In 2016 I participated in Blendkit, a MOOC provided by the University of Central Florida and EDUCAUSE, using the Canvas LMS. I really enjoyed this course not only because I was able to gain experience with blended learning and develop a blended course that I was able to teach, but also because I was able to experience an exemplary online learning experience that used gamification and social networking services to engage learners.

During the course I redesigned the Practical English course I was teaching to include an online portion. To do this, I had to determine which content would be presented online and what learners would accomplish in class, in order to effectively support the learning objectives. I created two visual maps to help determine the two spheres of this blended course using templates from UCF.

Video Tour: Week 4

After roughly drafting the course it was time to choose an LMS that was suitable for this course. I chose Schoology because it was practical and easy for instructors and students to navigate. Ideally in the future I would like to encourage other professors that teach this same course to utilize the resources that I create and discover in their own blended versions of this class. Here is a short video that provides an overview of one week of f2f and online class.

LMS Student Tutorial

In the second class of the semester I began class with a BYOD activity. Students registered for the online portion of the course in class, created bios and took profile pics using their phones. This was an engaging and fun activity which made their first experience with the online portion of the course a positive one. I also created a quick screencast tutorial using Jing and Camtasia to help students who were not in class join the course.

If you are interested in understanding some of the thoughts behind my design decisions more deeply feel free to visit my blog.

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