This link provided clear and organized information that we can use to organize the content and types of our course activities. It added another layer of information to what was already provided by the course. It seems to prove that when you read about the same topic but coming from different sources, the learning process is facilitated. Obviously, it takes more time but unless I'm sure of what I'm doing I like to prepare myself before jumping in to our own activities. Are you guys experiencing difficulties getting started on the DIY activities? I am taking forever...! But, in the end, I know that the acquired knowledge acquired by doing the project will prove to be more satisfactory and productive than just reading about it...Thanks to everyone who posted these links!

7 learning design principles that can help anyone make smart decisions when designing and creating online learning courses

How can you determine how well your blended delivery is working for your students? How can you gather information that will enable you to improve your blended design in the future?

This isn't exactly a blended learning course but it includes a lot of resources if you are getting students to do self directed multimedia courses as part of blended learning design. I also really like the curriculum design/progression. It is an advanced composition course that engages students in a comprehensive exploration of contemporary rhetoric, creative inquiry, design thinking, media authorship, self-reflection, and social engagement. Directed writings in concert with video production projects allow students to experience an integrated process of thinking, creating, and problem-solving.

Great resource--thanks!

Most interesting strategies for archiving student work. Great learning objectives as well. Interesting way to present them. This is also an excellent example of how a tertiary educator can integrate information from the web straight into their course work. AND how universities can tap into the wonderful and expert learning tools created commercially (e.g. lynda.com) Thanks.

This presentation from Donna Ziegenfuss of the University of Utah's Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence demonstrates a model and process used in a graduate-level online course based on Dee Fink's approach to 'backwards planning".

Thank you for sharing this and the Fink document below. Donna presented at our Instructional Design summit. I use Fink worksheets with many faculty I work with here at SLCC.

This is really useful - how do you estimate the completion time though?

Interesting article about a design course using Ning as an LMS introduces the notion that "social presence" is an important piece of the blended learning puzzle

This link is from the Chapter 05 reading and I thought it was the best for a focus on course design issues of what to place online v. classroom in a blended course.

Useful to reference when designing a course - have you included all of these?

I agree that we should follow the guidelines included in the peer review document to know what to do in order to create an "exemplary" course. Why settle for less?

Distance Education | Spotlight Using Online and Blended Learning To Help Students Design Their Educational Experience For Julie Young, who recently announced her retirement as president and CEO of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), the journey to online and blended learning began with her organization's mission: "To deliver high-quality technology-based education that provides the skills and knowledge students need for success."