Title: Week 0: Getting started
Course: Blended learning and distance education skills > Section: Course Content

The purpose of this week is to get started with the course and to introduce yourself to your fellow course participants. This section contains the course information on the course focus, course setup, and the assignments you have to work on.

Welcome in the EENSAT distance course on Blended learning. Good that you signed up!

Who are we?

This course is developed and taught by Eduardo Hermsen and Marie-Jose Verkroost. We both work for the Center of Expertise in Learning and Teaching of the University of Twente as educational consultants. We have used our expertise in designing education and technology-enhanced learning and teaching to design this course. We hope that this course helps you to set steps towards more blended learning in your courses. Our role is to guide you through the development process, give feedback on your design and to help you find the resources you need.

Course information

This course focuses on how to re-design a face-to-face instruction course into a blended learning course. With "blended learning" we mean that face-to-face and online learning are mixed. Blended learning is typically implemented in cases where students and teachers need flexibility in their studying and to stimulate the independent learning attitude of the student. During this course you will work on the re-design of a course into a blended learning format. Preferably, this is a course you teach yourself. Here you can read the description of this overall course task.

The learning outcomes of the course are:

1. At the end of the course, the participant is able to (re-)design a course into a blended learning format, whereby all steps of the ADDIE framework  have been followed and justified design choices have been made.
2. At the end of the course, the participant is able to give relevant guidelines for transforming a course with a blended learning format into a distance education mode.

For the re-design of the course we use the Analysis-Design-Development-Implementation-Evaluation (ADDIE) approach for instructional design. The steps in this approach are reflected in the week set up of this distance course. More information on this approach can be found at this website. Each week will generate output for your instructional re-design that you can hand in for feedback and share with others via the forum.

We also use a toolbox on Blended learning that has been developed by the Center of Expertise on Learning and Teaching of the University of Twente. This toolbox contains background reading and formats to be used for blended learning.

The course is scheduled for 6 weeks and has a study load of 40 hours. In week 6 you have to hand in your final products of the re-design for assessment and certification. You will receive a certificate when all assignments are handed in and contain serious work done. The assignments are:

A. Hand in the design and developed materials of the course that has been re-designed into a blended learning format.

B. Write a reflection on the design process, the designed products, and guidelines for transformation of the blended course into a distance education mode.

Present yourself

To become acquainted with each other, it would be nice if you could present yourself in the Forum of week 0. Let us know who you are and why you want to learn about blended learning.