Scaling Blended Learning: Penn's Teaching+Technology Program

Presenter Information

Joe Schaffner, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Becky Moulder, University of PennsylvaniaFollow

Streaming Media

Submission Type

20-minute Presentation

Abstract

Penn’s Digital Pedagogy group seeks to share blended learning strategies through the Teaching+Technology program, a series of three correlated workshops on theories, technology, and spaces that enable blended learning in diverse course contexts. Reaching more than 150 faculty and staff over several workshop iterations, the Digital Pedagogy group demonstrated how to implement blended learning elements through collaboration with faculty, technologists, and learning specialists. This presentation will share tips and strategies gleaned from the workshop series that can be applied at other institutions interested in launching a blended learning initiative.

Start Date

5-23-2018 3:00 PM

Description

In this 20-minute presentation, Becky Moulder and Joe Schaffner from the Penn Libraries will share lessons learned from the ongoing Teaching+Technology workshop series and how they collaborated with faculty, technologists, and learning specialists to share effective blended learning strategies at the University of Pennsylvania. The workshop series focuses on the effective, purposeful implementation of blended learning, how to account for faculty, student, and staff needs at various stages of implementation, and how blended learning can generate pedagogical and technical cohesion. Specific attention will be devoted to how stakeholder feedback on workshop experiences has shaped each iteration of the series. Additionally, the phases of development for the workshop series will be outlined with a focus on recommendations for launching similar blended learning scaling projects at other institutions.

This workshop series is part of a broader Penn Libraries initiative that emphasizes the development of digital skills among users. In Fall 2016, the Teaching, Research, and Learning (TRL) directorate at Penn Libraries launched a Digital Fluencies initiative. The conception of this initiative coincided with the emergence of TRL as unit within the Libraries and focused on supporting scholarship at Penn through innovative tools and methods. Through this initiative, six teams formed to address specific fluencies and created a series of workshops and online resources representing each fluency. The Digital Pedagogy fluency team created the Teaching+Technology workshop series, which consists of three correlated workshop on blended learning. Each workshop focuses on the respective theory, technology, and spaces needed for effective blended learning, and how to facilitate this pedagogical approach. This series has had several iterations since Fall 2016. As of Spring 2018, over 150 faculty and staff at the University of Pennsylvania have attended these workshops. In addition to covering the development phases of the series, the presentation will share use cases from these faculty and staff who have applied what they learned from the workshops to actual blended learning contexts. By sharing the overarching development of the series and by drawing upon specific use cases among faculty and staff, the presentation will reveal how the interplay of general and particular knowledge gathered from the series has indicated new approaches to further scaling blended learning at Penn.

Framework:

• Goal: Scale blended learning practices across courses at the University of Pennsylvania
• Findings:1.) gradually introducing blended learning practices into courses is a manageable approach for all stakeholders; 2.) individual use cases of blended learning must be evaluated to determine the efficacy of an initiative
• Assessment: user-experience surveys and use case evaluations
• Connections to Conference Themes: Institution-level strategies, initiatives, and programming

Outcomes for Session Participants:

• Learn tips and strategies for developing institution-level blended learning initiatives
• Gain insight into how to involve all stakeholders (faculty, staff, and students) in the development of a blended learning initiative
• View a model of how to deploy programming (e.g., workshops) to support a blended learning initiative
• Understand how to evaluate blended learning use cases to ascertain an initiative's efficacy

Activity Outline:

• Polling
• Q&A /Discussion

Interaction Plan:

• Polling via Poll Everywhere
• Q&A /Discussion

Comments

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