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If you are involved in blended learning in any capacity, you know that there are as many different perceptions and definitions of blended instruction as there are clouds in the sky. This recent blog post by Mark Bellas on the Blackboard blog does a nice job of bringing together a few different definitions, adding one of his own, and then asking which one best captures your experience with blended instruction. So, how about it? Which one resonates most with your blended learning approach?

via PocketOffice of Instructional Consulting: IU School of Education April 28, 2012 at 03:41AM @jgh @brainysmurf FYI these Bonk 10-min videos run fine on iPad (site says Firefox, IE...yuck) http://t.co/SW5ViZnm #bonkopen #bonkland via PocketOffice of Instructional Consulting: IU School of Education May 16, 2012 at 05:47PM

Peter: This blog post by Grant Wiggins (Understanding by Design) is pretty lengthy, but he does a nice job of talking about the pros and cons of "the lecture." While it's simple to say lectures are bad or ineffective because (insert your list here), he traces the instructional strategy of the lecture back to its roots and describes how it came to be such a controversial strategy for teaching. What I like about his post is that he presents both the effective parts about lectures (e.g., sharing thought processes, modeling and sharing cognitive structures) and the ineffective parts (e.g., most undifferentiated approach to teaching) so that we are not just throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, we are continuing to ask the question what is the most effective strategy for the instructional situation?

Peter J ArashiroMODERATOR MyBlend - Yesterday 7:09 PM Ok, just one more Grant Wiggins blog post to share (likely not the last!). In this post, he talks about the mindless practice of posting objectives or Essential Questions in classrooms so that students and teachers will know what they're working towards every day. Seems like a pretty good idea in theory, but in practice, the focus tends to be on the POSTING (so that teachers don't get written up for not doing this) instead of it helping guide teaching and learning. The big thing that came to my mind was how BH uses objectives to guide the design of instruction. I think we all agree that this is a good thing. However, these same objectives are also presented to students when they see how they're doing (assessment-wise) in class. When students read these objectives, do they make sense or are they more inclined to just look to see if they met the objective or not (by looking at the percentage). I think the strategy to use objectives to inform instruction is sound and we'll need to find ways to make it useful for both teachers and students.

I appreciate how Missy McCarthy has gone through the process of flipping her Math classroom and reflecting on the things she has learned. Missy teaches math at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan. In this post, in particular, she recounts how she took one class period to observe her students while they watched her screencasted instructional video to learn about their viewing habits of the content she has been creating. Her findings were interesting as they relate to the common concern of the flipped classroom regarding if the students are actually watching the videos or not, their note taking habits, if they are doing the practice problems or diving right into the required homework, and the ability for students to transfer what they are learning in the videos to problems that were not in the exact form as the examples provided. This, in turn, is now guiding how Missy is structuring her content, providing required note taking guides to evaluate if conceptual understanding improves, and even guide some of the questions she poses and instruction she delivers in the classroom together so that she can help students through the process of transferring the knowledge to new contexts.

"Begin with the end in mind.  "

I appreciate the focus on preparing students, parents, and teachers for the "shift" that happens when customizing and personalizing instruction. This article focuses on the ground-work that needs to be laid to transition parent and student mentality from a traditional to blended environment.

Solid post. I Digg it. Would love to solicit guest posts very much like this with Michigan faculty. I think his words about giving "a) some examples of research that supports blended learning and b) have some concrete samples of the different types of work that students will produce and c) demonstrate what assessment will look like. If you cover these three components, then my experience is that parents are thrilled about the change." could also ring true for MyBlend PD.

"Instead of a course syllabus or description, I've found it more useful to give students a "roadmap for success".  Here is an example from my middle school Geography class.  The idea is that all learning options are clearly laid out and routes for success are made clear.  It is well worth spending a class or two clarifying what the journey will look like in a blended learning environment and I've found that this reframes the experience for students in a way that they understand.  It also lays the groundwork for the one-on-one conversations you will have with students moving forward.  You will want to delineate the different segments of the class, discuss possible timeframes for moving through the challenges and what the options are for demonstrating mastery at each stage.  In this particular roadmap, some items are bold because they will be done by all students.  Other components are framed by a dotted line meaning that only some students will be eligible for those challenges based on their progress at specific stages.  You will want to make the roadmap as clear as possible so students are able to understand the journey to the point where they develop a sense of agency around their work. "

To follow up, I'd like to visit these kinds of situations to witness what the f2f environment "looks" and tap students brains a bit to see how it's working for them.

- I liked what this teacher says about his approach to flipped teaching. I thought it was going to be same ol' same ol' but he offered up some good insights as to why just doing the video thing wasn't going to work. Not necessarily blog worthy, but thought I'd pass it along. - Jeff - I like how this discusses the trial and error of his approach. That it is something that he worked at for awhile and continues to evolve. -dave I love that he even has qualitative data in a case study to share. Let's get this guy to Michigan!

"There has been a lot of interest in the flipped classroom."