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The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education has adult a new, online course on blended learning. Expected to launch this spring, the grade is intended for teachers spanning preschool, Thousand-12 and higher education.

It comes at a time when a number of state boards of education and school districts are testing new methods of didactics that bring technology into the classroom alongside in-person educational activity.

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Barbara Kurshan. (Photo: submitted by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.)
Barbara Kurshan. (Photograph: submitted past the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Didactics.)

The Pennsylvania Department of Pedagogy recently canonical an online program "endorsement" for educators – a credential that "documents noesis in new and emerging areas where formal certification does not exist," according to a June 2014 study from the section.

The new course at the University of Pennsylvania will offering teachers pedagogy, from a practitioners' perspective, on how to work in a blended learning-style instruction model. The virtual online teaching, known by the acronym VOLT, will include three modules: educational activity and learning, communicating and literacy. The unifying thread is that the course will help teachers learn to do these things in an online environment.

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The Hechinger Study recently spoke to Barbara Kurshan, the executive director of bookish innovation and a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania'due south Graduate School of Instruction, about this new course and almost blended learning in full general. She has worked in the educational technology field for more than 35 years.

What does the phrase "blended learning" mean, and do you think that someday we will move to calling this just "learning"?

I come across blended learning equally a combination of in-form and out-of-course. I think you are going to run across that to exist growing. You are going to meet more than of that with online. You are going to see more of the flipped classroom. And I don't know when the composite learning term volition go abroad. I think information technology is probably here for a while until nosotros figure out what we hateful by it, then I don't run across information technology going away in the next two or 3 years.

The VOLT programme will offer grooming to teachers in how they tin finer teach both online and in blended-learning classrooms. Why did you decide this certificate was needed?

The certificate is needed because nosotros don't teach teachers to teach online currently. They get a degree, and we put them in a classroom and they end up teaching something online, or using some digital resources, and they've had no training in colleges of education or even in continuing education, so there's an absolute need for a document. In addition, Pennsylvania just announced an endorsement for teaching online [which set standards for teachers who have had training in online education], so there's going to need to be somebody to provide the materials and the content and the courses to make that endorsement.

Are at that place other programs offering this in the way you lot are? What'southward different about what you are doing?

There probably are other programs, but I don't know of anyone educational activity totally online for an online certificate. Our program is going to be taught all online. And even though the teachers in it might be doing composite learning, we are even so going to teach ours all online because we want to emphasis the online part, not the blended part considering the blended office is traditionally what goes on in a classroom. I retrieve they need to larn to integrate the online part in with it. There probably are other programs doing this, but Pennsylvania is the first state that we know of that has an endorsement.

Besides the certificate program, this is likewise going to offer the power to experiment with new approaches to grade delivery. How will that work? How do y'all foster innovation and entrepreneurship?

Just past looking at new, innovative programs, exploring the new education technologies and the products, and having the students go online.

Enquiry is ongoing on this method of instruction. But, as you well know, tech teaching isn't new. Y'all've worked in information technology for a long time. What exercise yous see now that is different?

With blended learning, if they [students] tin utilise a computer, people consider that blended learning. And so they could be playing a game. That's not going online and interacting with learning. What's different is the power to provide instruction online versus providing the use of the figurer. So when you think most blended learning, most people would say sitting down with a computer and doing annihilation – whether they are using word processing or playing a game or whether they are doing drill and practice – that is considered blended learning. But when nosotros think about online learning, nosotros think virtually the ability to take the total instructional experience occur online. And that, past the way, that's what they are looking at for the endorsement requirements.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Nichole Dobo is a national writer for The Hechinger Study and she manages audition engagement strategy. She has more than than 15 years of experience writing about teaching and learning. Her work has been...