Global perspectives on blending learning

Insight from WebCT and Our Customers in Higher Education

Barbara Ross, Karen Gage

lended learning has become a highly effective means of addressing diverse student needs, expanding access to flexible learning opportunities, and im­proving the quality of education. As an e-learning solutions provider, WebCT has insight into how thousands of colleges and universities around the world are leveraging learning technologies to achieve their unique goals and objectives. This chapter presents examples from WebCT's customer base of blended learning strategies for individual courses, degree programs, and enterprisewide deployment.

Blended Learning—In the Beginning

The founding of WebCT as a company was the result of a research project con­ducted by Murray Goldberg at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to eval­uate the impact of the Web on his students' learning experiences. In 1995, Goldberg was experimenting with what we now call blended learning by taking two sections of the same course and teaching one using a traditional face-to-face method and the other with the addition of online components and a reduction in the number of class meetings. Based on the outcomes of his research, Goldberg was convinced of the potential for blended learning to improve student learning outcomes; he founded WebCT to make it easier for instructors to incorporate online components in their teaching.

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The Handbook of Blended Learning

Today in higher education, blended learning has a broad range of meanings. To convey more specific flavors of blended learning, we often hear terms like Web enhanced, technology enhanced, hybrid, ox fully online. Blended learning encompasses a spectrum of learning modes that range from the traditional face-to-face classroom to fully online degree programs. Across this broad range, WebCT has observed three major flavors of blended learning among our customer base in higher education:

• Web-supplemented or technology-enhanced courses, which add supple­mentary online components to a traditional course without changing the amount of time that students spend face-to-face with instructors. These courses may leverage technology to enable more convenient and efficient handling of admin­istrative aspects of the course or add more instructional activities online.

• Hybrid or reduced face-time courses. Hybrid courses reduce the amount of face-to-face and in-class time and replace it with online learning activities. This can range from a course where labs are conducted online to a course where one or more days of class time are eliminated and replaced with online course work.

• Blended programs or degrees. A hybrid or blended degree program means that a student is not a " traditional student" or an " online student" but has the free­dom to choose from all types of courses to earn a degree: some are blended, some face-to-face, and some fully online.

Of the three blended learning flavors, the hybrid or reduced-face-time course is in many ways the most innovative path, the most difficult to achieve, and where the greatest reward may lie in the long run. Hybrid courses do not fit easily into the organizational structure of higher education administration, and they require faculty to rethink the ways they teach. However, we believe that offering hybrid courses is potentially the best way to improve student learning outcomes.

Expanding Access to Education Through Blended Learning

Blended learning, and e-learning in general, have gained popularity in higher ed­ucation because learning technologies help to address many of the key challenges that colleges and universities face. One of the most important challenges is ex­panding access to education. The demand for increased access to education comes from a number of different pressures: an increasing percentage of the population participating in higher education, workforce retraining for a dispersed population, population growth in a specific geography, and global demand and opportunities for specialized programs.

Global Perspectives on Blending Learning

As more students enter colleges and universities, there is a clear need to ex­pand access. However, this presents a challenge in that institutions may not have enough buildings and classrooms to support the increasing numbers of learners. Blended learning has become a strategic means of reaching students who other­wise would not have access to face-to-face educational opportunities in a mode or location that is convenient for them and accommodating expanding enrollment without making major facilities investments. Institutional infrastructure can be built virtually rather than physically, often at lower cost.

Typically when people think of widening access with e-learning, they think of distance learning. However, the online degree program is only one model by which access to education can be expanded. There are a number of other blended models (such as technology-supported courses, alternating face-to-face and online class meetings, videoconferencing to multiple class sites, or the use of Webcams), which, combined with course or curriculum redesign, can have a significant im­pact on a university's enrollment capacity. Institutions that fail to expand educa­tional options for students run the risk of lengthening time to graduation or reducing student retention, particularly as enrollments rise.

