Blended Website Learning System: Innovative and Effective Educational Tool During the Pandemic
What is the Blended Website Learning System? This innovative learning system effectively delivers lessons and assessments online, particularly during the pandemic. Read on to find out.
I have developed a very effective online learning system in response to the constraints brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. I call it the Blended Website Learning System, an innovative collection of websites that work together to enhance student learning despite the limitations imposed by digital hiccups. It is a system that revolutionizes teaching in the increasingly digitizing world.
Teachers who traditionally teach students face-to-face scrambled to develop their instructional modules almost overnight due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone needs to stay inside their homes, afraid of the high possibility of contracting the dreaded virus. As a result, both the teachers and the students have to resort to online interaction to continue the learning sessions.
The shift from the traditional face-to-face to online teaching mode did not prevent me from mentoring my students effectively. The pandemic provided an opportunity to refine the teaching modules I have been developing online since 2012. I already had the experience, knowledge, and skills to deliver my lessons online.
Website Development
Website development is a challenge if you want your instructional modules to be available for students to view and download. Knowing how to upload and link to related media are prerequisites to working online.
It took me months to gain a good understanding of how websites work, how to make links in my posts, and learn search engine optimization techniques.
I finally chose WordPress for its popularity and ease of use; from scratch because I am not an IT graduate. But I always love doing something new that challenges my mind.
All these efforts spent on website development paid dividends. I transitioned from the traditional face-to-face interaction into to asynchronous mode of teaching.
What does asynchronous mean? Hearing the word for the first time in our webinar at the beginning of the pandemic, I also wondered.
“What the heck is asynchronous?”
Hence, I define asynchronous with its opposite, the asynchronous learning approach, in the next section.
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Learning
Asynchronous learning means that students can move on with their lessons at their own pace, using guideposts in the instructional modules that I have time and again revised towards more effective engagement. It is founded on the belief that learning can take place in different times and spaces.
Synchronous learning, on the other hand, occurs when learners and their professors interact with each other simultaneously. But the pandemic prevents this mode from taking place for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, synchronous learning is still possible online, i.e., if everyone has a good internet connection.
I can use both of these learning modes, but my approach dwells more on the asynchronous side because I have my instructional modules ready. At the beginning of the pandemic, I just uploaded my modules to the instructional website I created. No-fuss. I have done it even in pre-COVID-19 days.
Now I describe the blended website learning system that I developed out of necessity. I believe this model will help fellow professors out there facing the challenges of online instruction.
The Blended Website Learning System
The Blended Website Learning System arose out of necessity, not just a theoretical offshoot of previous learning systems developed by educators. The learning system drew insights from actual teaching experience and feedback from graduate students who went through the learning process with my guidance.
Components of the Blended Website Learning System
The Blended Website Learning System essentially consists of four websites serving different purposes.
The first component consists of the professor’s writing platform website. The second one serves as the examination site. The third website functions as a meeting place for the professor and his students. And the last one houses the instructional modules and student’s output submission site (Figure 1).
Each of these websites serves different purposes as instruction requires, namely
1) source of reference materials,
2) assessment of student performance,
3) synchronous meetings, and
4) download of instructional modules and submission of outputs.
You might ask, “Why use many websites?” My answer relates to the nature of the websites and how they work. I give a short description of each website below and what they do best.
WordPress for Professor-Written Articles
Given the content redundancy of my class lectures, I decided to post my thoughts and tips online in a blog that I have maintained for eight years. I linked to reliable references online in all my articles for quality purposes.
MOODLE for Assessment
MOODLE is a learning management system that can serve as a complete system for all the instructional modules where I integrate images and videos. I would have used this site exclusively for my instructional modules. But I found out with continued use that I could not make it load fast. My students complain that they have a hard time accessing the site.
I tried to optimize and studied tips to speed MOODLE up but to no avail. I feel that the site is too heavy for android phones to load. Many of my students could not buy a laptop.
I like the quiz feature of MOODLE, so I decided to use it for assessment purposes only.
Zoom for Synchronous Meetings
I subscribed to Zoom to enable me to record the proceedings of the regular follow-up meeting with my students. I also avoid worrying about exceeding the free but limited service in less than one hour. I update my students and remind the students of the tasks they need to do. I also asked for their feedback about my instructional materials.
The synchronous meeting also gives me an idea of student circumstances. If I can extend them a hand to alleviate their concerns, I do so. Somehow I can empathize with their difficult situation.
WordPress for Instructional Materials
Finally, the WordPress site purposefully for my instructional materials is free of bloat. I chose the fastest theme I could find. Thus, students save time in accessing the instructional modules that I uploaded. It is here that they upload their module outputs.
I used the Experiential Learning Model in preparing my instructional modules given this teaching strategy’s simple application. Besides, this learning model has solid theoretical foundations that persisted for more than a century.
The Blended Website Learning System works. I’m sure fellow teachers would love this innovation. Applying the system would surely enhance the learning experience of their students.
For a detailed description of this system, click here.
