Back to the Future: Post Pandemic Socially Constructed Blended Synchronous Learning - Vignettes from the Mobile Learning SIG
The initial impact upon higher education from the COVID19 pandemic was a rapid shift to online learning for a large proportion of the academic teaching community and for students as learners as well (Naciri et al., 2020; Zayapragassarazan, 2020). The on-going impact requires a more considered, designed response that takes account of the many socio-cultural issues that impact teaching and learning as higher education grapples with the new focus upon blended-synchronous learning for the foreseeable future (Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning, 2020; Ferdig & Pytash, 2021; Hodges et al., 2020; Lowenthal et al., 2020; Reimers & Schleicher, 2020). However, this concept, called Blended Synchronous Learning (BSL), is not a new approach to teaching and learning (Porter & Graham, 2016) or mobile learning (Cochrane & Bateman, 2009) - the difference is that, rather than being the domain of TEL innovators, post-pandemic it is now the norm experience of almost all higher education teachers and learners.
To provide assistance for higher education academics to implement BSL, this poster accompanies the concise paper from the ASCILITE Mobile Learning Special Interest Group (ASCILITEMLSIG) and illustrates the vignettes of BSL practice in multiple discipline domains. The poster will contain a series of QR codes that will link to multimedia examples of these vignettes in practice and further resources for those interested in exploring the application of these scenarios in their own teaching praxis. In this way we present our varied mobile learning (BYOD) scenarios as examples of pedagogical strategies for BSL that move from a focus upon teacher-directed content (Pedagogy) towards student-determined learning or Heutagogy (Blaschke & Hase, 2019; Hase & Kenyon, 2001, 2007; Moore, 2020), applying the Pedagogy-Andragogy-Heutagogy (PAH) continuum to BSL (Blaschke, 2012; Kearney et al., 2020; Luckin et al., 2010).
Finally, as a group, we have additionally explored the use of Activity Theory as a lens to analyse our BYOD practices (Bozalek et al., 2014; Leont'ev, 1978; Rozario et al., 2016; Uden, 2007), highlighting the impact of mobile technologies to mediate new approaches to teaching and learning that focus upon authentic learning experiences – or what the student does, supported by an interconnected blended or hybrid learning community. This approach is illustrated by the authentic mobile learning triangle (Cochrane, 2019, 2020, 2021), where authentic mobile learning experiences are built upon activities that facilitate user-generated content (UGC) and user-generated contexts (UGCX). This is detailed further in our concise paper.
