How Can We Get Students to Complete the Online Home Assignments?

After receiving several comments on my blog about problems arising when students don't complete online work from home, I decided to investigate ways I can avoid this frustration. With the mission to incorporate more online learning next school year, I don't want to spend a lot of time planning only to have students showing up in the morning without having completed the prework at home. As one of my classmates stated that because of this problem, she abandoned this model.

In this article by Dr. Barbi Honeycutt, she gives the reader three ways to encourage student engagement and work completion from home. The first suggestion involves giving some student autonomy to the assignment. You can give your students a choice in how they demonstrate their understanding of the assignment. Her second suggestion involves making them accountable by requiring them to make their thinking visible. Maybe they have to take a quiz, bring in a written summary, or post a comment to a discussion board. Lastly, Dr. Honeycutt mentions the necessity to connect work done at home to the work done in class. If there is no connection, students will feel like they can get away without completing the online work from home.

These suggestions may seem simple, but they have definitely given me something to consider when implementing my online component next school year.

Five Relevant Case Studies and What They Show Us About Blended Learning

The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation completed five case studies of blended learning school environment in the summer of 2011. Their two goals were to increase their understanding of this model and also help broaden the knowledge of other practitioners. All five case studies used a rotation model of instruction and the reasons for moving to a blended model centered around the desire to improve outcomes for high needs students.

There are significant findings we can take away from these cases studies. I will highlight the few I found most interesting to me.

• all five schools saw the need to adopt a laddered system of teachers (lead teachers, intervention teachers, and assistants)
• each school spent a considerable amount of time planning their model; however, the system has changed during implementation
• the packaged online learning products were often not aligned with standards which required teachers to adapt
• the technology infrastructure budgeted often had to see an increase in time and resources needed....more than expected

The study uncovered key considerations or areas of improvement that need to occur:

• better online programs
• better integration of data
• a need to form communities of practice to share information
• continued innovation will be necessary

Blended learning is still evolving and considered cutting edge by many school districts. The case studies demonstrated increased student engagement, opportunities for response to intervention, and the ability to make data driven real time decisions at times. What I consider the most important information presented in this article centered around the considerations the county should take into account before adopting this approach. It needs to be well thought out and studied or it could be disruptive in a bad way....not in a good way.