Blending Educational Models to Design Blended Activities

Background

A few researchers have revealed limitations and failures of online learning. Ackerman and his colleagues (Ackerman, 2009; Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2008) discovered a lower achievement of students when reading digital materials instead of printed ones. Kurtz and Amichai-Hamburger (2008) reported a sense of loneliness perceived when physical contact with teacher and peers is lacking. Finally, Shemla and Nachmias (2007) revealed that students lack sufficient skills to deploy in an educationally relevant way when learning with online technologies. The blended approach seems to be able to exploit the potentiality of online learning and to overcome some of these problems. However, blending online and offline contexts is not sufficient per se; instead, specifically designed pedagogical models are needed to achieve effective blended courses.

When designing theories for blended learning, specific problems may arise. For instance, time management requires particular attention and the educational material used for a course needs to be selected and organized in a proper way. At the same time, lecturing cannot be delivered without taking into consideration what happens online. Finally, since each of the devices available online (chat, forum, shared whiteboard, etc.) sustain specific type of interaction, each of them should be used for proper objectives.

In our opinion, a new pedagogy is needed to support efficient blended courses. Such pedagogy should be crafted by mixing already existing models proven to be efficient with appropriate adaptations of these models to consider both offline and online contexts. In the following paragraphs, we will report on a few models we used as inspiration. These models are mostly based on a constructivist vision of learning, stressing the fundamental role of social interaction on effective learning. Then, a specific blended course will be described designed upon this pedagogy.