Meeting Students' Expectations of Technology in Education

Students who enter colleges and universities today embrace and welcome tech­nology as an expected part of their learning experience. They have grown up with technology and often have experienced it as an integrated part of their secondary education. As a result, colleges and universities face increased demand for pro­viding a high-quality, 24/7 learning environment. Blended learning has become a predominant model for achieving this goal, particularly to serve the needs of tra­ditional, full-time undergraduate students.

A study of more than twelve thousand students across Europe by the SEUSISS (Survey of European Universities Skills in ICT of Students and Staff) Project found that more than 62 percent of new students enter the university using information and communication technology (ICT) in their studies at least two to three times per week (SEUSISS Project, 2003). In the National Survey of Student Engagement's study of undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities in North America, 72 percent of respondents reported spending more than five hours per week online, with almost 39 percent spending more than five hours per week online doing academic work (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2003).

With the global demand for technology in education comes a need for organizational change: the old way of doing things will no longer work. Students want a consistent experience so that no matter what course they take, they receive the same quality experience. Many colleges and universities have

The Handbook of Blended Learning

responded to this need for consistency and quality of experience by standard­izing on a single e-learning system and integrating the e-learning system with other technologies on campus. With an institution-wide blended learning strat­egy, colleges and universities have been able to provide students, faculty, and staff with a seamless experience where technology is transparent to them.

Improving Quality with Blended Learning

At the end of the day, we want students to learn successfully. How can blended learning play a role in improving quality and educational outcomes, particularly in boosting student retention and graduation rates?

Serve Diverse Student Populations. Students arrive on campus or in classrooms

with disparate skills and ways of learning. Blended learning offers new ways to personalize the learning experience and engage students. With e-learning, in­structors are able to deliver remedial or advanced content to the right students at the right time based on their individual needs. Blended learning is attractive to more kinds of learners because it incorporates varied instructional modes and supports multiple means of expression, making it possible to appeal to different learning styles.

Reduce Time to Graduation. Today's students face more and more pressures from work and family obligations; the percentage of students working twenty hours per week or more in addition to being a full-time student continues to increase. Often institutions offer required courses at times that may be inconvenient for students, creating bottlenecks for students in completing their degree programs, especially in large-enrollment courses. Blended learning allows institutions to provide more scheduling options for enrolled students to complete their required courses. For example, by offering blended courses that require only one day per week on cam­pus rather than the traditional three, institutions can reduce potential schedul­ing conflicts that would preclude students from taking the required courses for graduation.

Gain Greater Insight into Student Progress. E-learning systems collect detailed data about student activity and learning behavior in the online environment. Th availability of these data presents two key opportunities to higher education to im­prove quality and enhance student outcomes. First, instructors can track students' learning activities to see which students are falling behind or not keeping up with their reading material and can intervene; this can help prevent at-risk stu­dents from failing or dropping out. Second, institutions have the opportunity to

Global Perspectives on Blending Learning

assess the learning quality across the curriculum by aggregating learning activity data for analysis by assessment and institutional researchers. Once there is a crit­ical mass of learning activity taking place online, institutions will be able to ana­lyze outcomes and learning activity patterns to better determine what leads to student success and use those insights to improve the overall quality of the insti­tution's educational offerings.

The Blended Learning Spectrum: From a Single Course to a Degree Program

Blended learning takes place at many levels—from individual courses, to degree programs, to institution-wide approaches. This section presents examples from WebCT's customer base of approaches to delivering three main categories of blended learning: technology enhanced, hybrid or reduced seat-time, and blended degree programs.

Web-Supplemented or Technology-Enhanced Courses

Web-supplemented or technology-enhanced courses add supplementary on­line components to a traditional course without changing the amount of time that students spend face-to-face with instructors. Often technology-enhanced courses can help transform communication and participation dynamics. While it may be difficult to get students to raise their hands and participate in a face-to-face classroom, students are often more willing to participate in discus­sions online. Examples of technology-enhanced courses are those that add online communication and collaboration tools; use online labs, simulations, or streaming media; incorporate additional online resources and study tools for students; and support students who are collaborating virtually on projects and submitting or presenting them online. A technology-enhanced course may also serve to simplify administration by enabling faculty to more efficiently manage enrollment, grades, or other administrative aspects of their courses in the e-learning system.

