I wrote about my experiences with the pragmatics of contemporary education undermining the pedagogical benefits of hybrid teaching in Brave New Classrooms (Peter Lang 2007) It is still an ongoing battle - "It's online, so there is no problem with space and therefore no need to limit class sizes" "In your hybrid PBL course you only meet students every second week so you should only get half the worKload points of a colleague who has a student-led f2f seminar each week" There are advantages though - initial results suggest that students who Blog as part of their coursework, are more reflective in discussions and written assignments for example. Cheers, Marj Dr Marjorie Kibby, Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture Faculty of Education and Arts The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby@newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604
Steve Jones <sjones@info.comm.uic.edu> 05/23/07 9:16 AM >>> <snip> One of the things I'm seeing on a lot of campuses the last couple of years is excitement among administrators about "blended" learning because it promises to free up classroom space, which ties into two important administrative matters, namely an interest in increasing enrollment as a means of increasing revenue, and an interest in keeping a lid on construction costs (or, in some cases, the cost of leased space). I agree that those are important matters, but I disagree that they are sufficient reasons to "re-design" teaching <snip>