Book Report 2: Shea, "Toward a Conceptual Framework for Learning"

 As promised, loyal readers, a continuation of my summary of an informative anthology of blended learning research:

Shea, Peter. "Towards a Conceptual Framework for Learning in Blended Environments." Blended Learning: Research Perspectives. Eds. Anthony G. Picciano and Charles D. Dziuban, eds. Needham, MA: Sloan-C, 2007. Print. 19-35

Teaser for next time: Chapter 3 is a review of the blended learning literature (at least through 2005) -- should be useful!  Before we get there, though, Shea discusses a possible framework for how blended learning can be theorized, researched, designed and implemented, focusing on quality teaching and learning principles.


• Key questions: “What problem does blended learning solve?” (19) Benefits and losses? “What happens to cognition, motivation, and affect…?” (19)

• “Access” is a “common answer”; a benefit, in two senses: by freeing up in-class “seat time”, (1) students are freer to engage in other important activities that are more tied to time and place; (2) classroom space is freed in at the institution, = possible to serve more students without increasing physical resources (19)

• However, this benefit assumes the quality of instruction stays the same or improves; “If quality suffers, increased access is no benefit” (19).

• “What do we mean by ‘quality’ blended instruction?” (20) Focus of the model = how people learn in blended environments. A conceptual or theoretical framework for blended learning is useful to the extent that it “allows us to make testable hypotheses about the preconditions and activities likely to result in high levels of learning and high levels of student, faculty satisfaction, and ultimately increased access and more efficient deployment of existing physical resources” (20).

• Things to consider: “what we know about learning generally, what we know about adult learning and what we know about technology-mediated teaching and learning (20-21).

• Generally: “How People Learn” (HPL) framework (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 2000) – “Good learning environments are learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, and community centered” (21).
• Especially for adult learners: “Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (Chickering and Gamson, 1987) – “frequent contact between students and faculty, reciprocity and cooperation among students, active learning, prompt feedback, time on task, the communication of high expectations, and respect for diverse talents and ways of learning” (21); Knowles on “andragogy” – “utility of learning goals, immediacy of learning application, independence, autonomy, self direction, and ownership of learning” (22).
• Especially for online learning: “Community of Inquiry Model” (Garrison, Anderson, and Archer, 2000) – emphasis on “‘presence’ . . . in the absence of face-to-face interaction”: teaching presence, social presence and cognitive presence (22).
• All three of these “share an emphasis on the role of community, collaboration, and cooperation” (22).

• “learner-centeredness”: blended learning environments “need to focus on the goals, objectives, needs and interests of the learner” (22), and align the environment and activities to the varying needs of learners in a meaningful way.

• “knowledge-centeredness”: need to consider how online and face-to-face resources can be leveraged in a complementary way to build on what students already bring to the class, enhance understanding and enable students to use their knowledge; “seek to enhance understanding rather than memorization”, guide students into doing disciplinary work, and therefore “encourage the development of active learning that focuses on depth rather than primarily on breadth” (23).

• “assessment-centeredness”: “blended environments . . . need to help learners make their thinking visible, so that feedback and revision are more likely”, and need to “align instruction and assessment” (23); need to consider which online and face-to-face resources are best aligned with formative feedback.

• “community-centeredness”: “how we can promote the development of a sense of connectedness, collaboration, and a sense of safety” (24) through the use of blended learning activities.

• Lots of research agrees on the significance of “learner interaction” – Vygotsky argues that learning takes place first on an “inter-psychological” plane, then on an “intra-psychological” plane (24)… so, it is important to consider how a blended learning environment encourages “productive discourse between learners” (25).

• A concern: “One strand of research suggests that learners frequently do not participate very intensively in collaborative blended environments” (25); e.g., few, limited, and brief discussion postings in courses. Stahl finds that most online interactions are social, for sharing opinions and surface knowledge, “and not for collaborative knowledge building” (26)… which is disappointing, especially since writing provides a means for “mak[ing] thinking visible” (26).

Integration and Interaction:

• The key seems to be integration… when students see online activities as “either supplemental or irrelevant to their learning in the face-to-face activities” (26) they don’t participate as actively. “Promoting, facilitating, and integrating online and face-to-face interactions are essential to blended learning” (26)… so, for theory-building in this area, we need to analyze interactions.

• Methodological approaches to assessing “higher order thinking and learning” (27): message complexity, Bloom’s taxonomy, Biggs and Collins’ SOLO Taxonomy (“assesses structural complexity reflected in writing”, 27), Garrison’s Practical Inquiry Model of Cognitive Processing (examines phases of online discussion – triggering, exploratory, integration, resolution).

• Theories of human cognition can provide a basis for developing and testing “technology-mediated collaborative learning” (27).

Future Directions:

• “[A] degree of additional complexity arises when we consider what can actually be ‘blended’ in blended learning” (28): it’s not just about combining online and face-to-face activities, but can involve blending time (synchronous – asynchronous), place (face-to-face – online), pedagogy (cooperative – competitive), technologies (text – multimodal), format (cohort – self-paced), courses (home0institution’s courses – others), participants (local – distant).

• Factors influencing blended learning decisions include: learning goals, learner characteristics, faculty characteristics, and available resources – and “[a]ll exist within an institutional culture that may encourage or discourage such innovation” (28).

• For instance, students’ need for flexibility may influence synchronous vs. asynchronous activities; traditional pedagogies may be more appropriate for introductory-level content, while cooperative pedagogies would be more appropriate for learners at more advanced knowledge levels (29).

• However, pedagogically, for quality environments “we need practices that are grounded” (30), and so we need to build from epistemological assumptions, to theories of learning, to pedagogical approaches, to instructional strategies, to specific activities (30):

“Such a grounded-design approach avoids the dogmatic application of specific instructional methods, forces us to articulate the basis for instructional choices, and provides a firmer foundation for curricular and pedagogic decisions in blended environments” (31).

Media and Methods:

• This approach can also help us consider the use of technological media in teaching and learning… reminds us that the media are “less important than the design decisions made within such a grounded framework” (32).

• The research tells us that no medium is any better than another in enhancing learning; “gross comparisons of [blended vs. conventional] instruction” won’t be very useful for us to assess learning gains (32)… what is key is integrating medium and method for particular learning elements and goals “in a grounded instructional approach” (32). In this way, we can “avoid a ‘technology-driven’ design and the mistakes of the past associated with such models” (32).

Conclusion:

• “From a quality perspective, the ultimate potential of blended learning may be to make possible novel and productive instructional methods that may be difficult or impossible to implement in the absence of blending” (32); to do that, though, we need to have a better framework for understanding how blended learning takes place.