What's your opinion of Blended DL?

I was just reading about classes that are mostly DL with the requirement of attending some Saturday classes. I notice that U of California has some classes like that. I have no experience with blended classes but it seems like a good idea. What is your opinion of them?

 

I think it would well if "the attending the class part" coincided with the practical skills part of the program. A good example would be taking the theory part of CPR training online followed by the practical skills part in person.

 

My very first adjunct gig was at the local community college, where I taught hybrid/blended courses. Students met 1 night a week and the rest of the course was online. The length of the courses varied from 8 to 10 weeks. I think it was a great idea for students who were skeptical about online learning and those students who needed a face to face component. The community college started offering these courses, to slowly transition their night time students to online classes and to free up classroom space.

 

That would be great for those that have programs in their area but can't get to a class three days a week, etc. That said, I think many people in DL programs (myself included) chose DL because that program simply didn't exist in their area or they'd never be accepted to the one or very few close to them.

As an aside, I used to take classes at a B&M CC that met once a week for three hours. Isn't that better than the hybrid courses as they still only meet once a week and the whole class is face to face? Why have DL with a Saturday meeting when you could just meet for three hours on Saturday and skip the whole DL part?

 

Which UC campus is this?
I attend UCR two day course offered on Saturday and Sundayoccasionally.

 

Well, now that you call me on it, I've lost all my confidence. I think it was UCI, but it's been a couple of years ago. So I could be mistaken. I was looking into UCI for my daughter and thought I noticed some blended classes, but I must admit that I wasn't looking too carefully.

 

You've got a point there. Why bother?

Maybe the DL would provide the content, the reading and assignment submission and grading. That would free up the meeting for discussions, I suppose. I'm speaking from zero experience here, so I could be way off base.

 

I think that blended education is the wave of the future.

It's going to be kind of a spectrum with exclusively in-classroom classes at one end and exclusively DL classes on the other.

I think that the most common kind of blended education is the regular B&M class with online supplements. There's often going to be a class website with a syllabus, schedule and information about exams and assignments. There might be online readings, illustrations, lecture notes, practice problems, worked examples, glossaries, bibliographies and all kind of things. Some even have online textbooks.

I'll add parenthetically that I've found that the better class webpages can be great independent study resources for those of us who aren't enrolled in the class. If somebody doesn't need formal credit, they can locate hundreds of these things online for absolutely free. If one class website doesn't have something but another does, mix'em and match'em. Use several at once. That's what I do.

Moving along towards the DL-ish end of the spectrum is the short-residency class that's mostly online but might physically meet on a few weekends or something. That seems to be what people have been discussiong in earlier posts in this thread. That makes a lot of sense in some science areas, for example, where lectures could be delivered online with students just required to show up for laboratories.

 

Northeastern's EdD program uses blended education as well. The courses are offered one of four ways: Blended, Fully Online, Face to Face, and Blended Intensive.

Blended: Attend class once every two weeks for a few hours with the rest of the course online. I believe there are also blended courses that require a once-per-week course.

Fully online: Self Explanatory

Face to Face: Self Explanatory

Blended Intensive: This one is interesting. The course is fully online except for three days. They schedule one week during the semester and you attend M/W/Fr classes all day during that week. Since I still haven't taken one of these courses yet, I am wondering how much work is remaining for the rest of the semester since you are spending approx 24 hours in class over the course of that week long intensive. It seems to me like the those 24 class hours would make up the entire course, and the remaining time for the semester would be simply to complete the papers for the course. That is just my guess though.

You can take courses any way you want, but you have to take at least two in-residence courses (Face to Face, Blended, or Blended Intensive).