The perfect blend – an analogy between cocktails and blended learning

Designing a blended learning course is much like mixing a cocktail. You have never mixed a cocktail before? Well here we go:

1. Select the recipe (Cocktail or Longdrink, alcoholic or non-alcoholic).
2. Organize the equipment and the ingredients.
3. Mix the cocktail.
4. Maybe add some decoration.
5. Enjoy the cocktail.

So basically, this quite corresponds to the steps you follow to design your blended learning course. And thankfully we can use frameworks to guide us through this process in order to make sure that we are able to design a perfect learning journey to support our course goals and a student-centered learning approach.

First, we start by choosing our recipe. When it comes down to the definition of blended learning, there are plenty of to choose from. I personally felt a link to the definition from the International Association of Blended Learning that Marti Cleveland-Innes introduced to us in her Webinar for the ONL211:

“Blended learning is an educational approach, which integrates face-to-face classroom practices with online and mobile delivery methods. It aims to provide the learner with a well-planned, managed, and well-structured teacher-facilitated interactive learning environment, where high quality content, activities, and experiences can be customized to learner needs and preferences, unrestricted by time and location.” [1]

But in order to know what accessories and ingredients I need to choose to design my blended learning experience, it is helpful to make use of a framework to support us in our designing task.

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) is a theoretical framework that implies, “that higher education is both a collaborative and an individually constructivist learning experience.” [2] In order to be able to create this collaborative and constructivist learning experience, the CoI framework introduces three connecting elements that are to be considered in the design process – social, cognitive and teaching presence.

Well now, we start the mixing part of our cocktail. While we learned that it is necessary to make sure to consider the three presences as they connect and influence each other, we start looking at the social presence. Social presence with focus on the student aims on community building to trigger the feeling of being part of the group, it supports communication and discussion as part of the learning process, and it puts an emphasis on building relationships.

As for the cognitive presence it dedicates itself to trigger interests and attention to establish inquiry dynamics, it fosters exploration and critical discussions and also spends time on critical reflection and feedback.

The teaching presence is not meant to be a teacher’s presence but focuses on course design and direct instructions in order to shape the curriculum and methods that for example aim for clarity of requirements and flexibility for the learners.  Also, it is the teachers responsibility to facilitate the discourse by giving feedback on a regular basis, keeping the student engaged or also to further support the community thinking.

Well and sometimes you add a little decoration to your cocktail in order to spice it up. What we could do to spice up our blended learning design is to add another framework. The 5-Stage-Modell by Gilly Salmon aims at supporting learners (and teachers) through a five staged structured development process. It offers support and development possibilities at every stage as the learners step by step build up their expertise in learning online. [3]

But yes, before we start digging deeper, we just sit down and now enjoy our cocktail. And yes, do not forget to evaluate your cocktail. Maybe next time you want to adjust an ingredient or the mixing to make the cocktail taste even better!

Cheers!

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[1] https://iabl.org/Vision-and-Mission (07.05.2021)

[2] Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Edmonton: AU Press.

[3] https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html