A DESIGN AID MECHANISM TO CRAFT BLENDED E AND ACTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES

E-Learning is proven to be a powerful learning paradigm, as it offers so many bounties to the learner. At the top of which, is the flexibility of self pacing learning where the learners can control the timing, activities depth, and activities width they can get involved in to achieve certain learning experience objectives. While an attractive advantage, this flexibility may lead to a compromise of achieving the objectives; if not used within an elaborate system. On the other hand, the in-class Active learning that seems to offer less flexibility is highly effective and does not suffer this disadvantage. The challenging task of designing a blended E and Active learning experiences satisfying Bloom’s taxonomy is the focus of this paper.

Designing a blended Learning experience with the right balance of both paradigms, one has to consider a two steps design to achieve a certain learning objective. First step, is selecting activities and the second step is to construct a dual virtual and physical environment to assure success. Such a design would call for casting this learning objective into Bloom’s taxonomy terminology (satisfying two domains, cognitive and psycho-motor) where the objective is expressed as the needed levels of learning to achieve it. Then it calls for choosing the right balance of the set of E and Active Learning activities and environmental elements leading to the construction of this objective while satisfying the third domain levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (emotional).

This paper is proposing a blended learning experiences design aiding mechanism to achieve such a design. This mechanism is based on heuristically classifying each activity or element that is carried out in E and Active learning paradigms according of its contribution to a certain level of Bloom’s Taxonomy domains levels. Then, utilizing a road map that combines a set of activities and elements to achieve a blended learning experience design fulfilling the learning objective. Examples are given on how to use this mechanism to design blended learning experiences for a design course at the college of engineering level. An analysis of the resulting learning experiences is carried out and it showed their matching to the set forth learning objectives.