Page 51 - BLENDED LEARNING

In addition, there are a number of challenges connected with using the wiki as one
of the modes of instruction. These include:
a. Learning to work in collaboration: working in the wiki students become more
dependent on their peers’ feedback, so if it is not published in time the students
cannot use it while revising and/or editing their essay drafts.
b. Learning to use the learning environment: for most of the students working in
an online environment is a new experience, so they need some guidance and
practice in using it. This is sometimes complicated by the students’ prior learning
experience which to a large extent is based on a teacher-centred approach to
learning and teaching.
c. Learning to use the learning environment to its full potential, for which the
students need to become more familiar with its affordances and limitations.
d. Learning to manage their time more efficiently: this is of general concern, and
becomes even more acute than usual in the given context, for obvious reasons.
Lessons learned and advice
While designing the blend and teaching using it, it has become clear that it takes time
for students to get used to both participating in peer-editing and doing it in the wiki.
So, it is important to train students to comment on their peers’ work and help them
to learn to use the learning environment by offering activities that will allow them to
learn to use it more fully. Also, it is necessary to make the students aware of the time
management issues that can interfere with the learning process. In addition, students
should be encouraged to take more control over some aspects of the learning
environment, such as adding relevant content to it, maintaining its appearance
and using its editing and commenting features to their greater potential.

Pains and gains from blending
Keeping the students motivated throughout the whole duration of the course was
one of its worrying aspects. The other one was enabling the students to stick to the
deadlines for wiki submissions. In the context as described this was crucial because of
the students’ dependence on their peers’ feedback on their writing for further revision.
Among the benefits of course blending the students enumerated the following:
ease of access to the course materials and work written by the students’ peers, an
opportunity to receive feedback on their writing from their peers in addition to that
given by the teacher, and to gain more confidence in their writing thanks to the
opportunity to compare their ability to write to that of their peers. Also, thanks to
blending, students gain greater awareness of audience issues because peers provide
a broader and more natural audience for their writing, which agrees with research on
the benefits of peer-editing reviewed in this article.
Overall the attitude of the students to the described course blend was rather positive
and encouraged me to work on improving it. Some possible directions for the
improvement of the blend include improving the criteria for assessing the students’
contributions to the wiki, improving the students’ wiki submission procedures and
providing them with more opportunities for collaboration.

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