1. Rise of a Blended Course Delivery in Math Section
Dr. Saad Salman Ahmad and Dr. Eduardo M. Lacap, Jr.
Annual Staff Development, Auditorium, April 19, 2017

2. Agenda What is Blended Learning? Why Blended learning approach?
How to Implement a Blended Learning?
Implementation of BL for Basic Math and Statistics for AS at HCT
Performance of the students in Basic Math and Statistics courses
Conclusion

3. What is Blended Learning?
Blended course offerings “combine the elements of an online course with those of face-to-face instruction” or
A blended course delivery is operationally defined as a heterogeneous mixture of face-to-face (FTF-based) class and an online learning management based class (LMS-based).
Our Basic Math online learning materials were created and run in a Moodle platform. Open educational resources were the main learning materials present on the course’s e-learning pages.

4. Why Implement Blended Learning?
Blended Learning facilitate teaching and learning from many aspects:
Blended learning allows teachers and schools to address a variety of learning  styles with a variation of instructional methods (Wiffin, 2002).
Blended learning practices in the high school environment increase student motivation (Berson, 1996;Lipscomb, 2003; Pye & Sullivan, 2001; Scheidet, 2003; Wellman & Flores, 2002;).
Blended learning allows for more personalized instruction.
Blended learning provides opportunities for teachers to use online curriculum for basic information and for extensions/review and class time for higher order thinking activities.
Blended learning frequently provides a higher level of interaction  than commonly experienced in face to face courses. (Dziuban, Hartman, &  Moskal, 2004; Waddoups & Howell, 2002; Wingard, 2004).
Generally most of the introductory courses have high failing rates like in Basic Math

5. How to Implement a Blended Learning Course Delivery?

6. Roles of F2F Teacher VS Blended Teacher
Teachers usually spend some time setting up and decorating their classrooms by hanging up posters, arranging furniture putting pictures on their desks, etc.
A blended teacher should also spend some time setting up his or her classroom. Teachers might set up an announcement page or a series of announcement pages introducing themselves and their content to their students. This might include pictures of themselves and/or their families and some marketing of the course. What should students expect to learn? Why will this be important to them?
Teachers usually cover the class rules and expectations some time in the first week, whether these are determined by the teacher, the students, or some combination of both.
Blended teachers should also cover rules and expectations regarding behavior specific to the online environment. Students should know proper Internet etiquette, known as “Netiquette.”
Teachers may have the students engage in ice-breaker activities to get to know one another to establish a positive classroom climate and prepare students for collaborative work assignments.
This should also be done in the online classroom. Blended teachers can do live or synchronous ice-breakers virtually with students using collaboration tools or can use the discussion area to have students get to know one another in an asynchronous environment.
The first week of school a teacher often distributes textbooks and other materials to students.
Some of the online content providers do have supplemental materials. Will these be used in class or assigned to students to take home? The teachers should make sure that students have the required materials and explain the procedures for using them.

7. Roles Continued… F2F Teacher Blended Teacher
Teachers might provide students an overview of their textbook or create a textbook scavenger hunt.
It is important to orient your students to the online course as well. Where will they find content? How do they submit assignments? Where will they go to find discussions? What is the best way to navigate through the course?
Some times a teacher will implement some type of diagnostic assessment to help them determine what knowledge and skills the students have coming in to their class.
Several of the online content vendors provide diagnostic assessments. In addition, teachers can create their own assessments in the iLearnNYC platform. Teachers should think about how they will use this data. Will they use it to assign content? Group students? How will this data assist in personalizing the education of this student?
Some teachers send home an introductory letter to parents the first week of school and may gather contact information or other relevant student data.
It is important for online teachers to also think about parent engagement. Teachers should think about how they will introduce themselves to students, how to provide an explanation of the online course, and how they will communicate with parents throughout the student’s course experience. It may also be helpful to provide parents with tips and strategies for supporting their children if they are working on their online course from home. Parents should be aware of the number of the Help Desk in case students have difficulty working from home.

8. The Blended Learning Checklist
1. What do you want students to know when they have finished taking your blended course?
2. As you think about learning objectives, which would be better achieved online and which would be best achieved face to face?
3. Blended teaching involves developing or utilizing challenging and engaging online learning activities that compliment your face to face activities. What types of learning activities do you think you will be using for the online portion of your course?
4. How will the face to face time and out of class components be integrated into your course? How will the work done in each component feed back into and support the other?

9. Checklist…
5. How will you leverage the increased class engagement and participation from the OER materials?
6. How will you divide the time between the face to face portion and the online portion of your course? How will you schedule the percent of time between the face to face and online portion of your course?
7. How will you divide the course grading scheme between face to face and online activities? What means will you use to assess student work in each of these two components?
Source: NYC DepED

10. Case Study 1: The Basic Math for Foundation
Course name: The Basic Mathematics (Foundation Level)
Teaching Method: Blended Learning (Reduced Contact hours)
Learning Method:
2-hr classroom learning @Computer Lab
SCL learning through the week
Time Frame: Sem1 and 2, Academic Year 2016 – 2017.
No. Students: 895
Learner’s background Upon Registering the course:
Special students who failed the Basic Math course multiple times. The status of these students was either (or in combination) dismissed, postponed or pending to take higher level courses since the course is a pre-requisite course.

