Engaging Students in Effective Blended Learning

 

 

As one of the most important events launched by the BLUE team, the “Blended Learning for University Enhancement (BLUE): Sharing Promising Practices and Lessons Learnt” seminar kicked off on December 7, 2017 for academic and teaching staff from EdUHK and other universities in and outside of Hong Kong to exchange knowledge and perspectives on how to implement blended learning for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning at universities.  

Invited by the BLUE team to present in the session of “Stories from the Frontline”, Catherine shared her experience and reflection on the implementation of blended learning in one of the English enhancement courses. She gave a presentation titled by “Blended Learning based on Scaffolding” and introduced the rationale for employing a blended learning approach, the details of the design, and how online learning and face-to-face learning is synthesized by the integration of meaningful blended learning tasks. She also demonstrated student’s sample work and feedback to the audience and highlighted the learning outcomes. Based on her experience and observation, Catherine concluded at the end of her talk that blended learning does encourage active engagement, promote peer learning and provide enriched learning experiences for students but at this stage when this learning mode is still new there is a need to help students understand their role and responsibility in blended learning so as to ensure the effectiveness of the implementation and maximize the learning outcomes.