Online and blended learning have transformed the way we approach education. With this course of EC&I 834, I have been able to make sense of the depth that the course has. The pandemic era has introduced the knowledge community to a magic approach towards learning which happens with a keystroke. With online learning, we can access a vast array of courses and resources from the comfort of our homes, making education more accessible and flexible than ever before. It has helped us to set our own pace, adapt to various learning styles, and balance other commitments alongside our studies. On the other hand, blended learning combines the best of both worlds, offering the benefits of face-to-face interactions in physical classrooms and the convenience of digital tools for assignments and discussions. This hybrid approach enhances the learning experience, encouraging collaboration with peers and instructors while leveraging technology for enhanced engagement. Whether we’re pursuing new skills, advancing our careers, or simply expanding our knowledge, online and blended learning have opened up exciting opportunities for lifelong learning and personal growth.

So right on the day 1, we had a discord community as a platform for communication with the classmates, instructor announcement, resource sharing and which proved incredibly useful. That is how I actually got to know about alternate tools for content creation.

The first task of the course was to create a WordPress Blog and write the first blog post on online and blended learning and our own introduction.
Blogging proved to be fantastic way to create a close-knit learners’ community with many benefits. When learners write and share blogs, they can exchange knowledge, experiences, and expertise, enriching everyone’s learning journey. Engaging in blog discussions encourages interaction among community members and builds strong connections, providing support and inspiration. And it was mandatory for all students to read and comment on the posts. This was one good step towards creating inclusive community.

Next assignment was the ADDIE as an instructional design tool. My first ADDIE template was about a module ASAP- Adroit’s soft skills and accent reduction program. The second one was about communication dynamics in Relationships 101 – I built a course profile based on the latter template.

The next step was – creating audio/visual content through Lumi platform is an outstanding tool for online education! It is a user-friendly and interactive platform that enables educators to create engaging content for their students. With Lumi H5P, educators are able to create interactive assessments, presentations, games, and other multimedia activities that make learning enjoyable and efficient. Students can actively participate and learn through hands-on activities, which helps them retain information better. The platform also supports various content types, ensuring versatility in creating lessons that suit different learning styles. What’s even better is that Lumi H5P seamlessly integrates with various Learning Management Systems (LMS), making it easy for educators to share their content with students on existing online learning platforms.

The final assignment was a walkthrough of the entire course prototype. The students had a choice to select the LMS and I chose Google Classroom.
The course prototype is based on a module called The ABC of Image. The full form of ABC is the Attitude, behavior and communication of Image.

The prototype is a reflection of the enormous amount of work that can be done to create flawless classrooms for students regardless of age, place and subject

https://watch.screencastify.com/v/TRk7a1N2ONPTsG8DeNaT

References:

Bates, A.W. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C.: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Hicks, Cat, Emeline Brulé, and Roberta Dombrowski. 2020. “You Have to Put Your Class Online: Simple Things to Think About.” Online resource.

Hamraie, Aimi. 2020. “Accessible Teaching in the Time of COVID-19.” Mapping Access.

https://www.niu.edu/flexteaching/resources/inclusion-equity-and-access-while-teaching-remotely.shtml

Online and blended learning have transformed the way we approach education. With this course of EC&I 834, I have been able to make sense of the depth that the course has. The pandemic era has introduced the knowledge community to a magic approach towards learning which happens with a keystroke. With online learning, we can access a vast array of courses and resources from the comfort of our homes, making education more accessible and flexible than ever before. It has helped us to set our own pace, adapt to various learning styles, and balance other commitments alongside our studies. On the other hand, blended learning combines the best of both worlds, offering the benefits of face-to-face interactions in physical classrooms and the convenience of digital tools for assignments and discussions. This hybrid approach enhances the learning experience, encouraging collaboration with peers and instructors while leveraging technology for enhanced engagement. Whether we’re pursuing new skills, advancing our careers, or simply expanding our knowledge, online and blended learning have opened up exciting opportunities for lifelong learning and personal growth.

So right on the day 1, we had a discord community as a platform for communication with the classmates, instructor announcement, resource sharing and which proved incredibly useful. That is how I actually got to know about alternate tools for content creation.

The first task of the course was to create a WordPress Blog and write the first blog post on online and blended learning and our own introduction.
Blogging proved to be fantastic way to create a close-knit learners’ community with many benefits. When learners write and share blogs, they can exchange knowledge, experiences, and expertise, enriching everyone’s learning journey. Engaging in blog discussions encourages interaction among community members and builds strong connections, providing support and inspiration. And it was mandatory for all students to read and comment on the posts. This was one good step towards creating inclusive community.

