Blended learning in higher education

PODCASTS AS A CASE STUDY
ANA OTTO
UNED/UEM

 Getting students engaged with learning,
focused on working smarter, and ready for
the future
 Deepening and enhancing the learning
process through:
 Active engagement
 Group participation/collaboration
 Frequent interaction
 Feedback

 Using communicative facilitating e-tools –
Podcasts- for:
- not only as a platform for effective listening
resources but also for
- PRACTICING AND REINFORCING ORAL SKILLS.
WHY?
To make the most of students‟ autonomy as
life-long learners

 CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning)
 AIMS OF THE PROJECT
 BLENDED LEARNING IN TERTIARY EDUCATION
 SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM AND ITS ROLE IN
BLENDED LEARNING
 DESCRIPTION OF CAMBRIDGE LMS
 THE PODCASTS
 OUTCOMES AND POSSIBLE LIMITATIONS
 CONCLUSIONS

as a means of:
 promoting and facilitating motivation among
learners;
 allowing open access to teaching/learning
materials that would be inaccessible
otherwise either on a physical format or on a
temporal basis;
 allowing access to a range of materials
organized around a method and a program;
 assisting and enhancing cognitive diversity so
as to meet different learning styles.

 to evaluate the fundamental role of Web 2.0
social software in the Touchstone Pilot Program;
 to emphasize the importance of community
formation when involved in online learning;
 to state that the constructivist principle of
collaboration is at the basis of all learning
processes;
 To demonstrate that community building is
recognizable and visible through participants‟
discourse behaviors;
 To highlight the role of the teacher as an e-
educator or e-facilitator.

 the design of a learning environment from the
viewpoint of how the delivery of learning
materials to the students is best accomplished
by a variety of means available, be they
technological or non-technological in nature. By
choosing the appropriate vehicle for the student
to access the learning content, a number of
different strategies are used to provide hybrid
learning environments. Thus, blended Learning is
closely related to Distributed Learning and
Flexible Learning, both key concepts in higher
education in order to promote student-centered
form of teaching and learning

Important elements of blended learning
platforms allowing teachers to include and
create learning content and provide this to
our students. With the help of LMS classroom
teaching can be supported and enhanced in
modern language learning

Bologna and EEES directions on providing
non-traditional students access to higher
education (family responsibilities, jobs, etc.)
 Reduced face-to-face hours help them
manage time more efficiently
 online component of a blended course
enables students to access the materials any
time of the day and review the contents as
needed (flexibility to the learning process)

 Integrate multiple media;
 Facilitate and/or negotiate students‟ periodic
outcomes;
 Provide a channel for feedback and assessment;
 Encourage discussion, consultation and sharing;
 Allow access to a wide range of information;
 Be flexible in when and where learning occurs;
 Question whether the activities required in the
task can be done “without· Information
Technologies (IT). (Towndrow and Vallance,
2004)

CALL as an Integrative discipline emphasizing:
- task-based learning
- content-based learning
- project- based activities/scenarios as to
integrate learners in authentic social contexts
and to promote real communication among
individuals.

 Student as creator of learning who is
responsible of his/her own learning in active
ways
 Teacher as a mediator/facilitator of laguage
(not the sole source of language input)
 IT tools as a facilitator to the various uses of
language

Individuals create meaning through
social interaction resulting in
knowledge being socially and
culturally constructed.

One of the most important ways by which
learners acquire language with the help of
tech aids
- learners working together to achieve a
common goal, usually the completion of a
task as in real-life situations
- it encourages both social and thinking skills
and mirrors the way in which learners often
need to work outside the classroom

 Learn about their own learning process, and
consequently, they learn better;
 Increase their awareness about the target
language and about themselves;
 Develop meta-communicative as well as
communicative skills;
 Confront the conflicts between individual
needs and group needs;
 Recognize that decision-making tasks are
genuine communicative activities;
 ABOVE ALL, USING LANGUAGE IN AUTHENTIC
WAYS

