The take home message from the day was (or seemed to be) that the way that young students today interact with information has changed from what it was only a decade ago and the number of mature students who are taking distance based degrees has grown to the point that the degree programs are themselves becoming more common and (perhaps) as a result, the quality of these online degrees has increased to the point that they are no longer stigmatized. Given these two messages, educational institutions have to move to facilitate (not so much to react) the needs and demands of two large student demographic groups that it likely has never had to deal with before.
Amanda Jefferies from University of Hertfordshire points to experiences that she has had through the course of her research that suggest the ubiquity of technology is reason enough to pay it some attention. Contrary to the common perception of many North American education elders, Jefferies pointed out that txt was indeed a legitimate way to communicate for students. Many students felt that email was a bygone technology (though I am wondering how this will change with “smart phones” that have access to email and have data rate plans that are often more reasonable than SMS rate plans). Many of these students also already have some manner of online presence (blogs/profiles etc), so it seems reasonable that while they may not be “computer literate” they are in fact “communications literate” and comfortable dealing with information online. Research also showed that as students matured, so did their use of technology and information sources – moving from what is presented in the course to Open Ed resources is they are so motivated. As these students (and by extension, their instructors) mature, they also realize that technology cannot be used as a crutch to avoid putting effort into either the delivery or processing of class content.
George Siemens from the University of Manitoba explored the nature of the information that students can find online. Increasingly fragmented, the loss of a grand narrative with respect to online information means that the content the students are accessing on their own is very different from the content that would have traditionally been found in libraries (books/journals) or pre-internet news sources (papers/radio/movie reels). Much of the information that students might consider using is created not by a traditionally noted expert, but rather a “society”. This society sees both the author and the audience contributing the to the resource, and in that manner, providing checks and balances to assess the quality of what is presented. With many education scholars touting the virtues of social learning, the use of socially created resources seems to be a reasonable way of involving those younger students who may already participate in social content creation.
Enter hybrid or blended instruction. It offers to younger students the flexibility to use tools that they are comfortable with to engage their content while allowing older/busier students the flexibility they need to handle their lives outside the classroom, while still connecting with the expert who delivers the content. Blended learning expands the reach and the potential relevance of the classroom beyond the traditional bounds of space and time and moves it into the lives of the student. Achieved largely by making use of technologies that increase the convenience with which content can be obtained/developed and then accessed; blended learning is an idea that will change the way that educational institutions function with respect to their teaching and learning enterprise.
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