BLENDED LEARNING

1. CONCERN OF BL COURSE

1.1. CREATORS:

1.2. What should be done in class and which elements should be assigned to online learning.

2. One models of BL within US K-12 teaching including the following models:

2.1. Flexible BL: involves students working through course material online and occasionally meeting a teacher onsite.

2.2. Station rotation: usually involves a table set up in the classroom for online work via tablets or PCs with small groups.

2.3. Lab rotation: means booking a self-access center for the online component of the BL course.

3. SUCCESS FACTORS

3.1. There are four factors in creating successful BL course:

3.1.1. * Appropriateness, it would be appropriate to develop fluency in the classroom and to work on critical thinking skills through an online forum and adds the element of thinking time into the discussion.

3.1.2. * Complementary: is often referred to as integration, this refers to the genuine integration of the in-class and online elements.

3.1.3. “getting students to use the language communicatively”

3.1.4. *Attitude: The success of a BL course may depend on the teacher holding positive beliefs that are transmitted to the learners.

3.1.5. *Teacher and learner training: There are various roles required of an online tutor. Some may actually teach language lesson in a virtual classroom using the shared whiteboard, helping students with the technical aspects of a headset and managing speaking turns.

4. DESIGNING BL COURSES

4.1. Common platforms include tracking tools allowing teachers to see who has worked on the materials, number of attempts made, and so on.

4.2. Much material housed in publishers’ platform id linked to specific books.

4.3. The Macmillan English Campus is an example of data base of materials that can be mixed and matched to create unique courses.

4.4. A second option consists of so-called open platforms.

4.5. Teachers have long been able to create and upload their own digital exercises using authoring tools such Hot potatoes.

5. Stage one: context Decide the reasons for blending. Listing these reasons will be instrumental in choosing any platform.

6. Studies of blended learning need to take in account work in related fields: CALL (computer-aided language learning), SLA (second language acquisition), motivation and learner autonomy.

7. McCarthy (2016) Suggest that studies in BL need to triangulate evidence from three areas:

7.1. SLA research and studies.

7.2. Classroom interaction studies.

7.3. What we know about spoken interaction outside and inside classrooms from corpus analysis and technology-mediated language learning.

8. CONSTRUCTING A BL COURSE:

8.1. Stage two: Course design use publisher-produced materials, create digital materials for a course and upload them to the platform.

8.2. Stage three: Learners and teachers “The learners and teachers play a key role in any blend” (Whittaker & Tomlinson, 2013)

8.3. Stage four: Evaluating the blend “need to determine which aspects of the blend to evaluate. This will often be an ongoing process”