Needs of Blended Learning

Since 1998, four universities in China have been engaged in network education experiments under the approval of Ministry of Education (МОЕ). In expanding these efforts, at the end of 2003, sixty-four additional universities established their

Designing Blended teaming Focused on Knowledge Category and Learning Activities 297

own special School of Network Education (SNE). An SNE mainly uses e-learning instead of delivering instruction via correspondence or broadcasting (Huang, Zhang, & Dong, 2003). The sixty-eight SNEs have approximately 2 million registered students and 13, 540 teachers distributed in about 2, 790 learning cen­ters. Interestingly, many SNEs once recruited full-time students and issued the same diplomas as their counterparts in ordinary universities. This situation re­sulted in censure from the МОЕ. Thus, according to official views, e-learning can­not be used as a substitute for classroom teaching. As a result, the SNEs are now limited to continuing and adult education.

Actually, there are very few instructional institutes that use only e-learning for instruction. Although some schools claim that they use e-learning as their main teaching method, most university learning centers undertake many methods in traditional instruction, such as the use of tutorships. Moreover, many other in­structional institutions within China offer e-learning in combination with tradi­tional distance education. So an enormous framework of blended learning has been set up in various certificate education and in-service training programs in China.

In traditional universities and colleges, many external factors help people realize the value of blended learning, thereby facilitating its effectiveness and wide use in teaching practices. First, university and college enrollments in China have jumped quickly: the number of students increased at a rate of over 20 per­cent annually between 1999 and 2002. In 2000, college and universities enroll­ments increased by one-third or more (see Table 21.1). These sharp increases put a strain on educational resources and highlighted the dearth of classrooms and experienced teachers. These resource constraints forced many universities and col­leges to expand beyond traditional classroom instructional methods. Second, due to the SARS epidemic in China, especially in Beijing in the first half of 2003, per­sonal movement and communication were badly interrupted; even normal face-to-face communication was considered dangerous. Therefore, when normal classroom instruction was halted, the idea of e-learning became popular since it could achieve similar objectives without face-to-face communication. During the SARS epidemic, over one-third of the students of Beijing Normal University (BNU) left Beijing; the percentage was higher at other universities. During this period, most universities tried to tutor their students through correspondence and e-learning.

As a result of these events and trends, the introduction of the concept and method of blended learning was a natural start for the application of e-learning in regular university instruction. Not only do more people understand the value of blended learning in university environments, but they also now understand that it offers a way to continue instructional activities when emergencies or disasters interfere with reg­ular instruction. Therefore, we expect that blended learning will continue to develop

298 The Handbook of Blended Learning

TABLE 21.1. NUMBER OF COLLEGE STUDENTS IN CHINA, 1998-2003.

in universities and colleges in China over the next few years. But one problem is that the institutions and staff involved in network education as well as traditional uni­versities lack the appropriate knowledge for developing correspondence methods of instruction and also the organization to take full advantage of blended learning. Four factors are important to the quality of education when using blended learning meth­ods: (1) the curriculum, (2) organization of learning activities, (3) learning support, and (4) instructional evaluation (Huang, Zhang, & Dong, 2003). How to deal effec­tively with those four issues is one of this chapter's focuses.

There are various ways of delivering instruction, from traditional classroom instruction to the complete implementation of e-learning. And there are many different forms of blended learning, most of which combine e-learning and reg­ular classroom learning. There is tremendous diversity in the instructional orga­nization and implementation of blended learning, which makes its design extremely difficult. Clearly, blended learning cannot be regarded simply as a type of technology-intensive activity that replaces the functions of classroom instruc­tion. Instead, those effectively incorporating blended learning must think about how it might enhance, extend, or transform the classroom learning experience, not simply replace it.

Challenges Faced in Implementing Blended Learning

This section addresses three challenges to implementing blended learning: designing the curriculum, designing and using online resources, and changing the strategies students use to learn.

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How to Design the Curriculum of Blended Learning

Blended learning adjusts to the essential learning methods and overall learning environment, but teachers lack the necessary theoretical preparation and experi­mental experience to take full advantage of these changes. In fact, the main chal­lenge in blended learning is that most instructors in higher education do not know enough about effective instructional activities based on blended learning. In China, for example, instructional activities in a traditional university are not well suited to students who prefer self-paced and self-regulated learning.

The urgent issue of carrying out blended learning is to put forward a series of curriculum design methods and ideas concerning blended learning that teach­ers can easily use. The module promoted in this chapter is intended to help teachers design blended learning.

How to Design and Use Online Resources

The styles and organizing methods of learning resources in blended learning, the sec­ond factor important to the quality of blended learning, involve many types of media and instructional designs unlike the resources of e-learning, which are more inde­pendent and stable. Blended learning resources need to be integrated with learning activities (especially in normal classrooms) and embedded into online curriculum re­sources. Therefore, the flexibility of blended learning not only provides more choices for knowledge delivery and skill development, but it simultaneously makes resource development more difficult. The design of blended learning resources should be con­sidered within the overall design of the curriculum in order to adjust to the vast new resources and activities of e-learning and classroom learning.

