Blends of Blends

Multi-Blends

Blended learning usually refers to a mixture of different elements, and different ways of doing things, which is also integrated in some way to present and provide a coherent learning programme. There is a whole range of blends that should be kept in mind in designing a fully integrated ‘blended learning’ programme.

Most commonly blended learning includes blends of different:

· Modes of learning: such as on-campus, on-line, off-line and learning at work

· Modes of communication: such as face-2-face, online discussions, online chat, audio and video conferencing,

blogs, wikis, pod-casts, IMS

and mobile communication.

More interestingly from a design point of view, it can (and perhaps should) also include blends of different:

· Inputs from a range of agencies or departments, such as Academic Skills Unit, Careers and Advice Centre, Library, Media Development and so on. This relies on a good team approach to learning design and development.

· Skills, information and knowledge practices, such as essay writing, collaborative learning, group work on projects, research skills, information and knowledge management, professional practice.

· Student work and staff reflection, for instance student postings to discussions, then student reflection on the postings in assignments, then staff reflection and analysis which is fed back into the course as further (layers of) content.

· Peer inputs, learning, and reflection, from simple tasks like asking students to research and edit additional sources of information and case studies, to more complex examples, like using selected student reflections, and feeding these back into the course contents as the course proceeds.

And it seems there are 2 more to add to the blends available for blending or "meta-blending" ...

• Cross-mode use of LO's, for instance the way one of the computing courses has been set up: The online course consists of a number of LO’s, with discussion board space and support for online students. The same course is being used by on-site students, who get on-site tutorial support, and the odd lecture. That's very different from re-versioning, or re-editing and re-designing LO's from one mode to another.

And even more interesting:

• Private/ group/ public domain blending and weaving. If I want to improve what I do in designing and facilitating an "interactive learning space", or even better, an "interactive learning architecture/ ecology", surely I have to design, in some way, a space in which it is easy to move comfortably between public/ group/ private spaces, and in which both participants and facilitators can 'pick up' useful threads from these different spaces, and weave them and loop them across and together? [This paragraph is in fact cut and pasted - with minor edits - from another communication].
  

In design terms, we need to be able 'set out' and 'point to' a range of learning spaces, such as discussion boards, email (on VLE and elsewhere), IMS, chat, blogs, vlogs, pod-casts, wikis, etc. And we need to encourage people to use as wide a range of them as they feel comfortable to use, and to feed and weave interesting threads across from one domain to another.

This last point about ‘domain blending’ might be a useful response to the very real issue of whether we need VLE’s at all, or whether ‘death by VLE’ has now joined ‘death by power-point’. If we actively encourage ‘domain blending’, and cross-domain weaving and linking (and perhaps change our use of VLE’s from content management mode to interactive hypermedia mode) we might find new-ish roles for web-site looking VLE’s, and for (improved) discussion forums, which will emerge and consolidate over the next year or so.

Web 2 is likely to look far more like a ‘social software’ animal than a content management driven VLE, but we shouldn’t throw all the babies out with the bathwater – just some of the clunkiest ones!.

The number of blends and the classification or taxonomy of blends is not that important. What is important is to make the links across and between these blends, and to fold the layers of reflection back into the learning process.

That should give the learners (and the lecturers) richer and more comprehensive resources to explore, as well as the opportunity to construct their own learning pathway through a whole range of resources and links, appropriate to their own needs within their own contexts.