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Issues: blending online and face-to-face teaching.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

While technology allows us to provide varied modes of instruction to students, the dilemma of how much is too much should not be ignored. The responsibility that university teaching brings with it includes maintaining the integrity of the experience for students and not just adding technological hoops for them to navigate. Five specific issues involving the use of technology to take the place of face to face in class interactions in blended formats are discussed. Caution is recommended even as the benefits of technology are recognized.

Introduction

As I move through the adoption of teaching methodologies in our teacher education program that involve the use of more and more technological mediation, it becomes clear that there are serious consequences that not only affect students and their learning but also affect that which makes up the central feature of a teaching professor's professional life. Teaching is a social enterprise that is dependent on active interactions that include opportunities for the teacher to get to know students, observe them and make adjustments that will clarify expectations and maximize learning. As Creed (1997) maintains, "Electronic communication without student learning in mind can be just one more technological hoop for students to jump through" (p. 170). It's that hoop jumping that is problematic, not only for my students, but for myself as well. So as demands and commands to use more technology, more online components, and take up less of the classroom space required when meeting students regularly face to face increase, concerns mount regarding potential consequences for everyone involved. These concerns are echoed in the literature by Al-Bataineh, Brooks and Bassoppo-Moyo (2005), Bennett and Lockyer (2004), Bibeau (2001), Burge (1999), and Maheesh and McIsaac (1999) and McShane (2004).

There is no shortage of proponents of technology as valuable, sensible and useful in meeting the needs of many students, reaching students for whom travel to campus is difficult, or who need learning opportunities at times that transcend traditional course schedules (Creed, 1997; Miller & Mei-Yar, 2003). As I become familiar with techniques and processes that the latest technological advances on my campus afford me, I can see some of these benefits even as...

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