Hybrid designs

Doering, A. & Veletsianos, G. (2008). Hybrid Online Education: Identifying Integration Models Using Adventure Learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education. 41 (1). pp. 23-41.

The importance of this article is succinctly presented in a chart defining four models for integrating technology-based instruction. The applicability of the article is that the authors examined how teachers incorporated a computer-based, community-oriented PBL in actual classrooms. Rather than examining teachers’ technical literacy as previous studies have done, the authors ask “how technology is used” and provide real answers.

Previous research suggests three methods that teachers use to incorporate technology:

1. for efficiency (replacing less efficient methods)
2. for enhancement (transforming methods)
3. for entertainment–relaxation and reward (amplifying existing methods)

Doering and Veletsianos define four methods from observing actual use:

 

Focus	Community	Activities	Online
Curriculum	Student-student, student-expert	Student collaboration	Medium (to high)
Activity	Student-student	Student collaboration and construction	High
Standards	Student-student, student-teacher	Teams, student construction	High
Media	Student-teacher	Passive student consumption	Medium

A larger study may provide a full gradient of methods with a near-infinite number of defined paths–or it may provide validation of this four-method topology. Regardless of the methodological count, the article points the way forward in urging us to consider how technology is used in real classrooms. In addition, the article underscores the importance of teacher-teacher collaboration.

Let’s go on an Adventure

Doering, A. (2006). Adventure Learning: Transformative hybrid online education. Distance Education 27 (2). pp. 197-215.

Despite the unnecessary introduction of a new term (“adventure learning”), this article provides a concise and clear vision of an instructional model with solid grounding in contemporary learning theory and immediate practical application in the classroom. Doering positions adventure learning as an online course taken in the classroom while “teachers are facilitators” (differentiated from the other hybrid model where students take a face to face class augmented with online instruction outside the classroom). Combining collaboration and reflection to transform students into the authentic practitioners of Shaffer’s epistemic games, adventure learning relies on real-time community and fantastic (unknown) environments to provide student motivation.

The seven elements of adventure learning provide the practical application:

1. begin with a researched curriculum grounded in problem-solving and based on learning outcomes
2. provide collaboration opportunities among students, peers, experts, and content
3. utilize the Internet for delivery
4. provide authenticity with media and text from the field (emphasis is mine)
5. provide synchronous opportunities
6. offer pedagogical guidelines (for the teacher)
7. captivate students through adventure

An interesting variable which is mentioned but insufficiently explored in the research is the importance of teacher-teacher interaction.

Learning networks

Christensen’s 5th chapter proposes a valuable (but ultimately incorrect) three-part business model lens through which he proposes we consider education: consulting (services); value-chain (manufacturing); and user networks (black market). The parenthetical examples are mine: Christensen claims that telecommunications is a user network when in fact it’s a service (access to “wires” owned by a telco) as well as a value-chain (resale of bandwidth); consulting could also be viewed as experts providing a service within a user network rather than a distinct type. However, the metaphor of current public schools as a value-chain model is accurate, as is the view of special education as consultative and unscaleable one-to-one education.

The dismal evaluation of and outlook for textbooks is well-supported (although his terms are inaccurate: commercial systems are actually delivery mechanisms; “high fixed costs” are actually “sunk costs” because a business can have continuing high fixed costs whereas sunk costs such as the investment to create a book are one-time). His argument falls apart, though, in the claim tha,t “people will assemble them [learning kernels] together into entire courses.” If this were possible, libraries would have precluded the need for schools. Learners don’t know how to structure the learning they need because they don’t know the end goal. Learning opportunities or situations or problems must be constructed by experts, although not necessarily subject experts who often make unexplainable leaps in problem-solving.

The attempt to equate Web 2.0 technologies with the need for educational reform also falls short. QuickBase is not a replacement for SAPs’s ERP software; it’s an online service from a software company seeking to change its value-chain distribution model. Second Life is not a 3D world “‘created entirely by its residents;'” it’s a hosted software application whose creators charge real dollars for the service afforded by a virtual space. And finally, the idea that learners can self-educate smacks of self-medication and the potential for uninformed abuse. At the same time, the vision of public school education replaced by user networks guided by experts is enticing.