In Practice

Blended Learning, briefly stated, is the well-thought-out combination of complementary and mutually reinforcing online and face-to-face activities, which can increase learning efficiency and student motivation. At the same time, Blended Learning can also bring about cost reductions. Successful implementation of Blended Learning requires craftsmanship when it comes to facilitating interactions between management, teachers and students. Here you will find various examples of Blended Learning in practice divided over the themes: Portfolios, Peer Feedback, Knowledge Clips and Virtual Reality. The involved teachers reflect on their redesigned Blended Learning courses, while students explain how they experienced this novel educational method. You can watch videos containing the reactions of participants in the Blended Learning pilots, lessons learned and best practices are also discussed.

Portfolios

Two pilots made use of working with portfolios in different ways.

I. Hendrik-Jan Trooster (Hogeschool van Amsterdam)

“I develop a curriculum on social entrepreneurship where second year students can start building their social enterprises and keep doing that until graduation. For this, I use a digital learning environment”.

Lessons Learned

Don’t overestimate students’ skills in using blended learning tools. Actively involve students in developing the programme. Create space to experiment


Best Practices

Entrepreneurial learning has to be organised independently of time and space. Therefore, blended learning provides an enormous opportunity to organise this type of education in the most flexible way possible


II. Nienke Eijsink (Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten)

“I teach film, photography and installation art at the Breitner Academy. I hope to learn how to create a blended programme regarding entrepreneurship in a joint profession: artist and teacher”.

Lessons Learned

The students have been given a lot of room for independent work.

This was greatly appreciated, but at some point, I also noticed that some students were ahead, while others were lagged behind. This meant that collaborative assignments could not be made properly.

In the follow-up process, I want to plan more classroom lessons for feedback and collaboration assignments.


Best practices in student quotes

“I felt very supported, the contact with the teacher went well thanks to the online environment”.

“It was great that everyone could search the material independently”. “What I find very special about this form of education is that so many informative videos and links to websites are offered. This ensures that I know what to do if I can't figure it out and what I need to move on”.

TIP: Consult this video reflection of Nienke


Peerfeedback

Karen Verduijn (VU Amsterdam)

I provide an entrepreneurship course for third-year bachelor students. I am very enthusiastic about LoopMe and especially LoopMe in Education.

Lessons learned

Using the blended learning techniques meant that I spent less time on the course than I had envisaged since I no longer prepared the ‘flip the classroom’ lectures and have students provide each other (although guided by instructions!) with feedback.

Best practices

LoopMe is a great way to activate the students, check the ‘mood’ amongst the group of students and get back to them in a direct, personal way. LoopMe has allowed me to post tasks for students, which they need to complete by not only providing answers but also by adding tags and emoticons to their answers.


TIP: Consult this video reflection of Karen and one of her students


Knowledge Clips

Two pilots made use of working with portfolios in different ways.

I. Jeroen de Vos (Universiteit van Amsterdam)

We aim to organise a course over the next couple of years that opens up entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship studies to the Humanities faculty. On the one hand, this allows us to see how entrepreneurship skills are useful to students with a background in religious studies, journalism, literature and the arts.

On the other, it would serve as a way to re-evaluate these respective disciplines in light of broader valorisation processes.

The blended learning pilot will integrate existing learning materials and use digital strategies that can support the transition from Media Studies in specific to Humanities in general.

Lessons Learned

How best to involve teachers in creating blended learning content? It is important to note that when asking for consent to record a guest lecturer or involve colleagues in the creation of knowledge clips based on their expertise, many are wary of saying yes.

Best Practices

The production of the knowledge clips provides an opportunity to strengthen an argument, rethink it and contextualise it in a different, visually striking way. Besides its goal of educating educate future students, knowledge clips can be thought of as a new way to structure thoughts outside the conventional production of papers as well as a way to elaborate on an argument.


Examples of Knowledge clips

A clip made by students for the event closing the course

Mark Deuze - Entrepreneurship as social organisation

Marc Tuters - Scenario design

Jeroen de Vos


TIP: Consult this video reflection of Jeroen


II. Nienke Eijsink (Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten)

In her pilot, Nienke paid attention to both the theme 'Portfolio' (see almost at the top of this page) and the theme 'Knowledge clip'. Nienke had alumni of film, photography and installation art course talk about their experiences. It led to six knowledge clips that were part of her course:


Virtual Reality

Karen Verduijn (VU Amsterdam)

In this video you will learn how Karen Verduijn used Virtual Reality in her teaching and how this was experienced by a student (Expected in 2021).