 Student‟s Book
 Touchstone online (which mirrors the
Student‟s Book)
 Online Student Workbook for extra practice
with the same learning outcomes per unit
and a lesson as in the Student‟s Book)
 Interactive Whiteboard Software
 USE OF CORPORA providing a model for
teaching in real-life contexts

 Training students in better speaking skills as
one of the biggest challenges in language
teaching
 Students not aware of their mistakes while
teachers constantly correcting same mistakes

Does not necessarily benefit from teacher
correction or students being constantly
exposed to input:

Viswanathan (2009) “any training proves
effective only when it provides authentic
input and creates an opportunity for the
trainer to make use of what is learnt”

only when learners become aware of their
mistakes they can possibly fix them and try
to “update” a new version of the corrected
form.
- productive skills- writing and speaking-
students need to confront their own mistakes
by listening/reading them if we want them
to become fully conscious of their limitations
and its possible solution.

the building of a language community as one
factors that can help students overcome
their reticence and initial fear when it comes
to speaking the foreign language.
Podcasts as one of the tools placed under the
category of communicative facilitating e-
tools, i.e. software that facilitates output
and promote interaction among students and
teachers.

 A useful application which allows you to record
your own voice when you feel ready to answer a
question or a homework activity set by the
teacher.

 Once students have recorded their answers they
can post them into the LMS system for both
students and teacher to see it.
 The teacher can listen to the students‟
recordings and offer them feedback about their
performance during the activity in terms of
fluency, accuracy if necessary and the
vocabulary they used.

 It can integrate video and audio in ways that are not possible in
traditional materials;
 It has more practice and hyperlinked support available on electronic
devices as well as it offers he possibility to use one‟s own mobile phone
or smart phone to record one‟s voice;
 It helps students speak, respond and react and even personalize the
language in ways that can be motivating to everyone;
 It creates animated presentations to support the Grammar Charts,
Conversation Strategies, Speaking Naturally and Vocabulary Notebooks as
well as it brings the „ In Conversation Corpus „ to life;
 It enables students to record their voices and compare with model
speakers;
 It has students do video role-play and creating interactive conversation
simulations;
 It has students interact and join collaborative projects as they need to
listen to their peers, and assess them in qualitative rather than
quantitative terms. However, we teachers tried to make them aware of
the effort it takes to record a Podcast episode and thus, the need to be
respectful and polite while evaluating their fellow students.

 Scaffolding

 Learner support

 Language recycling

 Language consolidation

 Enhancing student participation and
fostering both cognitive and social skills as it
addresses affective factors

 Despite the „Digital Divide‟, sometimes students had to be
given very clear orientation on how to register, create a
Podcast and/or upload dialogues using the Voice Tools.
 Students had to be motivated to respond to the process of
recording their audios and to perform without any
inhibition;
 Sometimes, students complained about Podcasts and other
online activities being too long for them to complete at
home;
 In asynchronous environments, it was sometimes hard to
maintain students‟ motivation so teacher contact proved
essential in order to prevent a lack of interest;
 Some teachers commented on the LMS being slow at times
which made it difficult to check students‟ Podcasts
episodes before attending face-to-face lessons.

 students participate more frequently with the use of Podcasts
when compared to the methods in traditional classrooms;
 It offers different combinations of software and materials to
account for different learning styles as appropriate to different
skills;
 it fosters both cognitive and social skills as well it addresses
affective factors and students‟ individual differences;
 It promotes active, collaborative construction of knowledge
instead of knowledge transfer from individual to individual;
 It engages students in contextualized authentic tasks as opposed
to abstract instruction;
 It creates scenarios appropriate for building hypotheses and
fostering critical and strategic thinking;
 For more feedback on the students‟ comments visit Revista
conecta2 UEM
http://conecta2.uem.es/numeros/15/articulos/excelencia#207

“Young people learn best when it‟s relevant to
them, when there‟s social connection tied to
it, and when they actually have a personal
interest.”
(Mimi Ito, cultural anthropologist University
of California Irvine)

Blended learning in higher education

Blended learning in higher education

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