Chapter 2 | Design and Organization

Considering Design

Our goal in this chapter is to address questions related to the design of a blended Community of Inquiry that supports interaction and collaboration in constructing meaning and understanding. More specifically, how do we design an educational experience that combines the potential for asynchronous online and synchronous face-to-face discourse in a reflective manner that provides the time to think deeply and not rush through enormous amounts of content? The challenge of designing a blended learning experience is balancing the flexibility and freedom of online learning with the expert guidance found in a purposeful face-to-face learning environment.

The central challenge of a blended design rests on the thoughtful combination of the resources of the internet and the culture of collaborative inquiry in higher education. In addition, Boelens et al. (2017) have identified four key blended learning design challenges based upon a systematic review of the research literature on education: incorporating flexibility, stimulating interaction, facilitating students’ learning processes, and fostering an affective learning climate. Thus, design is a planning process that considers the many content and process issues related to the intended learning outcomes. This process inevitably will prove to be more effective and efficient when guided by a coherent framework and shaped by design principles. The first two principles, grounded in the CoI framework, relate to the design and organization of a blended learning course: design for open communication and trust that will create a learning community and design for critical reflection and discourse that will support inquiry.

The first principle of practice is the need to establish a social presence that will support open communication and the development of cohesive group identity. Social presence mediates between teaching and cognitive processes and has been shown to be associated with perceived learning and persistence (Eom & Arbaugh, 2011). The primary goal is to create a climate that encourages and supports open communication through a sense of belonging and trust.

The second principle focuses on the planning of the learning experience itself. The first task is the selection of subject matter, resources, and associated activities. This can be a daunting challenge if we are to encourage deep and meaningful approaches to learning and not overburden students with content and assignments. Please remember the saying “less is more,” and focus on conceptual understanding versus content coverage. Gooblar (2021, para. 10) advocates this approach in “Our Slimmed-Down Pandemic Pedagogy”: “I would much rather my students read one chapter closely, so that they’re able to understand its central concepts and discuss them in class, than skim three chapters and barely remember what they read. I’d rather they put their energies into completing a two-page assignment that engages their abilities in a manageable amount of time than struggle to finish a 10-page paper that brings them more anxiety than knowledge.” Designing and organizing a blended course is likely to be more complex and time-consuming than designing a conventional classroom experience. Thinking through the structure, process, and assessment aspects of a blended course raises special challenges. We recommend planning and structuring a blended course by following the phases of the Practical Inquiry model (Garrison et al., 2001). It starts with identifying and defining the challenges associated with a blended course (triggering events). Next we strongly recommend designing your blended learning course in collaboration with a teaching colleague and/or a learning specialist such as an instructional designer. A collaborative approach during the exploration and integration phases can encourage creative ideas and lead to an innovative course design. Finally, the initial design needs to be considered a prototype that will require an iterative process of testing and revision.

Particular macro components to consider in the design of a blended course are

• • establishing a curriculum;
• • identifying resources;
• • defining clear expectations and goals (process and content);
• • addressing technological concerns;
• • structuring activities (collaborative and individual);
• • setting time frames; and
• • devising assessment processes and instruments.

Fortunately, there is a variety of high-quality online resources to support the design process of a blended course. Several that we recommend include the University of Calgary’s (2022) Blended and Online Learning Resources, the University of Central Florida’s (2022) Blended Learning Toolkit, the University of Ottawa’s (2022) Blended Toolbox, the University of Wisconsin—Madison’s (2022) Blended Learning Toolkit, and Cleveland-Innes and Wilton’s (2018) Guide to Blended Learning. In addition, we have created a planning template that teachers can use to design their blended learning courses (see Appendix A or find a digital template that you can print or make a copy at https://tinyurl.com/blendedcoursetemplate).

The key is to begin the design process with the end in mind. What do you want students to take away from your blended course (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998)? How will you constructively align the course learning outcomes with your assessment plans and integration of before, during, and after learning activities (Biggs, 1996)? The following box provides a visual representation of this blended learning design process.

