Faculty Insights

Case #1: Organizing Learning

The first case is from an instructor in the Digital Cultures & Technology program, in a newly formed School of New & Continuing Studies. This instructor wanted to revise an existing blended course to be offered in the upcoming term. He primarily used the Flow Planner, citing the four stages (Set the Stage, Explore, Dig Deeper, Wrap Up) as particularly helpful for sequencing online and face-to-face lessons each week. This instructor noted that the tool helped him understand why he would incorporate new learning activities and instructional technologies into his course design. “Ultimately, I can feel assured that I am not having my students do some activity simply because it’s ‘fun’ or because it’s ‘flashy.’ Rather, I am choosing activities, and by consequence, particular tools and technologies, with purpose.” The instructor stated that the tool also helped him analyze the existing activities that were already in his course. He was able to eliminate recurring activities when they didn’t have a clear purpose. He found himself asking, “Is this [quiz] supposed to help set context for students? Or, do I want them to apply their knowledge by making something?”

Case #2: Managing Workload

This scaffolded approach to discovering new activities and technologies in the Blended Flow Toolkit can have unintended consequences. A professor from the College of Education, Department of Counseling and School Psychology, used the Flow Planner to design 30–40 minute online “mini classes” while he was teaching his blended course. As with our previous case, the organization of his online classes improved: “When I began using the flow plan template, several students immediately remarked that they liked the organization for the mini courses and found the progression to be reasonable and less confusing than my previous pages.” However, perhaps with the excitement of all the new ideas presented in the toolkit, the professor found himself drowning in grading as the course proceeded. “It seems to me I try to cover too much sometimes rather than focus on a salient learning outcome and approach that learning outcome from different points of view.” In this case, the activity ideas distracted from designing toward learning outcomes.