Welcome to the New Kensington Blended Initiative site, where resources and conversation about blended course design are shared.  Questions about this site can be directed to Deborah Sillman (dys100@psu.edu)

Background of the Blended Initiative

In 2014 the campus initiated a program to encourage and assist faculty interested in redesigning traditionally delivered courses to a blended (=hybrid) delivery format.  The campus developed a formal RFP process and a panel of faculty and staff was selected to review and identify the strongest applicants.  Each participating faculty member was provided with a $500 stipend through contributions mainly from the Chancellor’s office, with modest additional funding provided by TLT (Teaching and Learning with Technology).  Each year the cohort of selected faculty were provided with training, support, and resources to assist them in their blended course development.  Cohorts met regularly and were encouraged to share ideas and discuss challenges and solutions they encountered during the development process.

Projects Completed

A total of ten proposals were submitted during the three RFP periods (2014 – 2016) and of these eight were selected, funded, and successfully completed with the result that eight previously traditional courses are now delivered in a blended format.  In addition, these faculty are now prepared to assist their colleagues in this redesign process as well as consider other of their own courses which would benefit from a blended delivery mode. The successful proposals represented seven different disciplines and the faculty came from all ranks (tenured, tenure-track, instructors).

Professional Presentations

A total of four presentations were delivered at different regional and University-wide events:

• “TLT 101”, August 20, 2014, Penn State Altoona (video presentation)
• “Blended Redesign – the Cohort Approach”, Regional Faculty Development Event, Penn State Beaver, December 5, 2014
• “A Cohort Approach to Designing Blended Courses”, Transformative Teaching and Learning, Schreyer Institute, October 20, 2015
• “Active Learning Across Disciplines: Faculty/Student Perspectives on Blended Design”, Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium, University Park, March 19, 2016

Assessment Methods

A number of mechanisms are currently in place to evaluate the quality of the blended delivery format of these transformed courses:

• “Peer Review of Hybrid Courses” (http://facdev.e-education.psu.edu/evaluate-revise/peerreviewhybrid) is being utilized to evaluate the quality of the course content, organization, level of active learning and engagement of course activities, etc.
• A student survey, housed in Qualtrics, is being developed to provide a uniform set of questions to assess the level of student satisfaction with the blended delivery.
• Several faculty have compiled comparative data for student performance on specific assignments common to both the traditionally delivered course and the blended version.
• While not ideal, SRTE data can also be used to compare student satisfaction levels between the traditional delivery and the blended delivery courses.
• Plan a conversation including all faculty who are teaching blended courses to focus on the assessment piece
• Develop a rubric (loosely based on the QM ‘Foundations and Skills for Lifelong Learning’ rubric)

Assessment Results

Some discussion of assessment methods can be found under the assessment page of this site.  Data from the redesigned courses will be added here as it becomes available.