Blended Learning

Bryn Mawr College's TIDES Project (Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM initiative) is featured in the new issue of AAC&U, Diversity & Democracy on Gender Equity in Higher Education, Spring 2015, Vol. 18, No. 2.
"This issue of Diversity & Democracy extends AAC&U's longstanding commitment to addressing gender-based inequities in higher education. Article topics include gender equity among STEM students and faculty, women's leadership in areas such as higher education administration, the role of women's colleges and universities worldwide, and the importance of creating campuses that are safe and inclusive for students of all gender identities."

In Women in Computing: The Imperative of Critical Pedagogical Reform, the "Key to sustaining US global competitiveness is the country's ability to harness the kinds of diverse perspectives that not only are known to fuel better scientific outcomes, but also are associated with the inclusion of underrepresented groups, particularly women and women of color."

Kelly Mack and Melissa Soto, Association of American Colleges and Universities; Lilliam Casillas-Martinez, University of Puerto Rico–Humacao; and Elizabeth F. McCormack, Bryn Mawr College

The fourth annual Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference, hosted at Bryn Mawr College from May 20 to May 21, included a keynote address, panel discussions and various workshops.

It brought together more than 165 professionals from 65 different colleges, universities and institutions to focus on topics of interest related to blended learning in the liberal arts. Bryn Mawr College, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, FIPSE First in the World Program, and the Association of American Colleges & Universities TIDES Initiative supported the conference.

In a recent article in the Bryn Mawr Campus Bulletin, Professor Shiamin Kwa talks, among other things, about the role that digital technologies play in her East Asian Languages and Cultures course, Everything But the Table: Food and Culture in East Asian Literature and Film. Kwa received funding and staff support for this course through Bryn Mawr's Mellon-funded "Developin a Liberal Arts Curriculum for the Digital Age" and the Tri-Co Mellon Creative Residencies Program. The digital assignments and collaboration embedded into this course, are by no means the only aspects of this course that students find exciting and engaging, but Kwa discusses the role they play in helping students to reflect on their objects of study in different ways. A quote from Kwa in the article sums this up: "'Making is a way of thinking,' she explains, 'and a generative one.' Read the article ...

Registration is now open for the fourth annual Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference, May 20-21, 2015 at Bryn Mawr College!

This year's conference has grown to include 13 sessions of 2-4 presentations each, and two workshops. Sessions with a pedagogical focus include blending foreign language and STEM courses, designing blended approaches to teaching critical thinking, reading, writing, or computational skills across disciplines, and ideas for digital project-based learning in the humanities and social sciences. If you're just getting started, the Blended Learning: It's All About the Face Time workshop offers hands-on experience with developing a blended course. For those grappling with developing institutional support for blended learning, there are sessions on research and assessment, internal support models, and cross-institutional collaborations, including a hands-on workshop, Working Together: Community and Cross-Campus Collaborations through Blended Learning.

See our conference website for a schedule and registration, travel and accomodation information.

Lisa Cook explains why "you should watch this project" as part of Higher Ed Impact's "Spotlight on Innovation series. Read more ...

This question was a hot topic at last year's Blended Learning Conference, which featured several faculty presentations about their experiments and experiences with blended learning. In particular, faculty debated the importance of using videos that they created themselves and/or in which they were visible speaking.

In a recent article in the Educause Review, Melanie Hibbert, a media producer at Columbia University's School for Continuing Education and a doctoral candidate at Columbia's Teachers College shares findings from a internal study that the former conducted in order to answer this question. This study combined media analytics -- analysis of the viewing data collected by the school's video-hosting platform -- and follow-up interviews with 10 students. Although the courses analyzed were online, and the students were master's level students, their findings correlate with some of the feedback we've received from undergraduate students in blended liberal arts college courses and from our own internal analysis of viewing data at Bryn Mawr College.

Many faculty are experimenting with reducing the amount of class time spent lecturing in order to devote more time to discussion, problem-solving, and other activities designed to engage students in active learning. Thanks to Salman Khan of Khan Academy, perhaps, the most famous example of this is the "flipped classroom" approach, in which lectures are partly or wholly replaced by short instructional videos designed to be viewed as "homework" outside of class. In Introduction to Key Concepts in Five Minutes or Less: The ‘Did You Know?’ Microlecture Series, Julia VanderMolen explains talks about the potential benefits of the recorded "microlecture," the tools and pedagogical approach she takes when recording them, and how she integrates them in to her classes. Although the focus is recorded lectures, the approach could be used for in-person "micro-lectures" as well. 

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Below, read all about what others have been saying about Blended Learning!

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"‘Dubliners’Comes to Life in Boston College’s Annotated E-Book"

by Avi Wolfman-Arent in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus on June 10, 2014

"Learning R"

by Andrea Zellner in Inside Higher Ed: GradHacker on June 10, 2014

"Five Things Online Students Want from Faculty"

by Rob Kelly in Faculty Focus: Higher Ed Teaching Strategies from Magna Publications on May 30, 2014

Swivl is a robotic platform which can be used for recording presentations or class lectures. Users can connect a smartphone or tablet, or a DSLR camera, and use the free Swivl app to record video of the presentation.

Swivl is a service with 3 important components: the robotic base, the free Swivl Capture app for smartphone or tablet, and Swivl Cloud.

The Swivl robotic base can follow the "marker," either held or worn on a lanyard, allowing the instructor or presenter to move around freely and have the camera follow them. The marker conveniently doubles as a wireless microphone and as a remote control for the slides in the Swivl Capture app. Powerpoint slides can be imported to the Swivl app on the smartphone or tablet, which can be used to present while recording video, and facilitate the creation of a video with time-synchronized slides and presenter video. The Swivl Capture app can be used with Swivl Cloud without the Swivl robot, or with the Swivl robot.