Best Practices: A Guide for Turning a Face-to-Face Training into Blended Learning

We were given the following scenario in my grad class this week:

“A training manager has been frustrated with the quality of communication among trainees in his face-to-face training sessions and wants to try something new. With his supervisor’s permission, the trainer plans to convert all current training modules to a blended learning format, which would provide trainees and trainers the opportunity to interact with each other and learn the material in both a face-to-face and online environment. In addition, he is considering putting all of his training materials on a server so that the trainees have access to resources and assignments at all times.”

With this scenario in mind we were asked to create a best practice guide for this trainee to help them make their face to face course into a successful blended course. What do I mean by that? A hybrid or blended course, by definition, reduces face-to-face "seat time" so that students can pursue additional teaching and learning activities online. To be successful, a hybrid or blended course requires careful pedagogical redesign. (“How to Redesign Your Course for Blended Learning”, 2009) Dr. Piskurich says that the best way to teach is face-to-face on the job training, but obviously in today’s fast paced world that is not the most efficient way to go about it, and this is exactly what is happening in our scenario. (Laureate Education Inc, n.d.).The following guide is filled with Pre-Planning questions, a Teacher Checklist, and things to remember.

Pre-Planning

This step is going to be the most important. Switching over from face to face sessions into blended learning is not as easy as you might think. There are many different things that need to be considered, most importantly you want to make sure that you are not just simply adding online activities to your course as that ends up being more work for both you the trainer and your trainee’s. Part of planning is to map out what you think your course might need.  Here is a great tool to help you start thinking about design issues when taking a face-to-face training and turning it into blended learning.

Are you ready for redesign?

1. What do you want students to know when they have finished taking your hybrid course?

2. As you think about learning objectives, which would be better achieved online and which   would be best achieved face-to-face?

3. Hybrid teaching is not just a matter of transferring a portion of your traditional course to the Web. Instead it involves developing challenging and engaging online learning activities that complement your face-to-face activities. What types of learning activities do you think you will be using for the online portion of your course?

4. Online asynchronous discussion is often an important part of hybrid courses. What new learning opportunities will arise as a result of using asynchronous discussion? What challenges do you anticipate in using online discussions? How would you address these?

5. How will the face-to-face and time out of class components be integrated into a single course? In other words, how will the work done in each component feed back into and support the other?

6. When working online, students frequently have problems scheduling their work and managing their time, and understanding the implications of the hybrid course module as related to learning. What do you plan to do to help your students address these issues?

7. How will you divide the percent of time between the face-to-face portion and the online portion of your course? How will you schedule the percent of time between the face-to-face and online portion of your course, i.e., one two hour face-to-face followed by one two hour online session each week?

8. How will you divide the course-grading scheme between face-to-face and online activities? What means will you use to assess student work in each of these two components?

9. Students sometimes have difficulty acclimating to the course Web site and to other instructional technologies you may be using for face-to-face and online activities. What specific technologies will you use for the online and face-to-face portions of your course? What proactive steps can you take to assist students to become familiar with your Web site and those instructional technologies? If students need help with technology later in the course, how will you provide support?

10. There is a tendency for faculty to require students to do more work in a hybrid course than they normally would complete in a purely traditional course. What are you going to do to ensure that you have not created a course and one-half? How will you evaluate the student workload as compared to a traditional class?

(“How to Redesign Your Course for Blended Learning”, 2009)

Your job as the trainer in a blended learning environment

In a distance learning environment, the trainer’s role goes from being the sole person doing a majority of the talking into someone who coaches the students throughout the course. (Simonson, et. al., 2012)  A huge part of this is going to be to make sure that your learning activities are structured to promote collaboration. The following is a great check list to ensure you are doing everything you can as the instructor to encourage student collaboration.

 

(“Blended Course Checklist”, 2009)

Important things to remember:

  “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. However, a variety of constraints often affect the way blended courses are developed, which can compromise their quality.” (Kelly, 2012).

      Make sure that through your pre-planning you avoid the common mistake of designing a course and a half by just adding online assignments to your already existing training.

     When in doubt, add in simple technologies that you know will work, and as you become more comfortable you can add in more complex activities.

Resources 

Blended Course Checklist. (2009). Simons College Blended Learning Initiative. Retrieved from http://at.simmons.edu/blendedlearning/implement/documents/pdfs/blended_checklist_teachingPhase.pdf

How to Redesign Your Course for Blended Learning. (2009) UW-Milwaukee Technology Center. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/a/idahopd.org/blended-learning/redesigning-your-course

Kelly, R. (Nov, 30 2012). Recommendations for Blended Learning Course Design. Teaching & Learning. Retrieved from http://www.magnapubs.com/blog/teaching-and-learning/recommendations-for-blended-learning-course-design/

Laureate Education, Inc. (Walden University). (n.d.). Planning and Designing Online Courses [Video webcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_3396926_1%26url%3D 

. 

Simonson, S. A. (2012). Teaching and Learning at a Distance. In S. A. Simonson, Teaching and Learning at a Distance. New York: Pearson.