Chiang and Wu (2021) have developed a similar framework that they refer to as a three-stage collaborative instructional model (3-CI). This approach integrates pre-class, in-class, and after-class activities and invites students to participate in curriculum implementation and decision making. Their model is an important reminder that designing for collaborative learning in a blended environment is a dynamic and ongoing process. Design issues will continually present themselves as the needs and interests of the Community of Inquiry evolve. Even with the fluid nature of the inquiry, a well-designed course framework will provide greater flexibility at the outset in adjusting to the evolving needs and interests of the community.

In addition, Cleveland-Innes and Dell have developed an open educational resource tool called the Community of Inquiry: Teacher Self-Assessment and Exploration Tool to help in the design, facilitation, and direction of a blended or online course. This tool allows teachers to become practically acquainted with the component parts of the CoI framework while self-assessing indicators of cognitive, social, and teaching presence in their courses. We have created a Google Docs template for this CoI—the Teacher and Self-Assessment Tool—that we invite others to use (see https://tinyurl.com/coiteacher). The tool consists of five columns. The first column is a behavioural indicator related to one of the three CoI presences (cognitive, teaching, and social). The second column allows teachers to rate how the designs of their courses relate to a specific behaviour. The third and fourth columns provide information for teachers to develop a deeper understanding of the learning theory that is the foundation of the CoI framework. The fifth column provides space for teachers to make notes and be explicit about how they are designing and organizing their blended courses for each indicator. A modified version of this tool can be found in Appendix B.

In this chapter, we focus on designing not only for collaborative learning but also for relevance so that students have a sense of curiosity about and connectedness to the learning outcomes for a blended course (Littky & Grabelle, 2004). We describe design strategies and examples that foster the development of cognitive and social presence in a blended course. These activities include the creation of an online needs assessment survey; storytelling; an online discussion forum to share thoughts relevant to intended learning outcomes; the use of digital technologies to clarify course expectations; the use of blogs, concept maps, and a CoI self-assessment tool to help students set their own learning goals and track their progress; and a process for designing effective teamwork.

Online Needs Assessment Survey and Discussion

Students bring prior learning experiences and expectations to all courses in higher education. It is important to gauge those experiences and expectations at the outset of a course. In a blended environment, this can be accomplished by having the students complete an anonymous online needs assessment survey in which they are asked about their expectations of the course. Questions could include the following.

• • What are your goals for this course? Bottom line, what do you want to “take away” from your course experience?
• • What do you expect will happen during the class sessions? What will the professor do in class, and what will you do?
• • What type of work do you expect to do, if any, outside the classroom for this course?
• • How do you think your learning in this course will be assessed?
• • What type(s) of assistance with your learning do you expect to receive in this course and from whom?

This online survey can be constructed using applications such as Google Forms (Google 2022b), SurveyMonkey (2022), or the survey tool in your institution’s learning management system. The key is to share and discuss the survey results with the students during the first synchronous class. The teacher can assign the students to small groups that discuss and synthesize the results of a specific question and then share their key findings with the entire class.

For smaller classes, an alternative to the online survey would be to send out an introductory email with a list of the five questions for students to answer confidentially. You can then digitally compile the results anonymously and review them in the first class so that students can see how they share common hopes for, challenges of, and concerns about the course.

The focus of both approaches is to provide students with an opportunity to co-construct a set of engagement guidelines (rather than rules) that will help to foster open communication and trust that will enable the creation of a learning community. Salhab et al. (2021) have proposed a code of ethics for online learning during a crisis that can be used to guide this process. Through their research, they have developed the following four online ethical principles:

• • respect for and protection of digital dignity;
• • commitment to the profession;
• • commitment to the online education system; and
• • teachers’ and students’ rights and responsibilities within an online learning environment.