Virginia Michelich, a professor of biology at Georgia Perimeter College, has infused streaming media content into her online courses and traditional undergraduate biology courses with the goal of increasing student compre­hension and success. She found that many processes that her students studied in biology lab took too much time for one lab period yet could not wait until the following week's lab for completion. Streaming media technology helped solve this problem.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

Using a video microscope, Michelich created a video file to show egg fertil­ization and development in sea urchins, thereby allowing her students to view the entire process, accompanied by her audio explanation, in just twenty-three min­utes. As Michelich observed, " Online students have remarked that the streaming media files captured from the classroom help them to understand the more diffi­cult concepts that they encounter in this course.... Further, I have noticed a significant increase in class participation since these streaming media files have been available for the students. They have been less concerned about taking copious notes and more focused on understanding the concepts during class because the class material will exist online for review" (WebCT, 2002a).

rid or Reduced Face-Time Courses

Hybrid courses reduce the amount of face-to-face in-class time and replace that time with online learning activities. This can range from a course where labs arc conducted entirely online to a course where one or more days of class time are eliminated and replaced with online course work. One of the key elements in designing effective hybrid courses is that educators must choose the most effective mode (online asynchronous, online synchronous, or face-to-face) for specific learning activities rather than assuming that a single mode will work for all types of learning activities across a course.

Southern Maine Technical College has an effective, replicable approach to hybrid course design. In the light of the success that Julia Child had in teaching the fine art of cooking using television, Lance Crocker, department chair of the Hotel, Motel, Restaurant Program at Southern Maine Technical College, took a keen interest in translating the success of this approach to the Web. He began by asking himself, " How can I adapt Internet technology to accomplish my goal» in such hands-on industries as food and beverage and lodging management? "

Crocker found that all of his courses naturally broke down into two categoric» conceptual information (such as the guest cycle, accounting practices, night audi procedures, and case studies) and functional skill (such as guest services, customer service skills, and telephone skills). While the functional skills necessitated a hands-on internship, Crocker's goal was to replace his face-to-face lectures with a _L; n> prehensive online course in WebCT as a new method of exposing students to the conceptual subject matter.

Crocker found that the new online format encouraged students to becom-more active learners and consequently facilitated the comprehension and reten­tion of conceptual information. Crocker received feedback from restaurant own­ers and managers asking " what he had done to these students" because they knew more about the industry than students ever had in the past. Since students were

Global Perspectives on Blending Learning

already well versed in the vocabulary and key concepts of the hospitality indus­try, owners and managers could spend more time with hands-on training and less time explaining concepts.

The success of Crocker's courses has generated interest throughout the Maine Technical College System (MTCS), consisting of seven colleges located across the state. " The simple exercise of applying hospitality standards to offsite internships and combining that hands-on experience with the online conceptual learning has expanded horizons in the whole Maine Technical College System, " states Crocker. The MTCS has begun to use this hybrid course approach across a variety of other hands-on disciplines, including business, dietetic technology, behavioral health, culinary arts, fire science technology, and pharmacology (WebCT, 2002b).

Blended Degree Programs

A hybrid or blended degree program means that a student is not a " traditional student" or an " online student" but has the freedom to choose from all types of courses to earn a degree: some blended, some face-to-face, and some fully online.

Villanova University has provided undergraduate, graduate, and workforce students with a consistent, flexible learning experience through a combination of WebCT and other technologies. Its College of Engineering has developed strategies to accommodate both on-campus and distance learners in a single course using a combination of integrated technology tools that include WebCT and videoconferencing technologies.

In 2001, Villanova began to use videoconferencing technology to deliver distance learning courses for graduate courses. Although this approach helped to expand access to students who were unable to come to campus, a level of interactivity was still missing. Students could watch the lecture but did not have the ability to interact with their instructor or fellow students in real time. In 2002, Villanova began using WebCT to enhance the communication among students and faculty. WebCT has since become the foundation and gateway for all Col­lege of Engineering graduate distance education courses, whether they are Web enhanced or delivered entirely online. It is also used by many traditional in-class courses.