Next assignment was the ADDIE as an instructional design tool. My first ADDIE template was about a module ASAP- Adroit’s soft skills and accent reduction program. The second one was about communication dynamics in Relationships 101 – I built a course profile based on the latter template.

The next step was – creating audio/visual content through Lumi platform is an outstanding tool for online education! It is a user-friendly and interactive platform that enables educators to create engaging content for their students. With Lumi H5P, educators are able to create interactive assessments, presentations, games, and other multimedia activities that make learning enjoyable and efficient. Students can actively participate and learn through hands-on activities, which helps them retain information better. The platform also supports various content types, ensuring versatility in creating lessons that suit different learning styles. What’s even better is that Lumi H5P seamlessly integrates with various Learning Management Systems (LMS), making it easy for educators to share their content with students on existing online learning platforms.

The final assignment was a walkthrough of the entire course prototype. The students had a choice to select the LMS and I chose Google Classroom.
The course prototype is based on a module called The ABC of Image. The full form of ABC is the Attitude, behavior and communication of Image.

The prototype is a reflection of the enormous amount of work that can be done to create flawless classrooms for students regardless of age, place and subject

https://watch.screencastify.com/v/TRk7a1N2ONPTsG8DeNaT

References:

Bates, A.W. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C.: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Hicks, Cat, Emeline Brulé, and Roberta Dombrowski. 2020. “You Have to Put Your Class Online: Simple Things to Think About.” Online resource.

Hamraie, Aimi. 2020. “Accessible Teaching in the Time of COVID-19.” Mapping Access.

https://www.niu.edu/flexteaching/resources/inclusion-equity-and-access-while-teaching-remotely.shtml

I’ve personally enjoyed learning about the Online/Blended course creation, the tactics, and tools for producing quality and interesting instructional content etc. The curriculum was organized into a timeline that led us through different phases of course development and promoted group learning activities.

The course began with the basics of online and blended learning over the first few weeks of the course. then all that happened through 4 weeks was a highly intensive course and I wished it was longer. The technology aspect was great and really useful which was interspersed with the instructional design.

What forms of student/student-instructor interactions have you implemented/do you plan to implement in your course prototype (e.g. LMS forums, Flipgrid, blog comments/pingbacks, hashtags, video chats, etc.)?

What justification can you provide for choosing these forms of student interaction?

What guidelines or assessment practices will you adopt to ensure that interactions are meaningful,

The primary task for any teacher/trainer is to create a meaningful and good quality content. An equally daunting task is to make that content interactive and so build a community of learners that communicate within themselves, with the teacher and thus add value for each other. “Community is more than participation; it requires moving from participation to engagement, involvement, and action.”(: 6 Strategies for Building Community in Online Courses – The K. Patricia Cross Academy ) As a teacher/Trainer whenever I am confronted with a task of working on a Training project; my first few steps are: Understanding the Learning Objectives(which means meeting the stakeholders and understanding their point of view), discussing the plan of administering the module with the stakeholders which includes: Planning everything from activities to logistics to arrangement for building collaborative environment between participants and the stakeholders. I ensure this robust partnership between the stakeholders and the participants so that we have a response team in case of any exigency and also to solve any issues that may arise. These issues can be right from flawlessly working hardware, troubleshooting, collaboration, ensuring learning is happenings and participants are engaged and responsive, and finally assessments. Therefore in my work area of Adult education I function like a team rather than an alone teacher who has the complete responsibility of taking the class through a learning experience(which generally happens in Offline class scenarios). Online learning success is definitely based on team work, empathy and knowledge of subject plus the tools(online technology), constant upgradation in technology.

When I undertake any Online learning project; like I mentioned my first and best effort is to create a great content. This happens with the collaboration between myself as a facilitator, Business heads and Human resource key persons. Once the content is decided then I lay out a complete plan of what tools are available and what is my playground like
Few steps that I start with:
*Create a WA group/ FB closed group Page/ or utilize the intranet chat group of their own organization. Mostly WA group is the most handy and easy communication tools for my learners.
*Once a topic is complete; I mostly have participants breakout into rooms for a discussion. This is a useful tool for participants to know each other, be vocal about their ideas in smaller groups, discuss their POVs, build a relationship of approachability. It gradually gives them a feeling of familiarity and they start knowledge and resource sharing.
*The LMS I generally use in my classroom is Google classroom which gives me a leverage to create, share documents, use polls, quizzes, share videos, assessments etc. I also generally keep the task of documentation within the group through Google sheets. We supplement this learning with creating an FB page, where all participants can post the content that supports their learning in some way, some fun facts, chat with fellow classmates, post videos and this always brings about a sense of familiarity and teamwork amongst them.