Storytelling and the CoI Framework

Everyone has stories to tell, and storytelling can contribute to key social presence elements such as inclusion, connection, and the beginning of a class community (Health Foundation, 2016). Bashovski (2021) stresses how important storytelling is in the process of building a learning community. Ali (2017) suggests that storytelling can help to create “brave” spaces for inclusion and diversity in a blended course. She suggests that some key guidelines that promote the most productive brave spaces are “controversy with civility,” “owning intentions and impacts,” “challenge by choice,” “respect,” and “no attacks” (pp. 3–4). She asserts that these ideas are not hard to implement if they are reinforced through storytelling, the design of the course, the syllabus, and the co-creation of engagement guidelines for the course.

Storytelling has played a central role in passing on certain Indigenous oral histories and teachings. Blackfoot Elder Little Bear (2012) indicates that the power of storytelling is that, each time we tell or hear a story, we learn something new. It is an upward spiral of learning. The Indigenous resource Sharing through Story from the Alberta Regional Consortia (2022) also describes how stories can empower students who often feel marginalized in formal educational settings.

During the first week of the course, students can engage in a storytelling exercise in which each reflects on an event that was a compelling learning experience—it might or might not have been related to school. The teacher can create a series of online discussion forums in the course learning management system and then randomly assign four or five students to each forum. First, have the students share their learning experiences in small groups and discuss why they were powerful. Second, debrief as a whole class on what makes the learning experiences powerful and then, using the CoI framework (see Figure 1.1), co-create a set of engagement guidelines for the course.

These discussions should focus on students’ roles and responsibilities in a blended learning environment. Encourage students to have conversations about past learning challenges and advice on overcoming them, such as sharing study and time management strategies. It is important to emphasize teaching versus teacher presence.

In addition, these initial discussions can help students to share and develop mindfulness practices. Palalas et al. (2020) indicate that students often feel a sense of isolation in blended and online courses and that shared mindfulness practices can help them to overcome this issue. They define “mindfulness” as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment” (p. 247). They further indicate that this practice can help students to deal with the pressures stemming from the competing responsibilities and emotional demands of being online learners by developing self-regulated learning skills.

Their case study indicates that the key mindfulness-supported habits that positively affect “the forethought, performance, and self-reflection processes were enhanced intrinsic motivation, self-awareness, and a mindful approach to time management” (Palalas et al., 2020, p. 247). However, Austen Kay (2021) reminds us that online mindfulness training is not a panacea for student well-being. He recommends that “it should be seen as one part—albeit a promising one—of a broader strategy for helping students cope with the emotional and psychological consequences of online education in a time of COVID-19” (final para.).

Everyone in the course will be involved in the design, facilitation, and direction of this shared learning experience. The following box provides an example of co-constructed guidelines for online discussion forums in a course.

It is also crucial to make the Practical Inquiry model explicit for online discussions and course assignments (see Figure 2.1). In Chapter 4, “Direct Instruction,” we describe how students can use the PI model to code and track their own discussion forum posts.

The key is to make the CoI framework and PI model explicit to students through experiential activities at the outset of a blended course. Explicit introduction of the model allows students to begin to internalize and verbalize the practices associated with our seven principles.

Clarifying Course Learning Outcomes

During the first synchronous session, teachers often review the course outline/syllabus with their students in a lecture format. Unfortunately, this often results in the “in one ear and out the other ear” syndrome. Students do not have the opportunity to discuss and question the expectations of the course. We recommend the following course outline activity. First, randomly place students in teams of approximately four or five students. Each team is responsible for generating at least three questions related to the course outline. These questions can be recorded digitally in applications such as Google Docs (Google 2022a), Padlet (2022), or Google Jamboard (Google 2022c). Depending on the number of students in the class, each team presents its questions, and the teacher responds (see the text box below). For larger classes, teachers are encouraged to aggregate digitally and theme responses to the student questions after the first class and then present and discuss the results in the next class.

Goal Setting

Once students are clear about the expectations and learning outcomes of a blended course, it is important that they establish their own learning goals and strategies to achieve them. Teachers can design this process by having students use applications such as Google’s Blogger (2022) and WordPress (2022) to create reflective learning journals for the course. In their first posts, students can identify their personal learning goals for the course or program (see the text box below).

