Over a very short and ambitious timeline this past spring and summer, ASU Preparatory Academy developed a blended learning model to start a new school in a small community. With two successful brick-and-mortar schools, we had great philosophy and culture elements in place, but the blended model was a new opportunity for us to offer optimum environments for students. Through this project we learned many things, but there are five aspects in particular we find valuable to share: Curriculum: When building your blended curriculum, recognize that it can be beneficial to find a flexible format. For ASU Prep, we use the Cambridge International Curriculum, which doesn’t have its own online courseware. Thus, we developed our own materials "mashed-up" with some digital resources offered by third parties. Look for partners that allow you to be flexible with the content to meet your needs. Additionally, look for curriculum choices that give students opportunities for personal choice. Design: We created a blended school environment in a space that was designed for hotel conferences. All choices that we made with furniture and technology served the greater purpose of creating blended learning ready classrooms. For example, all desks easily move. Adequate power is available throughout the room for student laptops. Rather than invest in board space, we invested in technology tools for sharing screens digitally. Teachers don’t have desks, and there is no clear "front of the room." This helps both teachers and students understand the differences in a blended learning model. Scheduling: Think outside the traditional bell schedule structure in addition to the grade level structure. Our juniors and seniors blend together for all courses, even when the content is different. Through small group, targeted instruction, students can be in different classes in the same classroom but still have high teacher and peer interaction. For electives, use digital curriculum to allow for more choices for students. Think about ways that students could benefit from Learning Lab or Independent Learning off campus because of the availability of their coursework online. Learning Success Coach: Students are experiencing a different type of learning environment, and the staff that support them must think outside traditional roles of schools. At our blended learning campus, we have a small staff but high number of course offerings thanks to partnering with Florida Virtual in our first year. We utilize Learning Success Coaches to help students be successful in online coursework, to engage families, and to provide general life coaching and college preparation support. Professional Development: Since teachers are heavily engaged in the LMS (learning management system) as the platform for our blended learning environment, we try to offer many just-in-time online resources in the LMS to continually advance our teacher professionalism and leadership. In addition, the flexible student scheduling with Independent Learning off campus opens additional time for teacher collaboration on site. Finally, in the first year of our blended learning program, we were able to develop the role of a Subject Matter Expert Mentor Teacher who was 50% engaged in digital curriculum development and 50% engaged in helping to manage all the new learning and teacher professional development on site. Are you interested in starting a blended learning program at your campus? We would love to talk more about the successes, lessons learned, or professional development resources. Contact me at [email protected] to innovate together.
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AuthorJohn Sharp is the ASU Preparatory Academy Director of Curriculum and Professional Development Archives
May 2017
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