Technology is wonderful, but without a careful consideration of how it can serve as a catalyst to help you and your students discover and adopt new learning approaches, it can become an obstacle. It is important to put the educational design ahead of the technology to guide you in the search and selection of appropriate tools that will ultimately support real goals.

The educational design takes into consideration particular goals, the intended audience and the context, and allows enough flexibility to scale (adjust) your course up and down based on course needs. Some key guidelines should be considered when engaging in the development of the educational design for a course using blended learning:

• Take a fresh look! Blended learning requires a critical rethinking of what you do in your course and why. Redesign the entire course and discard obsolete, ineffective and inefficient practices that don't enhance the teaching-learning experience.
•  Content management. Make decisions about what content is required for students to learn. Is too much content a barrier to meaningful and deep learning? Do students have enough time to reflect and process the content given to them in class or online?
• Community. Incorporate learning experiences where the strength of online communication and Internet technology can be used to support your interaction with learners and among learners. An online community for your course (e.g., discussion board, Blog, Wiki, social network, etc.) provides a platform for engaging learners, providing feedback and assessing understanding and critical thinking of the course materials. The interactive and reflective nature of an online community can go beyond the possibilities of a traditional lecture where time and physical space constraints abound.

 Some important questions to reflect upon when redesigning a course:

• What do you want your students to know when they have completed the blended learning course?
• What types of learning activities will you design that integrate face-to-face and online components?
• What means will you use to assess these integrated learning activities?
• How will information and communication technologies be used to support blended learning in your course?

You probably don't have all the answers to these questions. It is therefore important to seek the guidance of an instructional design specialist who can help you discuss your responses and can facilitate the direction and implementation of the educational design. Answers to these questions would also likely include other faculty, course assistants and staff involved with the course.

Creating an educational plan before making decisions about  technology and communication use in a course pays off and provides the best foundation for creating the "blueprint" that will guide the design process of creating a blended learning course.

Free help is available to faculty in need of redesigning their CHM courses for blended and online delivery. To find out more about B-CLR  consultation services, please contact  Geraud Plantegenest at [email protected]. You can also visit the B-CLR webpage at http://omerad.msu.edu/bclr/index.php

Adapted from Blended Learning Strategies and Tools. Garrison R. , Vaughan N. (2008). Blended Learning in Higher Education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. 

On September 26, eighteen new junior faculty from across the United States began the Primary Care Faculty Development Fellowship Program. Over the next year, these fellows will spend four weeks on campus and one day a week at home completing fellowship-related tasks and a major project. Since 1976, over 575 physicians have completed this fellowship program.

 The overall goal of the program is to prepare new physician faculty for careers in primary care academic medicine. The program provides training in teaching, research, leadership, social context of medicine, instructional technology, scholarly communication and academic socialization skills.

The fellows are junior faculty in family medicine, general internal medicine and general pediatrics from medical schools and primary care residencies. While at MSU, fellows will participate in workshops, seminars, small group activities, mentor groups and practice teaching assignments.  Fellows also interact with fellowship faculty and mentors through web-based desktop video conferencing.

At their home institutions, fellows complete assignments and a major project. MSU faculty help each fellow design and implement a curricular development or research project. The results of their major projects are presented as posters and oral presentations at the annual Primary Care Research and Development Conference in May.

The Primary Care Faculty Development Fellowship Program is supported by grants from the Division of Medicine, Public Health Service (HRSA). This program is also supported by the Office of Medical Education Research and Development (OMERAD), the College of Human Medicine and the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics & Human Development, and Family Medicine  at Michigan State University.

OMERAD Publications 2009-2010 

Publications 2009-2010

Click on the link to see a list of  OMERAD publications for the 2009-2010 academic year.