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EdTech Publishing
In this course I was able to learn about the publication process, build a deeper respect for the peer review process and its importance, and push my comfort zone even further by creating a teaser video for a podcast. Seeing my ideas from my innovation plan come to life in the form of an article for publication has been surreal and a part of this program that I think I will cherish and appreciate the rest of my life. If you are curious about my innovation plan, explore the linked pages below.
Photo Credit: WIX free use stock photo
Blended Learning Starter Kit
In this season of learning about the publication process I was tasked with writing an article that I think would be valuable to the education community. Figuring out what I could write about was hard because while I am passionate about teaching I haven't begun conducting my own research or testing my teaching strategies in a qualitative or significantly measurable way.
What I do have is a strong passion, good sense of humor, and plenty of experience with trial and error when trying new things in the classroom. I thought about what advice I would give new educators and the best thing I could think of is a starter kit for implementing blended learning into their classrooms. I think the beauty of giving educators the tools to implement blended learning is really impactful because it gives you the freedom to implement and play with the educational tools before jumping straight into blended learning. You have the freedom to slowly dip your toes into blended learning in order to experience the benefits for yourself.
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Now, I'm not saying blended learning is a one size fits all, because it just isn't. It also isn't some miracle cure for the issues in our education system and it won't create a huge change in your students over night, but the benefits are huge and it's not just my personal experience, there is so much research to back this up. In fact, I was not a fan of blended learning until I was exposed to the research on it and then I played around with a few of the strategies and ideas I saw, which built my love for blended learning. I was a skeptic and now I'm writing an article about blended learning; crazy I know!
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The Research
I think it is only fair that you start this journey with me the same way I did, analyzing research. I will save you some time though and narrow down my hours of research into bite sized summary, but I do encourage you to read the full article when you have time because they are very interesting (plus you will probably find more important information that will help you on your journey as you personalize my ideas to make them yours and completely unique to you and your students).
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The first thing you must understand it that the transition from a traditional style to a blended learning style is not complicated and reinventing the wheel is completely unnecessary. In fact there is great news for us overwhelmed teachers, Dalsgaard and Godsk (2007), found that the first component simply required the educator to make the regularly utilized slides available online and then adding a variety of supplemental information that students could learn and review at their own pace. By making the materials more accessible over a longer period of time students are able to ponder the information, process it, and connect the information to their daily lives some way, which is obviously going to be more meaningful learning than just trying to keep up with the instructor while taking notes over the slides. Second, students were encouraged to continually access and utilize the information throughout the course as students were required to complete their coursework to better understand and remember the information (Dalsgaard and Godsk, 2007). This allows the resource of our slides to be fully utilized and appreciated by students. I always found it funny that we expect students to take notes, but they struggle to pick out important information by themselves in a traditional lesson, but note taking improves significantly in my class if I give them a chance to look over the slides first. Another benefit to allowing students to have access to the lesson materials is that the questions they ask me are deeper and more rigorous, often spurring on important debates and discussions of the topics I am teaching. Finally, this study found that effective transition relied on freeing up the teacher to create discussion opportunities on individual or small-group levels to provide quality guidance and help with the student’s specific learning needs as they complete their work and projects (Dalsgaard and Godsk, 2007). If you're anything like me you are probably thinking that maybe blended learning is doable and not just an admin. or educational thought leader pipe dream. It really is that easy to create a strong basis for blended learning in your classroom and it takes very little extra effort. This is a great place to start if you're still unsure of blended learning or you just don't want to fully commit at this time.
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When you take your blended learning lessons a step further and add student choice to the mix the benefits of blended learning grow even stronger than just freeing up your time for more meaningful student interactions, at this point you are able to see a change in students' effort in your class and their engagement resulting in better work quality from students at all academic levels (Pinchot and Paullet, 2021), (Hanewicz et al, 2017, p 283), and (Demink-Carthew and Netcoh, 2019). Over and over you can see the affect that student choice has on increasing the quality of work from students, which when you think about this it's a really obvious result. People that are actually interested in what they are learning about, those that can connect it to something they are passionate about or a favorite hobby are so much more likely to get completely engrossed in the task or assignment that the work and problem solving becomes fun. I know that I experienced this result as I started giving my students more freedom through blended learning and choice boards. I recommend using at least a few of my resources I describe in my starter pack article because you will be able to experience this joy of learning in your own class with very little commitment to the blended learning approach. Anything you do to make learning more interesting, impactful, and meaningful to students is going to help them in the long run, so fearing "failure" here is not something you need to worry about. I promise you as long as your heart is in the right place students will learn when they are having fun, being heard, and feeling supported; they will always surprise you with what valuable lessons they can learn even when you thought it was a total failure of a lesson (a lesson I learned through lots of trial and error as an educator).
Writing the Article
When writing my article, it looked vastly different in the planning stage than it did when I finished my rough draft and then even m ore drastically different after the peer review process. As you can see in my publication outline, I had a lot of ideas that I thought I may cover in my article. As I wrote, I noticed that I didn't want a formal information and research dense article, because I wanted to keep blended learning simple. The core of blended learning is simple so that it can be adaptable, so an article introducing the topic and getting educators started in the big wide world of blended learning should be simple as well. Technology is already scary to most people, overcomplicating this teaching method will only make the idea more overwhelming and I think we need to start steering education to blended learning and hybrid formats. I believe that is the key to a successful education system in the future and I want to influence as many educators as I can.