The College of Engineering extended this successful approach to an exist­ing degree program: it introduced a master of science in water resources and environmental engineering degree program that offers real-time distance learn­ing for graduate-level courses. Because the courses are held in conjunction with classes at the university, distance students can participate in class discussions with on-campus students, and the lecture is delivered live over the Internet and made available for review.

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162 The Handbook of Blended Learning

Having on-campus students and distance learners in the same WebCT courses makes it possible for traditional and distance students to communicate and col­laborate with one another and for all students to have the same quality experience, whether they are on campus, at home, or at work.

Institutional Strategies for Blended Learning

Since its introduction in the 1990s, e-learning has been growing rapidly at post-secondary institutions around the world. At leading colleges and universities, a majority of courses are blended, and nearly all students take at least one course with a technology-supported component. As e-learning enters its second decade, many institutions find themselves at a critical juncture. With course management system use continuing to expand, and course, program, and institution-level activities dependent on technology for success, many institutions have outgrown their current approach to e-learning.

For most institutions, linear expansion of blended learning—adding a pro­gram, a person, or a larger server to an existing model—will not scale to meet today's needs and tomorrow's demands. Moving blended learning to an enterprise level requires institutions to rethink the way they are currently supporting tech­nology-enhanced instruction. Adopting an enterprise approach to blended learn­ing results in systems and processes that are powerful, reliable, and flexible enough to support all stakeholders and provide benefits across the institution.

The transition from having many different learning systems toward a total en­terprise or " all-of-university" approach has become a trend at higher education institutions around the world. Institutions generally consider adopting an enter­prise approach to blended learning to respond to the fact that online learning a affecting every instructor and every student across the college or university. Hav­ing worked with many diverse institutions as they have moved toward an enter­prise approach, WebCT has identified three critical components in successfulh deploying blended learning at the enterprise level:

• Institution-wide strategy and participation. First, it is important to se­cure a commitment from senior administrators to use blended learning as a means of achieving the university's strategic goals. However, commitment from senior administrators alone is not enough. Institutions also need to expand the circle of influence to achieve much greater cross-functional participation. Balancing the autonomy and collaboration between diverse academic and administrative constituents is critical in successfully implementing an enter-prisewide e-learning strategy.

Global Perspectives on Blending Learning

• Mission-critical service level. Student and faculty demands and expecta­tions of technology heighten and change as technology becomes an increasingly vital part of their daily activities. In a model where it is expected that every stu­dent and every instructor will be served by e-learning technology, the standards for reliability, uptime, and user support will skyrocket. Institutions must seriously evaluate what level of service is required at their institution and design their tech­nology solutions and processes in order to meet these higher standards.

• Proactive measurement of learning effectiveness. With increasing amounts of e-learning activity come detailed quantitative data about student activity dur­ing the learning process. Enterprise approaches capitalize on this new asset by developing institutional processes for a regular cycle of measurement, analysis, and change that are designed to continuously improve educational quality.

An Enterprise Approach to Blended Learning

Following are two examples from WebCT's customer base of institutions that have successfully taken an enterprise approach to blended learning.

Deakin University's Institution-Wide E-Learning Strategy. Deakin University in Australia has become known for the distinctiveness of its courses and the large number of programs offered to students through distance learning and on-campus education. Deakin aims to be Australia's most progressive university: interna­tionally recognized for the relevance, innovation, and responsiveness of its teach­ing and learning, research, partnerships, and international activities. Deakin University is a veteran in the e-learning space and has been able to leverage its expertise in online learning to fuel the success of both its distance education and traditional learning programs.

In conducting a student survey about learning management systems, Deakin found that students wanted consistency. For example, they wanted a sin­gle e-learning system that they would have access to no matter which course they took at Deakin. A key aim at Deakin is to ensure that regardless of whether students choose to study online or on campus, all students receive the same high-quality learning experience.

