Blended Learning: Student and Faculty Perspectives in the Five Colleges
Submission Type
20-minute Presentation
Abstract
In the Five College Consortium, the perennial question when introducing digital objects into the classroom is: how does one improve the student’s experience without jeopardizing the core of current practice and success? In an effort to answer this question, the Five Colleges Blended Learning and Digital Humanities program (5collBLDH) surveyed faculty across our consortium as well as students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who have experienced classes with blended technologies. Our paper will describe these surveys, our methods, and the data generated as well as suggesting some interpretations about student and faculty perspectives on Blended Learning.
Start Date
5-23-2019 1:30 PM
End Date
5-23-2019 2:45 PM
Description
In the Five College Consortium, the perennial question when introducing digital objects into the classroom is: how does one improve the student’s experience without jeopardizing the core of current practice and success? In an effort to answer this question, the Five Colleges Blended Learning and Digital Humanities program (5collBLDH) surveyed faculty across our consortium as well as students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who have experienced classes with blended technologies. These surveys sampled very different constituencies. In the first group were the thirty-one faculty members who had lead projects under a four-year Mellon Foundation grant administered by the Five Colleges. Although these were non-representative and self-selecting group, their experiences in teaching with technology provided valuable insight into the value, incentives, and challenges of Blended Learning. The second group surveyed by 5collBLDH was two cohorts of students: 1. a class of freshmen who registered for a first-year class entitled “Digital Tools in the Academy” and 2. a group of students who were in courses where the professors self-reported using blended learning technologies. While the sixteen-person freshman seminar were again a self-selecting group, the forty-nine students in classes with blended technologies represented a more diverse subsection of UMass undergraduates. Together, these two groups create a mosaic of student experiences, including how students entering college rank their own technology skills and how other students understand and appreciate blended learning vis-a-vis their non-blended courses. Our paper will describe these surveys, our methods, and the data generated as well as suggesting some interpretations about student and faculty perspectives on Blended Learning.
Presentation Slides
Blended Learning: Student and Faculty Perspectives in the Five Colleges
In the Five College Consortium, the perennial question when introducing digital objects into the classroom is: how does one improve the student’s experience without jeopardizing the core of current practice and success? In an effort to answer this question, the Five Colleges Blended Learning and Digital Humanities program (5collBLDH) surveyed faculty across our consortium as well as students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who have experienced classes with blended technologies. Our paper will describe these surveys, our methods, and the data generated as well as suggesting some interpretations about student and faculty perspectives on Blended Learning.