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In my rough draft, I was trying to do too much in my article. In my quest to win the masses over to blende learning I just missed the mark on everything I was trying to do. I knew that I wanted to inspire change, but after all the research and time I put in I struggled to make that information bite sized and simple, while also describing describing blended learning and the tools that make it successful in my opinion with clarity in a way that readers could understand.
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After the peer review process I had an epiphany and I changed my focus for the article. Instead of doing a quick how to on blended learning I am going to lay out a starter pack for blended learning. In this approach I am able to share my favorite tech tools that can be implemented at any stage of your blended learning journey and as you get more comfortable you can add more and more elements until you have built up a library of blended learning materials that you can use to make the learning student centered so that you are free to actually build relationships with your students and guide them and have one-on-one conversations more often. I feel confident that my starter kit is helpful to every educator now, regardless of how ready they feel to entirely adopt the blended learning approach. While my article is still in consideration for publication and I am unable to share that with you, take a look at my sneak peek for my collaboration project and read about my peer review experience.
Resources
Dalsgaard, C., & Godsk, M. (2007, January 1). Transforming traditional lectures into problem-based blended learning: challenges and experiences. OpenLearning -Harlow-, 22(1), 29–42.
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DeMink-Carthew, J. & Netcoh, S. (2019). Mixed Feelings about Choice: Exploring Variation in Middle School Student Experiences with Making Choices in a Personalized Learning Project. RMLE Online: Research in Middle Level Education, 42(10), 1–20. https://doi-org.libproxy.lamar.edu/10.1080/19404476.2019.1693480
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Hanewicz, C., Platt, A., & Arendt, A. (2017). Creating a learner-centered teaching environment using student choice in assignments. Distance Education, 38(3), 273–287.
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Pinchot, J., & Paullet, K. (2021). Using student choice in assignments to create a learner-centered environment for online courses. Information Systems Education Journal, 19(2), 15–24.​
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Blurring Obstacles
Collaboration Podcast Sneak Peak
Peer Review Process
Peer review is an essential aspect when writing any publication. We all know this as common knowledge, but to experience the peer review process is truly life changing. I really struggled to complete my publication rough draft because I chose a less formal publication piece thinking that it would be easy as pie, however, I have learned that these short informal pieces are actually very tricky to write. I have really enjoyed seeing how my peers' reviews have given me clarity in my publication writing and I am excited to complete my final draft.
The ideas that my peers shared with me really got the wheels in my head turning and I am now more focused in my writing. The problem I had with this short opinion piece article is that I tend to be a rambler especially when I am passionate about what I am talking about so I wrote this long piece that I then had to cut to 600-1,000 words. I definitely cut in the wrong places and I can see now how to edit my article to be much more impactful and well researched while still sharing my experiences and opinions.
Peer Review Feedback
Through the peer review process I was able to gain valuable insight into not only the realities of publishing, but also how the peer collaboration process can strengthen my individual ideas and actually work to open up my creativity and personal flair, or sparkle. I think that I not only learned a ton of valuable insight on the behind the scenes of publishing, but of myself as well. I crave connection through humor and I am starting to see that I can continue to craft and hone this skillset to make my ideas about education more impactful and less scary to those educators on the frontlines with too full to-do lists and not enough time to get it all done.
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The truth is, I really got in my head about publishing for real. This caused so many issues when normally I am a natural born communicator and writer that has very rarely suffered from a writers block. Through this process I was able to see how everyone who read my article found something new to connect with and had ideas on how to make my piece stronger. At first it really sucked to see something that I did put a lot of effort into look as if it was just thrown together by the end of the mark ups, but as I went over the feedback I realized that everyone was right. I tried to create an article that reflected my views and thoughts, but I didn't write the article as my authentic self. I wrote it in a style that didn't feel natural to me and that toned down the helpfulness of my message. My message is simple; blended learning is really a simple teaching strategy that maximizes my time to do what I love -teach and connect with kids. My final draft of my article finally shows that and makes this big idea more palatable for teachers that are tempted to dip their toes into blended learning without committing too much up front.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed the publication and writing process in this course. Not only was it exciting to see all the hard work I put into research and development of my innovation plan come together with a real world assignment like this, especially since being able to say you are a published scholar looks great on a resume. Throughout this course I have seen my ideas and thoughts change shape and the difference between my publication outline to my final draft is significant. Thanks to the peer review process I outlined above, I can honestly look at my article with pride and know that I have shared a little part of my heart with a community that is full of passionate hard working people. Creating the media project to drum up publicity and make people not only want to read about resources that I found integral to trying out and adopting a blended learning approach in my own classroom. I am really creating something that is worthwhile and my innovation plan is actually taking shape and growing into a movement that I believe I can use to make real, valuable changes in education.
I am grateful for the lessons and opportunities that were gained from this course even if it made me want to pull my hair out at times when I was feeling unsure of myself and getting too into my head. The lessons I learned from this course extend beyond formal education and have truly built up my self-confidence in my knowledge and experiences as a teacher. I am starting to feel more comfortable with taking leadership and becoming a role model for other educators whereas I used to shy away from any attention like that.