aect-hybrid instruction

What is the Lived Experience of Designing and Teaching Multiple Delivery Methods -Live Meeting, Hybrid, Online, and Face To Face (f2f) within a Semester at a Technical College Setting?
Short Description:

The author documented the experiential teaching in designing and implementing four delivery methods for her Sociology, Diversity, Developmental Psychology, and Contemporary American Society via Live Meeting, hybrid, online, and f2f started in the spring semester of 2009. The dynamics of coordinating and adjusting structures and functions of each learning environment among the author, students, the IT department, and the administration illustrates the challenges of instructional and non-instructional issues situated in a highly contextualized setting.
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Technical colleges play a key role to bridge PK-12 and 15 to 16 for many higher educational institutions. The paper is intended for stakeholders who are interested in obtaining information regarding how learning technologies are implemented in the significant yet controversial educational institution – the technical college, both in instructional and non-instructional dimensions.My research question is: What is the lived experienced of a social study instructor teaching four delivery formats within a semester? Three cycles of a small scale of design research method has been integrated with an autoethnographical phenomenology case study. Each cycle lasts for five weeks.The purpose of this research has two levels of significance:At the individual level-1. To obtain the first hand experience of exploring different combination of teaching methods and resources to assist multiple delivery formats within a semester. 2. To observe Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory in action. 3. To illustrate differences and challenges between constructivism and the instructionism (instructional aspect) in online, Live Meeting, hybrid and f2f with web-enhanced methods in a technical educational setting.At the college level-1. To experience the dynamics among the instructor, students, IT Department, and administration in a contextualized setting (non-instructional aspect).2. To pay attention to the research potentiality of learning technologies practiced in the technical college contexts.Research BackgroundIn the research domain, some researchers have been interested in studying 2-year colleges’ online teaching and learning issues. But there is limited amount of research focusing on the complex educational ecology of the college setting that affects the daily teaching and learning, in particular, when relating to learning technologies. Though most two year technical colleges, comprehensive community colleges, and four year colleges tend to be lumped together as the post-secondary educational system or “higher educational” institution, they are fundamentally different in many aspects. Such as educational missions, climate, diversity of student body, specific roles of faculty and staff, funding, infrastructure and the overall ecological configuration, just to name a few, comprise the uniqueness of 2-year technical colleges that stand out as a special and controversial educational entity. Recently, learning-centered approach has been evincing with successful learning outcomes (Conti, 1985b; National Center for Education Statistics 2001; Allen et al. 2002; Migliete and Strange 1998; Post et al. 1998; Parisot, 1997). In online learning environment, researchers and scholars have been touting the potential to transition higher education from a teacher-centered orientation to the constructivist student-centered approach (Sherron and Boettcher 1997; Beaudoin 1990; Dillon and Walsh 1992; Chanchaem 2001; Berge 1997; Kearsley 2000). But researchers indicate that there is a discrepancy between the promoted learner-centered style and what is happening in the online learning environment. Online facilitation is different from the face to face instruction in terms of pedagogical approaches and learning technologies application (Zhao, 2003). However, online instructors tend to carry face to face pedagogies into the online environment (Connolly, Jones, & Jones, 2007). Parisot (1997, 5) stated “little has been done to understand the changing role of faculty in adapting to technology and the changes in the psychological and physical environment promised by distance learning”. A decade later, Barrett et al’s research echoes such observation, “….each new technological advancement engenders great expectations regarding its impact on instruction. Regardless of the changes in technology, teaching style has not changed and remains teacher-centered”(Barrett, Bower, & Donovan, 2007). In order to implement quality online course, Kochtanek and Hein (2000) contend that transformation of the instructor’s role from instructor to facilitator was an important initial step. They argued that a successful student-centered learning environment requires that the instructor’s role to changed from a knowledge transmitter to a knowledge facilitator. Research Procedures:To gain better understanding of the above research results and suggestions, the author situates herself beyond the dichotomy of online vs. on-ground by adding the hybrid and the currently piloting Live Meeting (to replace the high cost ITV and increase the accessibility to students) into the repertoire. Through a year’s endeavor and preparation, the author obtained the opportunity to gather four major delivery formats within current semester (started on January 12, 2009)– online, hybrid, Live Meeting (similar to Adobe Connect/Breeze), and traditional face to face with web-enhanced methods for her six social studies courses. As an antoethnographical study, the author documented the ADDIE process with design research components. The dynamics of coordinating and adjusting structures and functions of contents, pedagogies, and technological affordances in each learning environment among the author, students, IT department, and administration policy has been recorded for further study. Instrumentations: Two instruments are using in this study. One is student basic information survey (age, gender, GPA, income, employment conditions, level of technology familiarity, delivery format preference), designed by the author. The other one is “The Principle of Adult Learning Scale” (PALS, developed by Gary Conti in 1978) to be my self-report to discern the teaching style. Student learning outcomes have been collected during a five week's duration.As aforementioned, there are multiple purposes of this exploratory study. At the first cycle, this paper mainly concentrates on the instructional or pedagogical aspect of this case study. The subjectivity and inter-subjectivity between the author and her four delivery formats to experience the concepts of knowledge transmitter and knowledge facilitator, or student-centered versus direct guidance learning is the focal point.ConclusionThe challenge of constructivism versus instructivism (i.e., the instructional aspect) is intensively involved with the contextual forces (i.e., the non-instructional aspect) affecting the daily teaching and learning process. These forces identified so far are the social class of students(typically from low-income households),learning readiness (prior knowledge),the author's teaching style, school policy changing dynamics, and vicissitude of funding sources (e.g., decreasing the IT support). Currently, this study is moving toward the second cycle. There will be thicker information available for this work-in-progress study. Different levels of analyses will be continued.