from Jan Schwartz
I was reading a manual that George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger put together called Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning. As an aside, I took a massive open online course (MOOC) in Connectivism and Connected Knowledge with Siemens and Stephen Downes, along with 2000 other people in fall 2008. Jennifer Mackness wrote a paper about the experience, The Ideals and Reality of Participating in a MOOC. As you can see from the presentation of this paper Siemens is definitely a futuristic thinker in education.
The manual has a lot of really good information in it, but what I want to share are some definitions that they present– because distance education has become a catchall word for any education that doesn’t happen in the classroom and is technology based. Learning with technology can be viewed in three broad categories, and in order to have a conversation, it’s helpful to have everyone on the same page. The categories are augmented education, hybrid, or blended, education and online education. There are of course other definitions out there but I think looking at learning with technology on a continuum is helpful, rather than divvying it all up according to the percentage of work done with technology.
Here are Siemens and Tittenberger’s definitions:
1. Augmented – the use of technology to extend a physical classroom. This may be as simple as incorporating web quests into student work, or the use of an online discussion forum. In a traditional university, the learners still meet regularly with faculty in classrooms. Traditional paper based courses could be augmented with online discussion forums or blogs.
2. Blended – technology partly replaces in-classroom learning. Part of the course is face-to-face and part is online. For example, the instructor may initiate a course with a series of classroom lectures, with the rest of the course held online. Resources such as video and podcasts could be added to existing materials.
3. Online – technology entirely replaces face-to-face classroom teaching or paper-based distance education. Fully online programs often employ a learning management system to assist designers and educators with managing student grades, interaction, and content delivery.
These categories work pretty well for me. How about you? Would you categorize differently?
Photo credit: mikebaird
Tags: augmented education, education, elearning, George Siemens, Hydrid education, MOOC, online learning, Stephen Downes
[...] and the other half traveled from as far away as the Phoenix area (+100 miles up the road), so a technology-augmented course seemed reasonable. Students also brought their computers to class so they could work as a [...]