Notes from CITES's Innovative Approaches to Blended Learning

Hi all,

I just got back from the CITES discussion that was entitled, "Innovative Approaches to Blended Learning."

This was a very catchy title as we all seek to be innovative or at least should be en route in our search. The problem with this talk was that the title was not what the talk was about at all.

Blended learning was defined by the audience as a way to get us all involved in the discussion, however that was the last time the term was used.

Instead, E.T. Hansen showed us his idea for a new way to teach our students, a web-page using, Square-space.

Building his argument for this, he used the United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan's remarks at a recent meeting of the state of educational technology director's association forum. He is correct that with this next generation of college student that there will be even more things to grab their attention and education must compete.

Hansen is open to a community approach to his learning community. In this case, the University of Illinois and the University of Syracuse, where he is also employed.

His site, ShiftLearning.com, is an unique approach but, it does exactly what Moodle, Compass, etc. does.

Security is an issue as authentification is not needed. The course page is a public site that anyone can join and become a member of the learning community. In this case, of course, their work will not be graded with others.

The most interesting I gained was that we could revisit the idea of using Google docs as his students that give him feedback love it.

This was not as advertised so actual notes on innovation in blended learning does not apply here.