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Essay On Blended Teaching

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Lecturers were allowed to choose a variety of commonly used blended teaching tools such as blogs or forum, online laboratory experiments, discussion groups, videos, and recorded videocast. They also had the liberty to pick the right mix of online and offline time, which may vary from 20% to 80% online. These flexibilities were given to the lecturers because they were teaching different disciplines as one blended teaching technique may be suitable for one discipline may not be so for another. However, lecturers had to report to the researchers which teaching technique(s) they used and the percent of the online and offline mix. This information is useful in the analysis.
The teaching methods used and the percent of the offline and online …show more content…

At least two months before the research commenced, the chief researcher conducted a one-day workshop for all the participating lecturers. They learned the importance of the Social Presence to build trust among the group members which will eventually lead to open communication. Various activities and suggestions were given to the lecturers to assist them to develop the Social Presence at the beginning of a semester. Also, lecturers learned how to organise a 12-week syllabus into major themes so as not to overburden the students with content and assignments. With each major theme, lecturers selected subject matters (topics), resources, learning activities and assessments needed. After that, these broad themes were organised into a teaching plan with online and offline activities. All lecturers were required to submit their teaching plans to the chief researcher for checking before it was implemented. In the workshop, lecturers also learned how to facilitate and carry out direct instruction in the classroom; two essential components of the Teaching Presence.
From Week 1 to Week 12, lecturers executed their teaching plans with all the learning activities. They were allowed to choose a variety of commonly used blended teaching tools such as blogs or forum, online laboratory experiments, discussion groups, videos, and recorded videocast. They also had the liberty to pick the right mix of online and offline time, which may vary from 20% to

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