A multidisciplinary team with representation from faculties of health, and liberal arts of professional studies. York's teaching commons and university information technology,.
>> is investigating best practices in technology enhanced learning. With support from York University Academic Innovation Fund. The E Team is developing prototypes for web enhanced, blended learning, fully online education strategy, and innovated pedagogical approaches.
>> What a blended course does is to deliver at least one-third of the course experiences in a face-to-face format, and at least one-third of course experiences in an online format, and then the proportions are variable within those kinds of parameters. And the beauty of the blended model is that, it allows you to take advantage of the best capabilities of both learning experiences, the face-to-
face and the online. If all you're doing is delivering content as would be the case in a stand and deliver fact to face lecture without any interaction. It's much better to put that stuff online because the students can access it at their leisure. They can rewind it. A they have much more control over the viewing of that content being delivered.
The face-to-face time is best spent doing what instructors do best. What we have the comparative advantages in which the socratic give and take of responding to student questions. Getting them over misconceptions, helping them work through problems. So that they can see how an expert deals with that kind of an issue with feedback.
We have a commuting university. Not only are they commuting, but they all work part-time. They all have very busy lives, and university is one aspect of those busy lives. What the literature shows, s that the learning outcomes actually are better, especially in the blended core. What the research shows is that the outcomes for blended courses are better than both face-to-face and fully online experiences.
The infrastructure that we're trying to create, has, a couple of main components. One of them is providing the pedagogical expertise. So that faculty members can see how it is that they might radically restructure a course to move it into especially a blended format. The pedagogy and the technology have to work hand in hand.
One of the common misconceptions about e-learning, is that it's about the technology. And my experience in training faculty members is, all of the sudden they say, well this really doesn't have anything to do about the technology. It's really about how am I gonna best achieve my learning objectives.
And for some of them, how could the technology help me get there? One of my nicest experiences was riding the bus as, many people do to and from York. This was later on when we were doing digital capture of my lectures, in that introductory economics class. And there was a student sitting next to me watching, listening to my lecture while I was standing there next to her, on the bus.
But it was making use of the technology in the way it was intended. which is that they get to listen at their own pace, and at their own choice of time and location. and it made what would be down time time on a bus, something that's valuable, and it helps them fit the university experience into their busy lives.