Blended Learning

‣ ¾ To allow students the opportunity to interact with people beyond the university (e.g., industry experts,
workers in the field, overseas-based professionals);
‣ ¾ I want to find better ways of designing and managing group work to support students and to reduce my
workload;
‣ ¾ So that I can utilise my students’ interest in technology to motivate them to learn;
‣ ¾ I want to maximally support my students’ achievements of the course learning objectives without
creating too much workload for the course teaching staff.
What blended learning activities should I choose?
The level of learning that students’ achieve is often dependent on the type of activities and assessment
tasks, and whether they are aligned with the set objectives or desired learning outcomes. One useful
framework for considering learning objectives and suitable activities is Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1956), a
hierarchical classification of the different objectives that are typically set for students. Figure 7 shows the key
classifications for the framework, followed by example terms for each.
Higher-order
thought and skills
Creating
Generating new ideas, products, or ways of
viewing things
Evaluating
Justifying a decision or course of action
Analysing
Breaking information into parts to explore
understanding and relationships
Applying
Using information in another familiar situation
Understanding
Explaining ideas or concepts
Remembering
Recalling information
Figure 7: Bloom’s taxonomy
Bloom’s taxonomy has been recently revised to suit a blended learning environment (Churches, 2008). This
revision includes suggestions for tasks that can be used to support particular objectives. For example:
26 Getting Started with Blended Learning