Abstract:

When student teachers are offered an option to take part of a course online and rest of it face-to-face, will they take the option to work away from the classroom? The presentation will describe the development of a blended course for teaching professional communication skills in a teacher training institution. The course, in which over 1000 student teachers in two postgraduate diploma programmes were enrolled in August 2012, presented the participants with a multi-modal combination of a range of online resources and face-to-face tutorials. The goal was to provide the means for the student teachers to direct and tailor their learning to their individual needs to a degree not possible with the previous version of the course. The presentation will examine why and how the course was developed, describe how students selected their online and face-to-face course components, summarize the take-up rate for the online components, and examine the participants’ comments about taking a blended course.

Keywords:

Blended learning, communication skills, teacher training.