In case you don’t know, Camosun offers a Blended Facilitating Learning Online workshop – and not only do we offer it, we designed it! In this post we are going to tell you a little bit about how this special workshop came to be and invite you to become a participant this fall.
History of the Facilitating Learning Online WorkshopsÂ
The Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) workshop series originated with Royal Roads University many years ago. You may know that Royal Roads is mostly a distance learning institution, and the FLO series was designed to support the many faculty teaching from afar, but perhaps not experienced with online teaching. Over time, the series, which was Creative Commons (CC) licensed, was picked up by BCcampus and run at a provincial level. Â
FLO focuses on research-based “adult and online learning concepts, principles, and strategies,” and gives participants opportunities to experience what it is like to be a learner in an online environment, to facilitate learning activities, and experiment with teaching and learning strategies.Â
The first course on the series is FLO Fundamentals, which supports learning to plan and facilitate learning in a completely asynchronous mode. Over time, FLO Synchronous was added to address synchronous facilitation, a FLO Design which explores designing online learning and engagement, a number of one-week micro courses concentrating on specific aspects of facilitating online learning, and short one-hour sessions called FLO:Fridays.
Why did Camosun develop FLO Blended?
After adapting and running both FLO Fundamentals and FLO Synchronous at Camosun during and after the pandemic, there seemed to be an important one missing – one that would address the post-pandemic need for blended or hybrid courses. When faculty and students returned to in-person learning after almost two years of online (and some argue more flexible) learning, many students wanted to hold onto the flexible options they had enjoyed during the shift to online. And, while many instructors longed to come back to the classroom, many of them also wanted to continue to take advantage of their new online teaching skills even when teaching a course that was primarily face-to-face. Hence, the desire for blended courses that could meet this emerging need.Â
What we did
So, we, Robin Fast and Emily Schudel who are both part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, decided to design a Blended FLO workshop for Camosun College (which we would CC license and ultimately share out to the broader education community). Of course, this would be a different kind of FLO because we were working from the assumption that “blended” would mean having an in-person component, whereas other FLO offerings are completely online. But we also saw blended as the best of both worlds, so to speak, and the best option to support faculty wanting to give their students a bit more flexibility (and also to relieve the pressure of classroom space at the college, among other things).
Our preparation led us down a few interesting rabbit holes as we grappled with how blended learning is defined (There are many opinions to choose from!); what guiding principles to consider when planning a blended-learning course; what instructors and students have found to be the biggest challenges and benefits; and ways instructors ensure students have a seamless, integrated experience when they move between modes throughout a course. We consolidated what we found and created opportunities during FLO Blended for participants to share their own insights.Â
And, once we had settled on answers to these questions, we did our best to integrate them into our course design. FLO participants needed a well designed blended course experience while they explored how they would create their own.Â
One of the best resources we found were Camosun faculty already engaged in teaching in a blended format. Robin interviewed several of our colleagues from different schools and disciplines about their experiences and we included video clips from these interviews throughout the course. (You can view these videos here. You may recognize a few faces.)
We completed a peer review of the draft Blended FLO workshop in February, 2022 (Thanks team!), made adjustments based on feedback, and planned for our first offering of FLO Blended in the Spring of 2022. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the registration numbers we needed and had to delay until the following year. It was clear: faculty were tired! We’d all just come out the otherside – or hoped we had- of two years of stop-start-adapt-pivot-learn-breath-rest-keep-moving Covid weirdness. The course would need to wait.Â
Our Experience with Blended FLO
In the spring of 2023, happily, we had our first group of FLO Blended participants signed up and ready to go! Facilitating the course was such an uplifting experience! Participants brought a wealth of knowledge, enthusiasm, questions, concerns, hopes, and lots of laughter! They designed blended-learning lessons and delivered them to each other, giving and receiving feedback, making adjustments, and hashing out how to create the best experience for their students. And we all had fun and exciting conversations about teaching (and not just in a blended environment!)
The feedback from participants was very positive. They appreciated the clear organization and ongoing guidance, the supportive community that was created, the immense value of giving and receiving feedback from facilitators and peers, and how the course activities brought the blended-learning strategies to life. Some of the comments they made were:
“Practicing with 2 mini-lessons was incredibly useful so we could take the feedback from the first mini-lesson and integrate it into the second. Additionally, participating in other sessions brought other strategies to life, and helped me reflect on my own practice.”
“Amazing organization, people, interaction, wisdom. Very clear guidance. Supportive community, new ideas (like a really good buffet). Great teamwork, inspiring, thoughtful…good reflection tools and ideas.”
“I look forward to more courses on this topic, and I also recognize that at this point my program doesn’t have a lot of opportunities for blended learning. Now that I actually know what it is I feel much more confident in discussions with my Dean and colleagues.”
“I found this course rich in learning outcomes, but also demanding, more so than I expected. I loved the icebreakers and in-person discussions, and the follow-up summaries!”
“I really loved the interdisciplinary approach – learned a lot from different faculty for methods of delivery! I also really appreciate the in-person discussions and the free flow that came from those discussions.”
Plans for the Future
We will be offering FLO Blended again in Fall 2023, but this time we will stretch the course over six weeks to give a bit more time for participants to work through the material and plan and deliver their lessons (knowing that they will likely be teaching at the same time as taking the Blended FLO). We also plan to publish the course on an open resource to make it, at least the non-interactive portion, more easily available. Stay tuned for more!
Interested in taking the Blended FLO at Camosun? Find out more and/or register on our website, or contact Robin Fast (fast@camosun.ca) or Emily Schudel (schudele@camosun.ca).