11. Blended Learning The BL Framework for Basic Math (2-hr)
Face-to-Face Learning
Supervised Online Activities
Blended Learning
20% of Course Content
80% of Course Content

12. Open Educational Resources (OER)
UNESCO
"Open Educational Resource(s)" OER is
"teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
In short, "Open Educational Resource(s)" (OER) refers to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing."

13. BL utilization in Basic Math
Regular Students
(80%, 20%)
(FTF, Online)
Repeating Students
(20%, 80%)
(0%, 100%)

14. OER Repositories
MIT Open Courseware was one of the first to make their course content full open to anyone.
Open Courseware Consortium provides information and links to many open course ware projects and how-to guides on making your courseware open.
Coursera, edX, Udacity, and KhanAcademy are examples of current providers of open courses, including MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) at various levels and for all types of topics.

15. Sample Course’s e-learning page

16. Sample Course’s e-learning page

17. Sample Video Lectures (CLO1, CLO11)

18. Sample Assessment (CLO11)

19. Tutorials and Quizzes:
Out of class work log:
Students are expected to take charge of their own learning outside the class time. They should show evidence of their work in a log which is checked by the teacher regularly. The log should be part of the student assessment (5 to 10 marks) as an assignment. The out of class work includes using open education resources (OER).
Tutorials and Quizzes:
OER includes tutorials and quizzes on each topic of Mathematic courses to enhance the study skills of the students Learner assessment will be shaped differently in OER concepts. Collecting feedback through smart, interactive software would facilitate the analysis of students’ results. Teacher’s efforts in marking and analyzing students’ performance will be reduced.
Moodle Mobile APP:
To enrich the student study skills, college has launched a learning management system (Moodle 2.9) which is a student friendly mobile app for the smart learning at any time and any place.
Mock Tests (Self Tests):
We are conducting a series on mock tests from the students on each topic at the end of each lecture so that the students can run-through what they have studied. The mock tests could be either part of a study skills course.

20. Timeline of Analysis (BM,ASAC3120)
Blended Learning/Flipped Classroom

21. Initial Findings from the Pilot Case Study 1 (BM)
Student Status
Dismissed Status
Postponed
Pending
Student Status
Studying
Next Level
Repeat Course
At least 45% were given another chance
Register BL BM
Progress to Next Course
Progress/Repeat

22. Case Study 2: Statistics for Applied Sciences
Course name: Statistics and IT for Applied Sciences (AD Level)
Teaching Method: Blended Learning (Flipped Classroom Model)
Learning Method:
4-hr classroom learning (2hrs Lecture Room/2hrs Computer Lab)
SCL learning through the week
Time Frame: Sem1, Academic Year 2016 – 2017.
No. Students: 120
Learner’s background Upon Registering the course:
Regular students with at least advanced diploma level credentials (IELTS, GPA).

25. ASAC3120 e-Learning Page and Moodle Mobile APP

26. Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) Package in the e-learning page

27. Self-made Video Lectures (for Practical Classes)

28. 100,000 versions of Test-Yourself Practices available
Version No. 1
Version No. 100,000
A = B =C =D 30 allowable values
Unknown = 10 calculated possible values
(30)(30)(30)(10) = 270,000 versions
Original Version

29. Initial Findings Case Study 2: ASAC3120 Course
73 Marks
Median
75%
25%
Sample Size = 120
Teaching Method = Blended
Time Frame = 1 Semester
(S42)
50%
50%
Sample Size = 440
Teaching Method = Traditional
Time Frame = last 7 Semesters (S35-S41)

30. Conclusion
The Blended course delivery in Basic Math creates an equity on accessibility for up-to-date openly license materials.
More specifically,
It provides support to the College goals by INCREASING the Productivity while DECREASING the material cost
It provides support to the Student’s Learning Curve by giving them Freedom to Fail and personalized their learning path by navigating the in-demand rich contents, videos, quizzes through online engagement in the e-learning portal
It provides support to the Lecturer by expanding their roles as Content Expert, Researcher, Collaborator; it empowers Lecturer as well by giving them the full control of what content needs to be added and how the other resources fits together to meet the course learning outcomes.

31. “College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either”
- Mark Twain, American Writer and Prominent Lecturer
“The Mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but woods that needs igniting.”
- Plutarch
Source: TEdX talk Dhapne Koller 2012

32. Thank you!!!
                  Rise of Blended Course Delivery by IT Department, Higher College of Technology, Oman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at