Changes in Student Learning Strategies

The third challenge of quality blended learning relates to getting students to adopt or use learning strategies that are different from what they are used to in the tra­ditional didactic, lecture-based classroom. College students in China have been receiving classroom instruction training using typical drill-and-practice models, forcing them to overrely on the requirements and demands of teachers (Robinson, 1999). Using the Learning and Study Skills Inventory (LASSI) (Weinstein & Palmer, 2002), we surveyed students' learning strategies at BNU. As in other uni­versities, the level of students' learning and study strategies was not high. In fact, American student scores exceeded those obtained by Chinese students, especially on motivation and attitudes (Huang & Zhou, 2003). These findings begin to explain why, in technology-rich environments, Chinese students are often slow to take advantage of Web-based learning methods and often fail to develop the learning skills that match this instructional approach (Zhou & Zhang, 2001).

The Handbook of Blended Learning

Moreover, blended learning requires that students change learning environ­ments frequently, which may cause confusion regarding the learning objectives and make students unable to select and use proper cognitive activities. Such con­fusion will eventually make it difficult for students to form a stable and effective learning approach or strategy. In regular instructional situations, students' learn­ing activities can be adjusted with the help of their teachers' external control and advice. But in blended learning, there is more reliance on student metacognition and self-directed learning, exactly the type of skill base that is often lacking among most Chinese students (Huang & Zhou, 2003). Hence, teachers and instructional designers must consider how to promote students' self-regulated learning capa­bility in the process of instructional design.

In blended learning, the representation, delivery, and transaction of knowl­edge are altered somewhat, so it is important to consider the theoretical frame­work and instructional implementation of blended learning in universities and colleges. Many of the problems that Chinese universities encounter with blended learning likely exist in other parts of the world. In addition, these problems are closely related to one another.

Designing Blended Learning

In China, any new educational delivery approach or method needs to be easy to follow for instructors and not be too different from their usual way of doing things. This is especially true when implementing blended learning since it is still new to our teaching staff and students. The three key challenges can also cause stu­dents to get confused or lost. In the next section, we put forward instructional de­sign procedures suitable to the requirements of blended learning.

From the perspective of pedagogy, teaching and learning in a blended learn­ing environment can be highly unstable and fluctuating. Consequently, the orga­nization and instructional methods of each curriculum program, course, or module are different. Indeed, blended learning does not yet have a specific instructional design plan or framework that can be used for all curricula.

Theoretical Considerations for Design

Many well-known models of instructional design usually correspond to classroom instructional settings, which fail to meet the requirements of blended learning. We regard blended learning as the integration of e-learning and classroom learning. As a result, there is a pressing need to consider many instructional design ques­tions and issues, such as those related to time distribution, the design of online

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as well as classroom activities, the relationship between resources and different learning modes, and the balance point of e-learning and classroom learning. Clearly, with all these factors to consider, as well as the recent emergence of this approach, blended learning needs a theoretical framework or model to support it.

In his instructional design approach, The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction, Gagne (1999) promotes the idea of " providing different instruction for different learning outcomes" (p. 302). In effect, there should be a close rela­tionship between learners' internal mental processes and external instructional activities. Combining this idea with Anderson's idea of knowledge categories, Chinese scholars Shao and Pi and others put forward the idea of " knowledge category and objective-oriented instruction" and set up the " instructional process module of pan-knowledge" (Pi, 1998), which provides a sound basis for designing instructional activities and events suitable for e-learning and classroom learn­ing. They argue that a teacher should design different learning and teaching activities for different types of knowledge and set out practical methods to design learning and teaching activities.

In order to confirm the relation between learning activities and types of knowledge, we use Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives as revised by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001). Using this taxonomy, we can determine what type of delivery method is suitable to the content: online or classroom learning. The technique should be employed according to one's knowledge of the advantages as well as the disadvantages of e-learning and ordinary classroom learning. We believe that attempts to list such activities and methods will be highly similar to the second-generation instructional design (ID2) proposed by Merrill and his colleagues (Merrill, Li, & Jones, 1990). According to ID2, learning results from a given organized and elaborated cognitive structure, and different learning outcomes require different types of mental models. However, the learner's con­struction of a mental model is facilitated by instruction that explicitly organizes and elaborates the knowledge being taught during the instruction. The difference is that Merrill and his colleagues' instructional design environment was based on multimedia environments, whereas we are concerned with network environments.

As a knowledge construction process with learner intention and self-consciousness, learning activities need the support of reflection and self-regulated learning (Jonassen & Land, 2000). Blended learning requires that students have the consciousness and capability for self-regulated learning. As Zimmerman (2002) points out, the basic components of self-regulated learning are planning, moni­toring, and reflection. The learning activities listed in Table 21.2 are in accordance with traits of self-regulated learning and embedded in various Web-based activi­ties. Integrating the metacognitive knowledge with the other types of knowledge will help foster the successful implementation of blended learning.

The Handbook of Blended Learning

TABLE 21.2. BIDIMENSIONAL TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITY DESIGN.