Blended Learning

Staff-student consultations
In all courses staff are required to be available for student consultation. Obviously this can be difficult when
students are studying off campus or are on work placements or teaching staff are away from campus. There
are a number of online options that can facilitate either one-to-one or group consultations in real time
(synchronously). These include:
‣ ¾ Online chat;
‣ ¾ Virtual classroom;
‣ ¾ Phone call or teleconference;
‣ ¾ Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), such as Skype (http://www.skype.com).
Online chat and virtual classroom sessions are recordable while phone calls and teleconferences generally are
not.
Section 2.2
Designing and developing
Course information and reminders
Conveying course information or reminders to students is an important aspect of course management.
Using the Email and Announcement functions within Learning@Griffith makes this timely and easy,
particularly with the ability to automatically generate a group email when creating an Announcement.
With smaller cohorts of students, some staff use a mobile phone and SMS text messaging to provide timely
information without needing computer access. However, careful consideration should be given to the
management of mobile phone use for teaching particularly when using your personal number.
Group discussions
Students having an opportunity to share and discuss various course topics or issues can have a big impact on
their success and satisfaction in the course. Because many students have work or other commitments their
time on campus is limited and therefore so are opportunities for informal meeting and discussion. Staff can
help to create a sense of community amongst students by providing “spaces” for online communication and
information sharing. For example:
‣ ¾ Discussion forums
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Asynchronous (not in real time);
Some staff find it useful to set up a “students only” forum or a “students and tutors only” forum as
well as an open forum where they can also contribute to the discussion or respond to questions;
As with using discussion forums for a teaching and learning activity it is important to consider
issues such as purpose, expectations, integration and management.
‣ ¾ Virtual classroom
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Synchronous (real time) communication tools such as Wimba Classroom can also be used for group
discussion however participants need to be online at the same time.
Discussion forums are also addressed in the section on “Student Activity and Collaboration” and you can find
more information on Wimba in the “Content and Resources” section of this guide.
Section 2.2 Designing and Developing
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