True Synergy- …Pulling knowledge from online class activities to benefit blended learning.

How do we get students to be more invested in and engaged with their coursework?  Use Blackboard tools to promote student ownership of their learning  Model activities after the collalborative interaction that is so very popular in social networking  Use multilevel evaluation as both summative and formative assessment to measure traditional achievement, build rapport and connection between students, and to drive instruction.

Online Course Informing Blended Course Development  Undergraduates  Blog  Assignments  Group Discussions  Exams  Graduates  Blog  Assignments  Group Discussion  Exams  Room for Talk Journall ENGL322B – Linguistics & Society  Weekend Wiki (Online)  Paired Wiki (Mix of in-class and online)  Power Points/Videos (In-class)  Assignments (Both In-class and electronic)  Reflective Discussions (online)  Essays (Online)  Exams (Online) TEAC 413A/813A – ESL Acquisition

Multilevel Evaluation

Participation Summary

Rubrics

Pair (Short Assignment) Analysis of Political Language

Individual – Weekend Wiki

Pair (Pair Wiki)

Group – 1 st step ….

Group – 2 nd step

Student feedback…  “I definitely was tested in the technology field doing this assignment. I really gained knowledge on what Blackboard can all be used for and the different sites we can use for discussion. I feel as though for all the glitches on Blackboard and the discussion board acting up this weekend we really put effort into our own part and completed it for Monday's discussion. We have improved in the technology field of communicating within different discussion boards, wikis to come up with a end product.”

 “Our discussion pointed out many key ideas and concepts that I may have otherwise overlooked in the reading or may have misunderstood. Technology is playing a huge part in our society and I'm excited to get a chance to learn how o use some of it.”  I am finding myself becoming more fluent in technology because of these types of assignments…I am sure that some day these type of assignments will be incorporated as a basic requirement of all classrooms and it will be gratifying to be able to say that I was a part of the development and ground breaking experiences with this type of technology based learning.

 “My group work/collective synergy has improved from the previous assignment in that I had a better understanding of the process of the reflective discussion assignment, and was able to effectively communicate with my group members online. I think that the groups have improved in online technology interaction given that each group seemed to be much more organized compared to the last assignment. Engaging in the reflective process allowed me to discover all the different kinds of forms in which this contradiction between visuals and language can present itself.”  “I think I gained a better perspective on working with others in an online setting and how to work with others using the internet. Also, I really liked discussing realism and language with others and gaining perspective from them that built and pushed my first impression of videos or other depictions.”

Some negatives….  “It is also stressful that from editing a wiki to posting that information, the format of your work is often lost. Is there any way to fix this? I think using technology is very important, but I'm not the biggest fan of blackboard and I think there are still a lot of kinks to be worked out.”  “Technology can be very frustrating. I prefer to have face-to-face conversations and bounce ideas off of people in a group setting, however working online is different. You have to be patient and wait for others to comment and then within those comments you have to pick out sections to dialog about. It took a little more time and energy to do it this way but I think people posted some very interesting and thoughtful comments.”

Finally…  “From this reflexive process, I have learned to be a better online communicator. I feel more confident in using new technology. I'm really glad we are actually being taught how to use new technology, instead of just being expected to know it. ”