In one of my courses that I did with students globally where all of them came from different geographies, cultures and background; this way of interacting was not only easy but also useful. A lot of knowledge sharing, a mention of apprehensions & Limitations, humor led to a feeling of belongingness and community.

I also customize a lot of my offline activities that I have been using. I change them to suit my online learning modules. For example in communication skills, I use role plays which I let my participants record in the breakout rooms and then e share the video. That way all groups can do their role plays simultaneously and participate in the final discussion.
We also do a lot of energizers that are suited to online learning scenarios.
doing group case studies in break out rooms and then a discussion in the class is also an effective way of learning concepts and theory
I create Buddy system where people form pairs based on some relevance and take ownership of learning

Another way of knowing more about such hacks for building communities I have always learned by myself being a part of the class(as a student). My learning journey is never ending and I have enjoyed being part of various learning sessions with people from across the world and that has introduced me to various such ways of methodology that facilitates learning.

Having a great content with apt activities to interact and build communities is followed assessments that help gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of my course. I normally use summative assessments with adult learners unless we decide(with stakeholders) about doing pre, mid and post training assessments. The reason of doing one formal assessment is because with adult learners the process of assessments is not limited to formally assessing them. As feedback is a crucial part of training with adult learners therefore the onus of learning is taken jointly by learners and teacher. The development that the learners go through, the skills they acquire also adds to their performance appraisals therefore keeping in mind the time available summative assessments are best suited for my adult learners groups.

Building Community out of a class is a challenge and an ongoing task for every teacher/trainer. This one aspect of learning creates bond and ensures we have Go To resource when we are confronted with issues relating to what we learnt together

Image courtesy: https://fltmag.com/community-online-course/

References

https://kpcrossacademy.org/building-community-in-online-courses/

Ensuring accessibility, inclusion and equity are as important considerations as is the content creation, planning and the course itself. If these factors are not planned well, it can lead to a chaos in the administration of the course, learning and the assessments. With this era of online/blended learning the classrooms have extended in their geographical boundaries. The students can avail learning without thinking about the location of the classroom. Education has become more accessible in the literal sense however to ensure accessibility and equity it is important for the course facilitator to plan it while designing the content. That is also possible only when the facilitator is fair, empathetic and also well trained on the nuances of administering Online/Blended learning courses. This isn’t only true for online learning but also for Face To Face programs. The principles remain the same however with Online learning the triangular teamwork is what drives the course successfully and it can reach the intended audience. As stated by the OECD (Citation2018), “Equity does not mean that all students obtain equal education outcomes, but rather that differences in students’ outcomes are unrelated to their background or to economic and social circumstances over which students have no control” (p. 13). The Warschauer’s (Citation2003) framework highlights the equity concerns that were a result of the “pandemic-induced shift to emergency remote learning”. Equity in learning is a result of the kind of learning environment when “every learner belongs, contributes, and thrives, regardless of race/ethnicity or socio-economic status.”

The course that I have undertaken is a 2 day workshop on Communication in relationships 101 with a corporate for their Middle management managers. This program was done during the Lockdown time of the pandemic era. All the employees were working from home and were in the process of getting used to the new way of work. The audience were from different parts of my country and were almost 50 in nos. The various challenges for doing this online course for me was:
Challenge 1) It was a group from different parts of the country. Some were cosmopolitan areas and others were less developed. Which meant they may be from different society, ethnicity, economic backgrounds- so some liberal some conservatives, may have lower bandwidth, less access to hardware and software, may not have enough space in their house to sit separately. They maybe large families staying in a small house. They may not be technically very proficient.
Solution – To be sensitive towards the participants and give them leverage to put their video off, to join on mobile if the need be, to keep a tap of the attendance and note who are missing. and more important to create content for asynchronous sessions so that in some way the participants can access the learning material and coordinate in case when disruption is unavoidable during synchronous meetings
Challenge 2) It was a very large number for a focused learning outcome however that was the need of the organization and so I had to find out ways to cater to it.
Solution – To plan activities in a way where grouping the participants for activities likewise was fully planned, the content planning along with activities, the timing and also making arrangements for exigencies was an important part of Pre Training Phase. Having a complete Schedule in place and sharing with the Human resource department for a discussion enabled us to depute a team of 3 IT executives to facilitate the program, they also installed a team viewer, Google Classroom so that they could remotely set up everyone’s laptop/PC. The IT department also fixed an orientation to settle the hardware and software with the participants. The participants were used to google docs and Chat by now so choosing google Classroom as the LMS was the appropriate decision. The IT team also prepared an excel sheet that kept a note of the areas that the participants were in, their hardware and software so that they could manage help when needed.
3) Doing 2 full – One-Day Online programs was a very big challenge. Holding the audience for such long spans is practically impossible unless planned well. The 8 hours day was divided into three, 2 hours program with One hour of lunch, 30 min of 2 Tea breaks and a 10 min break after every module. This made the program doable for the participants and the facilitator both. I also earmarked the participants who were more proficient technically and comfortable with the online programs and made groups likewise for different activities.

