While blended learning offers many advantages for students in terms of time flexibility, and diverse digital platforms, a significant challenge is designing pedagogy that encourages and stimulates student engagement and creativity.  How can we help students to engage with each other and with the class material during the online sections of the course?  How can we promote a culture of community even when students are not in the classroom?  Can creativity be an integral part of the blended learning program?  These are some of the questions that we will explore together in this workshop.  As a new recruit to teaching a blended learning course, I have been struggling to discover methods and techniques for how to encourage engagement, community, and creativity.  The course I teach involves experiential learning in the classroom, and site visits, creative portfolios, and mixed media learning (videos, podcasts, readings) outside of the classroom.  During this workshop I will share some of the techniques I am currently using and as well speak about my process of transition from classroom learning to blended learning.  As well we will explore together the major obstacles and potential solutions to encourage student engagement and creativity.

During this workshop, I will share my experience of converting my undergraduate and graduate courses into a blended format. I will explain my motivations to switch to this teaching approach as well as the institutional challenges that I have faced. I am hoping that my own experience will help us address the following questions: What should be our goal when we decide to convert to blended teaching? What is the ideal proportion of online versus in-class activities? Which learning activities should be conducted online and which ones should be “saved” for in-class face-to-face meetings. When are synchronous online activities appropriate? How long should asynchronous online activities last? How is our online role different than our role in the classroom? I came to realize that the answers to these questions are never definitive: some approaches work well in certain fields or programs or terms and others don’t. In addition, as soon as you think that you have hit the right balance, it is probably time to modify your approach. One thing I know for sure is that once you take the blended route, there is no coming back!

This workshop will show student responses to blended learning. The first blended learning exercise was adopted in a 400-level course and used Moodle as a platform for critical thinking. The second blended learning exercise was used in a 200-level non-majors science course. Here, a video of the lecture was uploaded onto Moodle. Students listened to the lecture at home followed by a lecture in class. Student feedback was solicited from both courses and will be shown at the workshop. 

What makes doing Hybrid, Asynchronous and Blended Structured (HABS) studio arts courses so hard?

What makes doing HABS courses so important for the studio arts?

When I was a chair of Theatre the most common request I got from non-theatre students was how to get into an acting course.  When I was Associate Dean of Fine Arts, I discovered that Departments throughout the Faculty get similar questions. How do I get into a Photography course? How can I get a Film Production course, etc? Unfortunately the answer to all of the questions has generally been, ‘you can’t.’ 

These courses traditionally employ a style of teaching that is built around critique of individual work in small-class settings. The necessary student-to-teacher ratios make the mean, per-capita instructional costs for these subjects among the highest of any disciplines in the University. These high costs are to some degree reflected in Quebec funding ratios but there are still limits. And, those limits have generally meant ‘majors and specialists only.’ This is a true pity because these courses engender marketable and transferable soft-social skills.

My portion of today’s discussion will focus on this basic conflict between these two values, keep it small and personal and make it big and affordable. HABS courses are giving Fine Arts critical tools in making a resolution possible. I will also be examining some key limitations for Fine Arts when it comes to using HABS courses.

L’apprentissage soutenu par un mode d’enseignement hybride est une formule gagnante autant pour l’étudiant que pour le professeur. Pour que  la technologie reste au service de la pédagogie, à titre de complément plutôt que de distraction, le professeur doit connaître les principaux éléments  à suivre dans sa  démarche de transformation de son cours traditionnel en  enseignement hybride. C’est notamment de cela dont il est question dans la présente communication.

In this workshop, I will share some personal observations on my experience with blended learning and present results of surveys conducted in several courses at JMSB. The students' persistence, performance and perceptions will be examined. A review of the perceived contributions towards higher-order thinking skills and team-building of activities and resources offered in courses will be presented. Complementing the blended learning approach, it seems that social medias also impact the learning at different levels.