Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

ookmarking because social bookmarking sites allow users to share their
bookmarks with other groups or site users. Using this technology within the course
allows participants to work in research groups to collaborate in discovering useful
resources and information. This forms a strong model for the kinds of study skills and
practices they need to encourage within their own classes.
Micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter enable users to build global information
sharing networks. Training participants to use these kinds of platforms during the
course enables them to reach out beyond their course cohort and expand the scope
of their research, collaboration and learning into the global ELT community, not only
for the duration of the course, but to help them to sustain learning after the course
is completed.
The socially interactive nature of the tasks is designed to promote the connectivist
aspects of peer-to-peer learning within the online community. Some of the main
principles of connectivism outlined by Siemens (2004) in his essay ‘A Learning
Theory for the Digital Age’ are that: ‘Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of
opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information
sources. Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual
learning.’ So the focus is very much pushed towards building an online community of
practice that works with minimal tutor support using the tools previously mentioned.
Creating the initial element of the course online enabled the integration of a number
of web-based Web 2.0 type social tools as well as much greater integration of social
networking, collaborative creative tasks and multimedia elements within the course.
Overall the course is a form of ‘loop input’, a ‘style of experiential teacher
training process that involves an alignment of the process and content of learning’
(Woodward, 2003), in that a blended learning course is being used to develop
understanding of blended learning approaches and methods based around content
focused on blended learning methodology. This gives participants experiences
similar to those their students will have as learners.
Using an online medium in this way as part of the blended learning course gave
participants some genuine experience of online learning on which they could then
reflect. This genuine experience of learning through an online medium and all the
issues that emerge through it helps teachers to understand the strengths and
limitations of the medium in a way that could not be achieved in the face-to-face
classroom alone.
Blended benefits
The overall advantages of taking a blended learning approach to the course as
opposed to doing the course completely face-to-face are many. The greatest
advantage is that having considerable parts of the course online enables us to
extend the period of learning over a far greater timescale than would be possible
with face-to-face teaching. This means that teachers have more time to develop
and absorb the materials they are studying. It also enables the teachers to learn in
their own teaching context, try things out with their own students and gain genuine
A blended learning teacher development course | 69