Eight Design Essentials to Transform Your Classroom

Purpose & objective

When engaging in this session, participants will likely identify intersections of technology and instruction, regardless of the method of instructional delivery and that’s because many effective instructional practices transcend the walls of a traditional classroom. No matter which learning environment you’re teaching in, don’t throw out best practices that were effective during in-person instruction. The beauty of blended learning is the ability to leverage technology and learning theory in creative ways to meet students’ unique needs.

As you begin to incorporate the session’s eight Design Essentials, I encourage you to think about how each aspect enhances instructional practice and student learning.

When implementing the instructional framework presented, remember that your focus is not to use as many technology tools as possible. Instead, the focus is to make learning accessible, engaging, and meaningful for all your students.

Outline

Students in a blended learning environment interact synchronously and asynchronously, at least in part. This means that students use instructional technologies, online resources, and other digital tools to work through a prescribed plan of study, learning, and demonstrating understanding both synchronously and asynchronously and even in-person and remotely. By design, some teachers also allow students to control their learning pace in a blended environment; when students are ready, they complete an assessment to demonstrate mastery.

Once a certain level of proficiency is attained, students progress with their learning. At times blended learning is described in a way that focuses on only the context of education. Because of the technical components, there is hyper-focus on instructional technologies instead of teaching and learning. Although technology is essential to delivering blended instruction, it is just one aspect of numerous considerations. To mitigate this issue, I use a design framework addressing instructional design considerations specific to blended learning. An instructional design framework supports high-quality instruction and authentic student learning. A framework also ensures that students engage at the highest cognition levels, whether learning synchronously or asynchronously.

In this session, I will explore a framework for designing and delivering blended learning:

Why of the framework (Opening game to demonstrate the need for a framework: 5 mins)
What is your why.? (Peer to Peer Interaction: 5 mins)
Open with optimism (SEL/Morning Meeting strategy: 5 mins)
Communicate learning outcomes (Modeling: 5 mins)
Activate prior knowledge (Cloze Passage model: 5 mins)
Build academic vocabulary (World Cloud: 5 mins)
Deliver engaging instruction (Socratic practice: 5 mins)
Facilitate student discourse (Share and then shoulder chat: 5 mins
Close with optimism (Closing Circle: 5 mins)
Extending learning through feedback and reflection (Share and then shoulder chat: 5 mins)

It’s important to remember that my framework adapts to both in-person and remote synchronous teaching and learning. That’s the magic of the framework—it’s universal by design.

Supporting research

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Universe. blendedlearning.org/models
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