Our experience suggests that students have limited prior experience with goal setting and thus require guidance and support in this process. We recommend using the SMART goal approach (Bjerke & Renger, 2017). SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely goal setting.

We recommend that students select critical friend(s) responsible for providing them with constructive feedback and support on the course assignments, such as replying to a blog post about personal learning goals. The critical friend process is a key first step for shared metacognition, which we discuss in more detail in Chapter 3.

An extension to this activity is to have the students generate a set of collaborative goals for the course. Have them create goals in small teams and then digitally compile the results for the entire class. If the list of goals becomes too long, then the students could vote on their top five or 10 using crowdsourcing or voting software applications such as Poll Everywhere (2022) or Mentimeter (Menti, 2022).

Concept Mapping

As we indicated at the beginning of this chapter, “less is more,” and the focus of the learning outcomes for a blended course should be on conceptual understanding rather than on content coverage. Thus, concept mapping can be a valuable activity to help students document and track their conceptual growth in a blended course (Figure 2.2). Concept maps are tools for organizing and representing knowledge (Novak & Cañas, 2008). A variety of digital technologies can be used for this process. We recommend applications such as Cmap (2022), Coggle (2022), Lucidspark (2022), Miro (2022a), Popplet (2022), or Sketchboard (2022). They are free web-based tools that students can access on a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

At the beginning of a blended course, have students use one of these applications to create a digital concept map containing the course’s key concepts or learning outcomes. The next step is to ask students to add links to nodes of prior experience with and knowledge of the core concepts. Then throughout the course have designated checkpoints at which students are required to add links to new nodes of knowledge and experience that they are acquiring related to the key concepts. By the end of the course, the students will have created unique visual representations of their acquired knowledge, which they can then articulate further in a reflective writing exercise such as a final course synthesis (Entwistle, 2003).

Students can also use concept maps to create class notes and to design and organize class projects. Brigham Young University (2022) and the University of Waterloo (2022a) provide excellent online resources on other ways that concept maps can be used effectively in blended courses.

Community of Inquiry: Student Self-Assessment Tool

In addition to concept mapping, we have developed a Community of Inquiry: Student Self-Assessment Tool. We have created a Google Docs template for this tool that we invite others to use (see https://tinyurl.com/coistudent). This tool has been designed to help students make practical connections to the CoI framework throughout a course. Similar to the Community of Inquiry: Teacher Self-Assessment and Exploration Tool, the application consists of five columns. The first column is a behavioural indicator related to one of the three CoI presences (cognitive, teaching, and social). The second column allows the students to rate their behaviour at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the course. The third and fourth columns provide information for students to develop a deeper understanding of the learning theory that is the foundation of the CoI framework. The fifth column provides space for students to reflect on and document their development throughout a course. A modified version of this tool can be found in Appendix C.

Designing for Student Group Work

In the next chapter, on facilitation, we provide more details on the formation of student teams, but it is important to have a planning template for this sort of learning activity. We recommend using the IDOARRT design template (Hyper Island, 2022). IDOARRT is the acronym for intention, desired outcome, agenda, rules, roles and responsibilities, and time. It is a simple format to help students engage effectively in teamwork by setting out a clear purpose, a structure, and goals at the beginning of the process.

The results of this design process can be recorded digitally in Google Docs (Google, 2022a) or an online template from the collaborative whiteboard application Miro (2022b). In addition, Miro (2022c) has developed a guide to help students learn to collaborate in blended or hybrid environments. This handbook consists of chapters on engagement and inclusivity, continuous collaboration, alignment, and tying it all together.

Conclusion

For a blended course, it is important to design and scaffold learning activities that support shared thinking and learning (shared metacognition) with an ethic of care for inclusivity (socio-emotional presence). It is important to keep in mind that creating a learning community takes time, so repetition and patience are important. To keep learners engaged and progressing toward intended learning outcomes necessitates leadership, specifically in facilitation. In the next chapter, we explore facilitation strategies and activities for creating and sustaining a community of inquiry in a blended course.