Blended Learning: A Teacher's Personal Experience of Coming Face to Face with Online Learning

This paper describes a series of personal experiences of teaching adults, who were studying part-time, on a course of study leading to a foundation degree in Learning Support. The students are mature professional practitioners who work in primary and secondary school settings mostly as teaching assistants, and who support classroom teachers in the delivery of the curriculum. The methodology used in this inquiry combines small-scale qualitative action research supported by an online quantitative questionnaire. My account draws together a range of reflections on practice as a module leader responsible for the design, delivery and assessment of a module using face-to-face delivery combined with asynchronous online support via a WebCT learning platform. My intention in writing this paper is to share my experiences with other University tutors who use these combined delivery methods, and offer a variety of considerations when designing and delivering material online that may help other academics in similar situations. As the paper’s title suggests, it is not enough to assume that curriculum design for face-toface delivery will satisfy the needs of blended learning, even when the actual curriculum content and outcomes are the same.