A New Kind of Blended Learning

I plan to present a slide-show explanation of how I revised a traditional four-credit-hour college science course to carve out basic didactic content into a condensed separate course that was all-on-line and supported mass enrollment. A linked companion course applied this didactic material in a small-enrollment face-to-face class that emphasized essays based on peer-reviewed research, student oral presentations, and class discussion. I explain how the idea evolved and why I think it can be a model for a variety of subject matter.

The Pedagogical Model

By analogy, this curricular design can be likened to a hub-and-spoke or heliocentric model involving a foundational enabling and supporting central core (Fig. 1). The on-line course would be pre-requisite and perhaps taught concurrently with a given specialty course.The demonstration reported here was an on-line didactic course in principles of neuroscience (one credit-hour), linked to an essay/discussion course in Neuroscience and Religion (three credit-hours).

The Rationale

The theoretical rationale for this curricular model is to promote the following:

• The creation of a mass audience on-line course forces a faculty to think hard about just what in their discipline is foundational in the sense of being needed in all advanced courses. Introductory courses are sometimes constructed on the basis of academic fads or faculty interest and specialization or institutional culture and tradition.
• Constructing a core course should require faculty to work together as a team and has at least the potential to promote faculty esprit de corps.
• Such a design encourages faculty to indulge their personal interests and expertise by offering small enrollment face-to-face classes without undue concern that the students would lack a foundational background.
• Condensing a discipline's knowledge base reduces the common problem that beginning college students, especially non-majors, become overwhelmed, perform poorly, and reject the major.
• An introductory on-line course opens the door for a faculty to reach a wider audience, even at the level of MOOCs, which so many colleges are now considering.
• If the core course is stored and accessible on-line for future reference, students have ample opportunity to review core content at multiple times in later courses on an anytime, anywhere, as-needed basis.
• This design offers students the chance to repeat the application of the same core knowledge from multiple perspectives, thus perhaps providing a deeper mastery of the discipline. These perspectives may even increase a student's passion for the academic major.
• This design may help alleviate the "degree-plan clogging" that results from so many three-to-five credit-hour courses.

 

Paired courses enable learning at two levels: Type 1, basic concepts and skills of a given discipline; or Type 2, in-depth exploration and extension of ideas and their broader implications and practical applications (which may even be inter-disciplinary). This paper reports the author’s experience with a paired-course approach in which an all internet-based course is Type 1, and the other is Type 2.  In the application reported here, students can enroll only in the Type 1 class, but those enrolling in the Type 2 class must be concurrently enrolled in the companion Type 1 class to ensure that they have adequate didactic background for the writing and class-presentation assignments and classroom discussions of the Type 2 class.

The "Field-tested" Example

The Type 1 unlimited-enrollment, "Core Ideas in Neuroscience," is designed to provide a basic introduction for the students in many disciplines who need to be informed by neuroscience without being overwhelmed by it. The Type 2 limited-enrollment writing and discussion course, "Neuroscience and Religion," is for those students who seek applied-neuroscience understanding for their own psychological and spiritual growth.

The paired courses reported here began as a single four-credit hour course in "Neuroscience and Religion." Many students had little background in neuroscience, and therefore the course included a once-weekly lecture on basic themes in neuroscience. The rest of the course consisted of students writing essays and summaries on research papers and discussing the implications in class, which proved to dominate student interest and engagement at the expense of learning sufficient neuroscience. This led me to restructure course into two separate courses. The didactic component was separated into a one-credit-hour all-on-line course on "Core Ideas of Neuroscience," with its own rules and objective grading. As a result, students were much less neglectful of learning the necessary neuroscience concepts. The Type 2 paired course remains as "Neuroscience and Religion," but students have to be concurrently enrolled in the on-line course. Weekly themes and activities are aligned between the two courses. Both courses are elective, and not required in any curriculum.

Benefits of This Model

Four main advantages of such linkage were evident:

1. One course can support mass enrollment, while the other can support small, more personalized courses.

2. If condensed with low credit-hour assignment, the on-line course can increase the breadth of education for non-majors, while providing needed background for related specialty courses in the major.

3. Degree plans can accommodate a broader range of academic diversity.

4. The specialty courses can proceed at a fast pace, because necessary background is being provided in another venue.

5. The idea can be flexibly implemented by adjusting the credit-hour assignment. For example, a four-credit hour traditional course can be broken into a one-credit hour condensed on-line course on basic core content that is paired with one or more three-hour traditional courses at a more advanced level. In some situations, the core course might be 3-4 credit hours while the specialty course is more condensed with perhaps 1-2 credit hours. This could well suit a curriculum that emphasizes seminars or laboratory periods. I found the paired-course model appealing for another reason: I got tired of repeating lectures each semester that basically just transferred my notes into student notes. By limiting my video-taped lectures to "core ideas" and adjusting U-tube videos and tutorials each year, I can easily keep the course up-to-date. Testing and grading is all automated.

We professors are notorious for trying to teach most of what we have spent a life-time to acquire. Less can be more. Students need to get the basics of an academic discipline, but more importantly, they need to develop critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills for evaluating and applying didactic materials. Thus many academic subjects could benefit from a model that combines concise didactic instruction and testing in an on-line course with paired advanced courses that feature small-group Socratic and peer teaching in a face-to-face environment.

I have become convinced, after the three times of teaching with this model, that this is an effective way for students to achieve robust learning at both over-view and in-depth levels. By being condensed with a workload of one-to-two credit hours, the on-line course encourages mass enrollment of students in various academic majors who need and want a broader academic experience than is commonly possible in standard college curricula.  Especially in the sciences, curricula commonly have degree plans that restrict curricular diversity.

 

Possible Application to Other Academic Subjects

I will suggest application of this to other aspects of neuroscience, such as animal behavior, abnormal psychology, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, developmental psychology, social neuroscience, neuroscience of learning and memory, and multiple medical courses (neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, neuropathology, neuroimmunology, neurology, neurosurgery). Suggestions will be made for other sciences, such as chemistry, math, microbiology, molecular biology, marine biology, parasitology, biogeography, ecology, systematics, or others