Blended Learning in the World Languages Classroom

Last semester, I taught an online class for the first time through Virtual High School. I learned so much from that experience that I have become inspired to convert my face-to-face class to a blended learning environment. My supportive principal and department chair gave me the thumbs up, so here I go. We "went blended" this week. I will let you know how it goes as the semester goes on.

So why blended? The most important thing I learned by teaching online is how transformative it is for students when the teacher hands over the power to them to direct their own learning. Sure, I'd read all the books and listened to all the speakers saying how important student-directed learning is. But I never really knew how to do that in my own classroom. Certainly we had projects in which the students could exercise some control, but when the project ended, so did the self-directed learning. How to apply that theory to every day teaching was harder than I expected it to be. In online teaching, the teacher has to be the "guide on the side". The content is not provided by the teacher. It's provided by the course. So the teacher is forced to abandon the abandon the role of purveyor of information. Talk about transformative!

The first couple of weeks was very disorienting as I learned my new role. But once I got the hang of it, I saw the value of this type of learning model for students. And the more I allowed them the freedom to choose their own direction within the confines of a certain topic, the more they learned. I finally saw what I had been missing - that it's about what students take away from the course; not what we think we are covering.

Fortunately, my school also sees the value of this type of learning and gladly approved of my project. Actually, my class - a Level 3 French class - is not truly blended, as by definition a blended class is one in which 30% to 70% of the instruction is delivered online. In my class, we meet face to face four times a week and online once a week. So it's only 20% online. But it's a good start. We're using Schoology as our LMS (Learning Management System) and each week, the students have several assignments which must be posted there. Some are individual and others are collaborative. In fact, that was one exciting discovery for me - that students could actually collaborate outside of class on an assignment due the next day. What a help for me!

In our "experiment" we started by allowing the students to be in one of 3 approved locations on campus during the online class period. If they prove responsible enough, they will earn the freedom of more possible locations during that time period.

We started yesterday and the kids loved it and did well. So stay tuned! I'll keep you posted.