In mid-September CUNYs fall issue of their Salute to Scholars magazine came out. Specifically focused on blended learning (CUNY refers to this loosely-defined half-online half in-person teaching as ‘hybrid’), the magazine comes complete with a clever eye-catching iPad cover with the title of the issue being “Making Online Learning Work”. One article written by author By Ronald E. Roel, aptly entitled “What Clicks with Today’s Students” related that a ‘multitude of hybrid approaches, tweaked continually as a course progresses, is now the norm’.
Now whether hybrid teaching and learning is yet gotten to a norm here at CUNY can certainly be debated, but what really excites me is a quote he relays from Issa Salame, a City College graduate who advocates for hybrid learning:
“I’m always interested in finding ways to improve learning-I do not think of myself as a scientist; I think of myself as a teacher.”
Many of my colleagues agree that media and information technologies shine in the learning environment when the focus has been on the educational purposes that the
technologies can best serve. So the technology is at the service of the teacher who understands a particular tool’s best potential, not the other way around. NCREL, (The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory) understands that each technology is likely to play a different role in students’ learning and that rather than trying to describe the impact of all technologies as if they were the same, researchers need to think about what kind of technologies are being used in the classroom and for what purposes.
When you decide to engage in the services our office provides, you will see that there’s more to our approach than having you watch an expert demonstrate a technology. I’d like to assist you in addressing real strategic course design issues, researching your own class and students and helping you to answer questions like “who will use the technology?” “how it will be used?” and “for what specific purpose?” I promise that the process will be a
creatively guided one, helping you discover the best methods for active student learning and integrated assessments with respect to your particular course, be It hybrid, in-person or fully online.
Here on the Commons exists a collaborative environment that supports faculty in a way that engages them as both teachers and learners. With this first post, I hope to collect and
relate a series of timely interesting happenings and events related to online teaching that communicates issues that may be of interest to our faculty here at Lehman and CUNY. Welcome to the Commons and to our blog and if you enjoy the posts, please pass it on!
Disclosure: a shameless plug for the above article as myself
and many of my CUNY colleagues in online learning are quoted! Please write to
me if you’ve enjoyed it… alyson.vogel at lehman.cuny.edu
http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/09/16/what-clicks-with-todays-students/
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