Blended experience: why our ADA model works well for education
So what is Education?
Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits.
For centuries, The educational process has remained constant, adopting the teacher-centred method, where the main focus is memorization, punishment in the case of mistakes, and forced uniforms. The main objective is to convey information in a dull environment with no interaction.
In the other hand, the MOOCS represented a temporary solution for students, learning online anytime and anywhere.
But it has restrictions, as it lacks discipline and human interaction.
Both methods are limited, uneffective at some point, so what can we do about it ?
So in one way we have discipline with discomfort of place, time and progress speed.
And in another we have comfort of place, time and progress speed but lacks discipline.
So what could be a solution?
Enter the blended experience
Blended learning is a training curriculum that combines the classroom-based training with self-paced e-learning, using both the online and in-person learning experiences. It requires the physical presence of both teacher and student, with the student control over time, place, path, or pace.
So basically, students progress in their own tempo, while still having an instructor to guide them, thus combining flexibility with discipline.
GoMyCode : a blended experience
GoMyCode, a High end computer science educational Startup, despise the Traditional Teaching approach and disagree with the Teacher centred method, adopting a holistic approach, where the focus is on the students needs.
The Traditional model of the Teacher-centred is very limiting because:
- Students have to wait for the educator to arrive
- Students have to adjust to the educator’s way of teaching
- Students have to progress at the same speed as their peers.
- Students have to be present in the workplace in designated times and if not they will miss some sections of the learning process.
And having a MOOC process is not successful too because:
- it is very easy to be distracted.
- It is very easy to be confused.
- It is very easy to get lost with no one to turn to.
- It is only limited to the content of that specific course.
The solution that we created in GoMyCode is ADA, a MOOC platform that favorizes blended learning.
Students have access to online courses that we instructors tailored in detail, with a mix of slides, mini and big projects.
Throughout their learning process, at any time, students can ask for an instructor help or assistance, thus developing their autonomy, in the same time, they still have their guide to rely on in times of hardships.
Up until now we have teached 3 sessions with this new model (Almost 455 students) and it’s objectively successful, students enjoyed the ability of progressing at their own pace, assisted and oriented by their instructors, and being able to ask questions that might be, in some cases, uneasy to ask, too detailed, not tech-related or embarrassing.
But did we stop evolving?
Of course not, we went one step further to help our content creators and content architects work more efficiently.
Content Creators (CC) are responsible about elaborating the slides & checkpoints while Content Architects (CA) are responsible about the curriculum setting and have the final decision about what should be included and how.
Generally, the problem with MOOCS content creation is that you spend a ton of time to prepare courses, that may be reproduced several times within the same team of Content Creators, so we had the idea of making our content in the form of a graph.
By having our courses in graphs, we can easily add, edit or remove slides, as well as borrowing from another course without having to rewrite them.
This has immensely helped us, as Content Architects to hop in and add slides, remove, repair or remake them, we can also easily modify their order. In this case, it is easier to update our content and make modifications according to our students’ feedback. Actually, we devote a high importance to any kind of suggestions, remarks about new learning material, either it is to be added or removed. This has greatly amplified their productivity!
And not only that, we developed a content creation editor called Gomill, that enable Content Creators to create slides easily.
With a Photoshop-like interface, creating new content & correcting slides is lightning fast.
The ADA model has been for now our biggest innovation yet, we are constantly innovating as we teach and learn from our students’ feedback.
In fact, innovation is our main motive at GoMyCode, our blended experience isn’t just about ADA, so wait for my next article.
