Last night I began my first Coursera MOOC (massively open online course) entitled Blended Learning: Personalizing Education for Students, taught by some of the key folks who are driving this movement. I watched the four short videos for this week, participated in the quizzes and poked around in several of the already active discussion forums. The first homework assignment (which I haven’t done yet, don’t judge me) is to post your own definition of blended learning. While it would be premature to make any meaningful assessment about this particular course, I’m struck by how much of the conversation around blended learning for students is about personalization, self-paced instruction with some component of creating/making, while much of the professional development I’ve seen for educators is not. While MOOCs have a certain appeal to some, if you don’t learn well from watching video lectures, then you’re pretty much out of luck as self-paced is not the same as personalization.
Earlier this week I participated in a small discussion at the Krause Center for Innovation (KCI) with school leaders, funders and entrepreneurs who are really thinking about blended learning PD for educators. KCI, which has been serving K12 educators since 2000, offers one of the best edtech PD workshops in the country, the
MERIT program. While it is not explicitly teaching educators how to manage ‘flex/station/rotation’ blended learning environments, it is empowering educators with the knowledge, confidence and support system to experiment with various tech tools and strategies. KCI also offers some less popular online courses that they themselves admit are not as effective. While KCI has an incredibly effective offline experience if MERIT teachers want to engage online they do so on their own through Twitter and other online communities where educators gather. It seems that most PD opportunities for educators still fall in one camp and have yet to be blended.
During my session at KCI I was introduced to the
TPACK Model.
This visual representation really captures the complexity in developing ‘Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)’ where teachers seek to understand how their knowledge in the three areas of tech, teaching and content shapes their teaching practice. I think we can all agree that this will not be achieved through
teacher PD MOOCs alone, while they may be one valuable piece of the blended learning puzzle.
Gay Krause, Founder of KCI, acknowledged a real shift in thinking amongst school administrators. Where previously school leaders required convincing, often asking ‘why do we need to this?’, now more often they are asking ‘how can we implement technology effectively?’. Demand for blended PD exists and is growing.
If the blended learning movement is to truly become mainstream and lead to learning gains for students in schools beyond high-functioning charters (like the 3 highlighted in this MOOC), then we must provide personalized, high-quality blended learning for our educators. And let’s remember the exciting aspect of effectively blending instruction is that it will free up time for students to make stuff; work on projects to stimulate deeper learning. In a recent post from KQED MindShift on
empowering educators, they highlight the importance of collaboration and creating opportunities for educators to be makers as well.
For a majority of students their teachers are the gateway to their learning experience, so if we do not adequately prepare and support educators I doubt we’ll see high-quality blended learning really take off.
What do you think? Have you participated in any exceptional blended PD? What has been your experience with PD MOOCs? Please leave your comments below or tweet me
@Jessie_Arora.
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