Facilitating Learning with Emerging Technologies in Blended and Online Environments

With online learning is gaining traction in higher education, there are continuous concerns of its accessibility, particularly for participants with disabilities. It is the individual’s choice to disclose a disability. In the online learning environment, it is difficult for the instructor to identify if any students have disabilities. Most institutions have a disabilities or accessibility services department, but the student must take the initiative to activate services, which then are approved and professors are notified of needs pertaining to individual students. Reaching out to professors on the student’s behalf does not help lessen potential barriers within online course unless the student takes the initiative to introduce and identify themselves as a students within the class needing accommodations. Even then there is no guarantee that he or she will be successful in the course. The success of students with disabilities in an online environment centers on whether or not the stu...

An Eclectic View on Teaching and Learning As Bates (2015) states, “there is no one best way to teach that will fit all circumstances” (p.49).  The most effective and conscientious teachers usually have an “arsenal of tools, methods and approaches that they can draw on, depending on the circumstances” (Bates, 2015, p.49).  Having an eclectic perspective on teaching and learning and drawing upon multiple learning theories, in my opinion, is the most effective way to create the best learning environment for all students. One of the learning theories that I feel connected and committed to, in regards to my project, creating a learning environment for the Human Services Field Placement Orientation, is the objectivist theory.  In this view, it is believed that a learning course “must present a body of knowledge to be learned. This may consist of facts, formulas, terminology, principles, theories and the like” (Bates, 2015, p.53). Bates (2015) states that “the effective ...

Can what we do in class be done equally well or better online? According to Bates (2015), “technology is leading to massive changes in the economy, in the way we communicate and relate to each other, and increasingly in the way we learn” (p.15), and “ as more instructors have become involved in online learning, they have realized that much that has traditionally been done in class can be done equally well or better online” (Bates, 2015, p. 38). I came to the realization, after the Spring 2018 semester, that I would need to come up with another option for my Human Services students to complete an orientation to field placement and have access to the resources and information necessary to prepare and start their internship.  Many of our Human Services students face numerous as students such as very limited availability of days and times when they can attend classes and other school-related events; they are oftentimes balancing a full-time course load with full-time employment...