Blended Learning Fellow: It's Official

This morning, I officially join the Learning and Teaching Development Unit team as University Blended Learning Fellow, with a particular responsibility to promote the use of all aspects of e-learning across the university. Dr David Rush had been in the post for the last couple of years, when it was a completely new initiative, but with the increasing importance of digital technology in the educational world, I can see that this role could grow – which is a very exciting idea!

As I said in my interview, ¨“The term is commonly associated with the introduction of online media into a course or programme, whilst at the same time recognising that there is merit in retaining face-to-face contact and other traditional approaches to supporting students. It is also used where asynchronous media such as email, forums, blogs or wikis are deployed in

conjunction with synchronous technologies, commonly text chat or audio.” ¨Janet Macdonald Blended Learning and Online Tutoring: Planning Learning Support and Activity Design, 2008, p2

Loved this presentation: “E-Learning Sucks“, and used a few concepts from it in the interview also!

I thought this diagram from the University of Calgary was interesting, and suspect they’ll be more links to follow!

Links:

• Tagged “Blended Learning“
• Interview presentation
• Notification of interview