Blended Learning Action Plan.

The beginning of the development.

Two weeks ago, at the beginning of the development of my action plan, a reunion was held  in  a classroom of my social work "unidad receptora", where  three instructors of the Blended  Learning course, including  myself, participated.  The reunion lasted for only  half an hour. I introduced  to my  colleagues the  new design on content  of unit 5 for level  1 in the learning  platform Moodle.  I also, interviewed them about the tools and means they are using to develop  and evaluate oral production on –line.  At the beginning of the course,  the use of Skype was highly suggested by the coordination  as a mean of promoting and developing oral practice in students, oral evaluations, and tutoring.It was interesting  to learn, not just by the teacher but in previous informal talks with student, that Skype has been promoted in this course from zero to a one -time participation per week.  Nevertheless, in only one case, the teacher said to  be using  many other  on-line means not only to develop oral skills but to provide participation and tutoring. This teacher was very willing to continue carrying out academic reunions and to share his experience on on-line learning and teaching with us, which I found quite motivating.  He shared some  on-line sites, like vocaroo,  as options  for students who cannot attend Skype session at the same time as the teacher and classmates.

Some of the common uses in this blended learning course  have been that students do not efficiently participate in the platform,  along with comments on that this course is not developing robust skills in students; “ they are just getting a little bit of everything.” Teachers have said. So during the  short meeting,  one last questions I asked my colleagues was about  their opinion on how much they thought the  content in platform and work in line  was helping students  learn the language.  “ to what extent, are students showing evidence  that they are learning through   the on-line work?” “ was is the quality of their production and content used in the classroom (off line learning)

One of the colleagues started giving the frequency of students’ participation, which actually did not answer accurately my question.  The question was rephrased and new answers threw random comments on students’ participation, including the fact that is has been observed that some students participate only to hand in homework on time. Perhaps specific attention needs to be paid on how students are participating and learning through on-line work.