After an extensive evaluation process, Deakin selected WebCT Vista as its central academic enterprise system to support e-learning across the university The selection of WebCT Vista (a learning management system designed for enter-prisewide deployment) was an extremely collaborative process that involved more than twelve hundred students and four hundred faculty. Gaining support from constituents across the university was a critical component in formulating and implementing an enterprise approach to e-learning.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

Online learning has become a key component in Deakin University's strate­gic and operational plans. The university also made substantial organizational changes to support its online teaching and learning objectives, including the establishment of Learning Services, a central academic support unit focused on " ensuring that the online learning environment is a seamless mix of all services and resources required by students for a successful education" (McKnight, 2003, p. 13).

City University, London: Extending Blended Learning Across the Enterprise.

Based in the heart of London, City University serves nearly 11, 500 students from 153 countries. Its graduate employment record is one of the best in the coun­try, and the university has close contacts with the leading professional institutions and with business and industry. One of the university's chief aims with e-learning is to develop flexible online degree programs that allow students who otherwise would not be able to participate in the learning process to earn degrees on a flexi­ble schedule.

City University has experienced rapid growth in blended learning. The uni­versity selected WebCT Vista as its academic enterprise system in the summer of 2003, and in just one year has over 150 course modules being taught online within WebCT through a mixture of blended and fully online learning. Today. 2, 500 students and 250 staff regularly use the system.

City University implemented WebCT Vista as the central e-learning envi­ronment and has integrated its e-learning system with other mission-critical technologies and processes, taking a holistic approach to blended learning. Man­agement of WebCT Vista is undertaken by the E-Learning Unit, which sits in the Information Services Portfolio as part of Library Information Services, to ensure collaboration among different service departments and systems. The university has leveraged WebCT Vista as a new mode of delivery to reach out to groups of nontraditional learners and support existing students. With the availability of new online degree programs, City University has attracted students from new markets around the world. This has contributed to an overall increase in enrollment at the university.

The university also has a number of partner institutions and has used WebCT Vista to facilitate closer collaboration, particularly in the field of health care and nursing. One course in renal nursing uses a solution-focused approach to online learning where students are provided with real-life scenarios that require them to apply a variety of skills to realistic situations. WebCT Vista encourages students from different backgrounds to learn from each other and to share expertise as pan of a collaborative, flexible learning experience.

Global Perspectives on Blending Learning 165

Multi-Institutional Collaborations

Taking an enterprisewide approach to blended learning holds particular value for educational systems and consortia. The advent of the academic enterprise system has made it possible for multiple institutions to reap the benefits of a central e-learning system, while allowing each entity to operate autonomously and retain local control of the system. When forming a blended learning strategy across mul­tiple institutions, the advantages of a centralized implementation increase tenfold. Each of the members can:

• Expand access and educational opportunities for learners, making it possible for students at different schools, in different states, or in different parts of the world to access flexible, high-quality learning opportunities.

• Share hardware, IT, training, and human resources, helping to eliminate redundancies and optimize existing investments.

• Reduce duplication of programs and courses across multiple institutions.

• Improve retention rates and student outcomes systemwide.

Here are two examples of WebCT's customers that have taken a multi-institutional, collaborative approach to blended learning.

University System of Georgia: Blended Learning Across Thirty-Four Institutions. In April 2002, the University System of Georgia (USG) signed a comprehensive, statewide license to make WebCT Vista available to all thirty-four institutions under the board of regents. The goals of its statewide e-learning strategy and implementation include:

• Expanding systemwide access and program offerings for every student in the state regardless of their location

• Building a resource network for faculty to share content, courses, curriculum, and best practices across the network

• Building a model to track and monitor student performance across the network to provide personalized learning experiences and develop improved acade­mic programs

One example of the impact of USG's collaborative, enterprise approach to blended learning is the establishment of the eCore program. eCore consists of specific required courses that are delivered online, ultimately making it possible for nontraditional students to pursue the first two years of a university system un­dergraduate degree anytime and anywhere. USG has taken initial steps toward

The Handbook of Blended Learninc

evaluating the quality of the eCore curriculum by analyzing patterns of studen: activity based on data gathered from discussion postings and correlating those data with quality measurements and student outcomes.