Before starting the program there were some activity sheets that were also mailed to the participants and while the program went on there were few videos which reinforced the learning, some reflection exercises which helped them reached the outcomes and a list of some online energizing activities that I learned when I attended Tony Robbins Online – Unleash the Power within. Apart from these preparations I was mentally prepared to be empathetic towards the Performance gaps that may appear, socio-economic-disability – special needs gaps. Therefore I was prepared for Screen Off instances, time Out instances, Internet-power outages instances and for which I created asynchronous content, scheduled those in a given timeline and also used audio plus visual tools for similar content.

It was humongous planning for a program that had to succeed. And the time put in panning was completely worth it. We did face all the issues that I listed however we were also prepared for the same and all in all it was a successful plana and program

Reference:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00461520.2022.2062597

One of the most interesting quotes on communication that I have read is by Paul Watzlawick: You cannot not communicate. He has done some good work in the field of Schizophrenia and theories of communication. What intrigues me the most is this, ““Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa. And the most dangerous delusion of all is that there is only one reality.”
– Paul Watzlawick” The whole Neuro linguistic programming concept also refers to the fact that The Map is not the Territory. My favorite area of study is – how we communicate inside us and with the outside world. What we do, how we do is what affects the outcome. Fortunately for me as facilitator and life coach there is a lot of opportunity everywhere. This subject or skill is one of the most sought after skills for adults in every sphere of life whether personal or professional. Therefore today my topic of the blog post is not only on Communication but also the new H5P methodology of creating interesting and meaningful content. The video projects a relationship, the dynamics involved in it and how we can choose to be non judgmental and more interested and curious. How we interpret based on the different filters of values, beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, habits, memory etc. and how stubbornly we stick to the reality that we create.

I facilitate adult learning sessions in communication both for the professionals and others. This clip of communication is based on relationship scenarios. As a life coach I come across a lot of such interactions between couples, families, friends and these videos can be an eye opener. They have the visual, auditory and kinesthetic abilities to appeal to different people who process information differently.

Communication process in every situation is about transmitting information- knowingly or unknowingly. In our social circle we everyday send messages to people and receive messages from them. Mostly our communication consists of talking about people, work, coordinating schedules, “What time will you go for grocery?” or maybe negotiating; who will do a certain task, who will manage expenses; how about certain duties etc. In communicating such tangible expectations we also transmit feelings like: I don’t like you; I hate when you do this; why do you act pricy; who do you think you are; you are——-

The process of Communication, that shows the different dynamics has been a part of curriculum for all the management students atleast and has infact become a clichéd model. However it is important to take it up because it shows how different components in communication can steer the whole scenario in an intended or unintended way. The sender acts based on their perceptions, values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, habits and memories and the receiver of that message receives in their own perceptions, values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, habits and memories. This exchange happens through different chosen channels like written notes, letters, mails, phone call, or maybe simply through exchange of glances, music, fragrances, facial expressions. Sometimes these ways of communication may not clearly convey the internal intended communication and may rather convey what was unintended. Another major breakdown can happen when both the sender and receiver are communicating and blowing their own trumpets without waiting for the response- The feedback. Once they take out time from out of their assumptions, perceptions, and adopt an empathetic attitude, suspend judgement and are more curious and interested in the other person and seek feedback on what they intended, that is when everything starts falling in place.

This video is an interactive way of presenting what we everyday do in our relationships with people. How we assume, judge and perceive based on our core systems and take it as a reality. Creating stories like this on videos and interspersing it with concepts is a great way of teaching and will be useful for me as a facilitator because I am planning to begin my own channel and having videos like this will add value to my content. I can also use such videos for my learning sessions, especially blendid learning. I can use them very well for my asynchronous sessions and then take up in In-person workshops. I have a list of experiential games that I conduct in classroom or in spacious setting and then I debrief the outcome, where we translate the learning in the workplace. So these sessions are going to be extremely useful for my adult learners. Therefore the video that I have shared is about a relationship that has its own dynamics and how it moves ahead is also an interesting process. The next step in this learning continues with the next video of the series: The map is not the territory

Please take a look at the video that I have made despite all the technical hitches I faced. This being the first video may not be as refined as my upcoming videos will be in future.

https://app.Lumi.education/run/ztEJ55