This book is a pragmatic and useful guide for educational and training practitioners new to blended learning and online tutoring. Janet MacDonald's experience as a student, tutor and staff developer in e‐learning, gives this guide an authenticity and provides advice that can be directly applied in practice. Although Janet has a distance and e‐learning background and many of the examples are drawn from this context, the book is also relevant to both campus‐based and mixed delivery development contexts, all of which are illustrated by examples drawn from a broad range of international case studies.
The book was written for “practitioners who are contemplating blended learning and online tutoring for their course, or staff developers who wish to encourage others” and is appropriate to their needs of the broadest possible interpretation of this audience. The guide is relevant to education, training and CPD practitioners.
The book draws on three sources of practitioner experiences of blended learning: a survey of UK Open University (UKOU) tutors to elicit their strategies for supporting students; a set of 35 self‐selected international case studies on blended learning, and the experiences of the author and her colleagues at the UKOU. These practitioner experiences are set in framework informed by extremely pertinent research on student learning.
Excluding the Introduction, the book is divided into three parts: I Approaches to Blended Learning; II Online Tutoring; and III Developing Independent Learners. Possibly it is the last of these parts that set this book apart, examining as it does the characteristics, motivations and requirements of learners and suggesting practical strategies that a tutor can use to address these in a blended context.
Part I contains four chapters that discuss some current tutor approaches to blended learning. Chapters 2 and 3 are based on research on tutor strategies at the UKOU and one UK campus‐based University. Chapter 2 on Tutor mediated support: Reflecting on Present Practice examines how tutors support groups and individual students. Chapter 3 on Tutors' Perceptions of Effective Intervention discusses quality criteria for assessing the effectiveness of tutor interventions and choices of media. Chapter 4 on Blended Learning and Pragmatism then establishes a common framework of course types analyzing the appropriateness of different aspects of blended learning in campus‐based courses, distance learning courses and courses that a delivered simultaneously on campus and at a distance. Chapter 5 on Blended Learning and Pedagogy examines the different contributions of asynchronous and face‐to‐face support bring to blended approaches with a focus on the changing roles and functions of face‐to‐face support in a blended approach.
Part II Online Tutoring contains four chapters which describe extremely practical ways of using online synchronous and asynchronous media to support learning. Chapter 6 Supporting Students Using Asynchronous Media provides extremely practical models of different conference structures to support different aims. It addresses issues of tutor workload and contains extremely useful “bright ideas” hints and tips. This is followed by a shorter chapter 7 on Handy Techniques for Moderators: Online Conferences which summarizes the various roles a tutor can be expected to undertake in an online conference. A similar pair of chapters addresses these issues in relation to synchronous media including audio, text chat, whiteboard, break‐out rooms, application sharing, synchronized web browsing, polls, feedback and handraising and video; and techniques for moderators for online synchronous sessions.
Part III Developing Independent Learners, is the most possibly the most innovative section in that it looks at online learning from the student perspective. It provides practical advice and strategies that will enable a tutor to engage with and address the needs of the learners in what is often, to them, a new and challenging mode of study. The chapters cover the experience of blended learning, course design for blended learning, developing e‐investigators, developing e‐writers, developing e‐communicators and collaborators and staff development for blended learning. Each chapter provides practical approaches as to how online tutors can help students develop these e‐skills and provides lots of examples of relevant activities and tasks. Chapter 15 on staff development for blended learning doesn't fit seamlessly in this part, but it can be argued that tutors are also learners in this emerging blended approach and there doesn't seem anywhere else it could be more appropriately placed.
Whilst the book does not bring any startlingly new insights into blended learning; its strength is in its synthesis of current effective practice in blended learning. This is presented in a framework that makes this advice accessible to, and directly applicable for, practitioners new to this area. The vignettes from the 35 international case studies (despite these being self‐selecting) plus the author's own experiences add an authenticity to the advice which arises out of real experience. Full contact details for all the case studies are provided adding to their authenticity, rather than the authors hiding behind anonymity and they are an extremely useful resource for interested readers to follow‐up. The tutor survey data proves less compelling and is not drawn upon beyond Chapter 4, this sits somewhat uneasily with the material in the remainder of the book. However, the example activities, hints and tips and checklists provided throughout the book give the practitioner tools that can be directly applied in practice. Overall the text is easy to read, well written and structured and an enjoyable read.
This is a book that meets the needs of its target audience and represents an up‐to‐date practical and pragmatic introduction to blended learning for tutors and trainers.