The USG has also been able to efficiently share the high-quality course con­tent developed for eCore courses with faculty across the member institutions of the Georgia Board of Regents. In February 2003, Advanced Learning Tech­nologies (ALT), a unit within the board of regents, began a pilot project to de­construct the eCore courses and reassemble them into learning objects (smalla more modular components that can be used for instruction). Marie Lasseter. project coordinator for instructional development of the board of regents of the University System of Georgia, comments:

Today, through our Faculty VIEW portal, faculty across the System who use WebCT Vista have a variety of options for developing new online courses or supplementing face-to-face courses. When they attempt to reuse content, they're not locked into a course/unit/lesson format. Faculty have the freedom to develop their courses as they like without having to start from scratch, and they can also participate in online discussions with other educators to share 1 practices in the use of online content. We believe our learning objects project will produce better courses more quickly and efficiently, especially as the learn­ing object exchange model scales to encompass higher education on national and global scales [Vallone, 2004].

Hawaii Department of Education: Collaborating to Expand Access to Education. Hawaii's Department of Education (DoE) is one of WebCT's K-1 1 customers that has implemented a collaborative, multischool approach to online learning. Hawaii's DoE launched E-School, a supplementary virtual learning pn -gram delivered through WebCT that typically enrolls three hundred to four hun­dred students per semester in fully accredited Web-based courses. Students fror: secondary schools across the Hawaiian islands can access both required course--and electives through E-School's Web-based curriculum, enabling the DoE to de­liver to students in rural schools the same courses and resources available in urbar. Honolulu.

From its inception in 1996, E-School expanded from ninety-six students twelve schools to five hundred students in forty-five schools in 2002—2003. No­tably, 47 percent of participating students and 62 percent of participating school-come from the smaller island schools and communities outside the city of Honolulu. In this regard, virtual learning has achieved success in meeting the academic equity and access aspirations of the Hawaiian DoE officials (Newman. Stein, & Trask 2003).

Global Perspectives on Blending Learning

When Blended Learning Becomes " Learning"

Having worked with institutions around the world in planning and implementing their e-learning strategies over time, WebCT has witnessed the evolution of blended learning from an experimental technology to a mission-critical learning solution. As blended learning has become more prevalent, educators have dis­covered new ways to foster communication with and among students, gain insight into students' learning activities, appeal to diverse learning styles, and ultimately improve learning outcomes. At the enterprise level, blended learning has made it possible for colleges and universities to achieve key institutional goals, such as expanding access to educational opportunities, serving new markets, and im­proving student satisfaction and retention.

Institutions have made tremendous strides to strategically leverage blended learning as a means of achieving their core mission and goals, and that movement will continue. In the long run, almost all courses offered in higher education will be blended. Given today's growth trends in the use of course management sys­tems, it is almost a certainty that blended learning will become the new traditional model of course delivery in ten years. Moving forward, what will differentiate institutions from one another will not be whether they have blended learning, but rather how they do the blending and where they fall on the blended learning spectrum.

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education to online teaching and learning. Paper presented at the Fourth Annual WebCT Asia

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overview. Bloomington: Center for Postsecondary Research, Policy and Planning, Indiana

University. Newman, A., Stein, M., & Trask, E. (2003, September). What can virtual learning do for your

school? Boston: Eduventures. Surveys of European Universities Skills in Information and Communication Technology for

Staff and Students. (2003, April). SUESISS Project final report. Edinburgh: Department of

Higher and Further Education, University of Edinburgh. Vallone, C. (2004, July). Online learning's impact on global education. Presentation at the Sixth

Annual WebCT User Conference, Orlando, FL. WebCT. (2002a, February). Bringing content to life: Multimedia in WebCT. WebCT

Newsletter. WebCT. (2002b, July). Cooking with WebCT—An interesting mix of conceptual and

functional learning. WebCT Newsletter.

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