Blending In: Returning to the Classroom by Mini-Blending Your Class

Schools, colleges, universities and training organizations are planning to return instructors and students to the classroom. Most often the plan is to move from remote instruction to blended instruction. The idea of blended has at least two meanings: Students will be blended -- Some students will opt to come to the face-to-face classroom and some will want to learn remotely – so student attendance will be blended. Instruction will be blended – some instructional content will be delivered face-to-face and remotely, and some only remotely. This zoominar will explain one of the most popular ways to blend a course. The technique is called flipping your class, or more appropriately MINI-flipping your class. MINI-flipping involves identifying single concept, building blocks of course content, and recording that content for remote delivery. Face-to-face sessions, whether with the entire class enrollment or in a divided class, is then reserved for discussions and explanations--approaches that work nicely when social distancing is required. The zoominar will be short – 30 minutes – and will provide an explanation of the mini-blending process, including links to five short “homework” videos that provide in-depth information about mini-blending process. Michael Simonson is a long-time professor in the Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice at Nova Southeastern University in the Instructional Technology and Distance Education program. Simonson has authored four major textbooks dealing with distance education, instructional technology, instructional computing, and instructional media. His two most recent books received first place book awards from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Mike has over 200 scholarly publications, and in excess of 250 professional presentations dealing with distance education and instructional technology, and how to deliver instruction at a distance. Dr. Simonson is founding editor of the Quarterly Review of Distance Education, Distance Learning Journal, and Proceedings of Papers presented at the Annual Conventions of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Also, Dr. Simonson was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps at the rank of captain