Changing Role of Teacher
Prior to this past school year, I never gave any thought to teaching online and used a very minimum of blended learning in my own classroom. For some time I have used a lot of technology in my classroom, but integrating it into the classroom in an academic way for students to use to direct some of their own learning I had not really done. After taking the certification courses, I had a better understanding of how the role of the teacher is changing in education based on the availability of technology to all along with the benefits that a more blended approach can incorporate into any learning situation. As I began to use the techniques with my own students, they were more engaged, enjoyed the additional variety of instruction/learning, and were able to produce some incredible work. Students also enjoyed the convenience of being able to submit work through Edmodo and to be able to access course content from home. All in all, the ability for me to step to the side to allow my students more control over their own learning was a positive one. |
Successes and Challenges
There were a number of successes and challenges that were observed from the implementation and teaching of both a completely online course, and in a blended-approach in a brick and mortar setting. Flexibility for students was a huge success, along with having constant access to course content even when not at school. One of the bigger challenges that was more of an issue in the full online setting was cheating. Students seem to have less concern or perhaps less awareness of what constitutes cheating in an online academic course. Next time, I will absolutely spend more time at the beginning of the course giving examples and making the ‘integrity statement’ comprehensible to students as to what is okay, and what is not okay. In that I am teaching full-time online next year, I won’t have as much of an opportunity to try out more things in a blended approach in a traditional setting. However, since I am teaching Spanish 1 next year, which necessitates visiting the middle school labs once a week, I plan to use that time to actually teach a live lesson for at least half of the time and dedicate the other half of the time to individual help and general course questions. I don’t want that time to just be a “technology” visit. What I’m working on currently to incorporate into my online teaching is bringing more of what is a benefit to students in a brick-and-mortar setting into that online setting, basically doing the reverse of what most teachers have the opportunity to do with blended learning. As learning a second language is based on comprehensible input for the student, I have been working on more interactive activities within the synchronous sessions as one place to incorporate a more blended learning environment in a place that is for most students, a completely online learning experience. It is a challenge for the instructor to know how much students are comprehending or even truly paying attention when you don't have the face-to-face contact. I am excited for the potential for improvement of online teaching by bringing the benefits from experience in a brick and mortar classroom in to the online setting. |
Student Benefits
Students have benefitted in a number of ways from the implementation of both online and blended techniques and tools. Students in a brick-and-mortar setting were more engaged when they had opportunities to direct some of their own learning through assignment choice based on interest and a variety of online tools to use to present information to the class. Student work demonstrated better understanding with the online component than when that part is missing. Students were less likely to forget assignments and/or deadlines by setting Edmodo to send them alerts as reminders. I was also able to more easily communicate with students when they were at home so they didn’t have to wait until the next day, thus stopping their work in its tracks, when in the past they would have had to wait until the next day to seek that help or clarification. Overall, I did not see a huge leap in student achievement, but I did see a bigger impact on student engagement through the use of a more blended approach. In the completely online course, the flexibility of being able to do all work online was a huge benefit to many students. For example, I had two students who are dedicated athletes and so being able to complete their work, have access to their teacher from anywhere at almost any time, made it possible for them to keep up with their academic studies while providing the flexibility and time to pursue their dreams outside of the educational setting as they traveled around the country. For these students, there was a huge benefit by allowing them to stay on pace for graduation. For other students, there is a benefit for credit retrieval, the improvement of a past poor performance in a course, or by allowing a student room for an extra elective in their brick-and-mortar setting to be more involved in other courses of interest that their schedules would otherwise not allow. |