Blended Learning Research
Happy December!
Here are some activities that you can do with learners before or after the winter break: Winter Break Activities from AlphaPlus
Plus one Christmassy activity for those who celebrate.
New for 2025!
What makes you feel cozy in the winter?
What are your favourite comforts?
Learn about comfort foods and one of the most famous food and memory stories. The story is the from a book by Marcel Proust.
Proust writes about eating some tea cakes called madeleines and how the smell of the cakes takes him back to the days of his childhood.
This is now sometimes called the Proust Effect, The Proust Phenomenon or the Madeleine Effect.
In this activity you can
- discuss comfort foods and other things that make us feel safe and cozy
- learn about the Proust effect
- think about good writing
- watch videos
- and, if you like, write a story.
Winter Break Plans, Poems and Songs
Winter Break is a drag-and-drop and Answer Garden conversation starter where learners can think about what they will do on the break.
Winter Poem is a poetry activity based on the poem Dust of Snow by Robert Frost. Learners can read and listen to the poem and then examine the rhyming pattern (ABAB). They can then compare that rhyming pattern with the rhyming pattern in Catch a Little Rhyme by Eve Merriam (AABB).
Christmas Songs is an advent calendar of Christmas songs. You can see the whole playlist and links to the lyrics or play the songs one by one and look them up. If you want to make your own calendar, contact Tracey.
Winter Solstice Stories and Activities
Start by watching a video overview about the Winter Solstice and then watch these two videos:
- Author and Journalist Waubgeshig Rice from Wasauksing First Nation shares the importance of winter solstice as a time of change and storytelling for indigenous peoples.
- Wilfred Buck of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation in Manitoba sharing the Cree story of the winter solstice.
After the introduction, you will have a choice to
- Learn about Cree Astronomy from Wilfred Buck and make a Turtle Calendar based on the 13 Moons.
- Go to the Winter Animals activity and hear stories about animals (see below).
- Plan a Winter Solstice Party.
- Make a twig lantern or a jam jar lantern for a lantern walk.
- Make clove orange decorations.
- Make a warm, spicy drink.
- Make a winter playlist.
Winter Animal Songs and Stories
Winter Animals is made in Google Slides and gives learners a choice of stories or songs to listen to:
- Deer: A song called Deer Dancing Round a Broken Mirror by Bruce Cockburn and Rik Emmet.
- Owl: A TVO short about Kenojuak Ashevak and her painting, The Enchanted Owl.
- Raven: The Raven and the Owl, an Inuit legend put to song. There are two versions: one by The National Film Board of Canada and one by Becky Han.
- Fox: The Fox and the Whale, a 2016 Canadian animated short film directed by Robin Joseph.
- Skater: a 1980 animated film from the National Film Board of Canada narrated by the author of the story, Roch Carrier. There is a link to a 2023 riff on this story called the Hockey Jersey.
There are follow up activities in a Google Form and collaborative Slides.
Have you been thinking about offering test preparation for the new Canadian Adult Education Credential (CAEC)? Do you need help supporting learners as they prepare to take these tests? As we kick off the academic year, we have a new guide to help you.
In the spring of 2024, the Canadian Adult Education Credential (CAEC) was released. This new credential replaces the GED® for Canadian adults seeking a secondary equivalency. While the CAEC offers important and useful changes from the GED®, it requires significant teaching and background knowledge, and the transition to a digital platform has implications for both test-taking and literacy. Until now, little support has been available to build teachers’ knowledge so they can assist learners.
New guide available: Preparing for the Canadian Adult Education Credential (CAEC)
AlphaPlus is pleased to unveil a new, comprehensive guide to help you learn about the new CAEC and support adult learners. The guide includes teaching tips, curriculum planning outlines, lesson routines, and other resources. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll find inside:
- Test overview to help you get familiar with the unique features, demands and requirements of the CAEC and how to effectively prepare learners.
- Subject overviews and teaching tips on each of the five CAEC test subjects: reading, writing, math, science and social studies.
- Templates, curriculum plans, and lesson routines to help you develop your own test preparation courses and workshops.
- Test readiness tools: To identify your learners’ skills and determine their readiness to take the CAEC tests.
Check out this brand-new guide and get up to speed with the digital, content, and cognitive complexity changes you will need to understand to support learners with the CAEC.
Additionally, please let us know your thoughts on the content of the guide so far and what you’d like to see added. We welcome your feedback! Complete the form to let us know what you’d like to see in the guide.
What is PAL?
The Planning a Lesson website — PAL for short — is a lesson planning companion that’s a little like a conversation with a teaching peer—a peer who has already thought about planning engaging lessons that flow.
The ideas and materials in this digital space stem from thoughtful questions, robust discussions and the collaborative efforts of the PAL working group. Thus, PAL is a space to engage with the insights from front-line LBS practitioners just like you, and to garner some handy tips.
PAL could also be used as a place to return to for inspiration or to spark discussions around learner-centred approaches and strategies with LBS colleagues.
PAL is
- A new way to look at lesson planning
- An opportunity to reflect on your practice
- A space for front-line insights, tips and resources
You will find a blended-learning lesson planning flow developed for and by literacy practitioners grounded in research and research-in-practice. It is kitchen tested but flexible enough that you can add your own flavour and refine the process to meet the needs of your evolving practice.
PRE-LESSON:
Anticipating challenges
- Challenges to lesson flow present themselves before the lesson even begins. Technology issues and day-to-day class logistics can impact a lesson.
- Consider the most common pre-lesson challenges that can become bottlenecks to flow and try to turn them into learning opportunities.
THE LESSON:
Planning for learning and lesson flow
- Skills are honed not only through discrete tasks, but through active learning strategies and lesson components that build upon each other for connections to be made.
- Take a look at planning a lesson where adult learners work with digital tools and each other by way of activities that are purposefully planned.
POST-LESSON:
Taking the learning beyond the class session
- Taking the learning and newly acquired digital skills into the real world, post-lesson, is a way for adult learners to solidify their learning.
- Explore some simple ways to encourage learners to think about their digital wins and reflect on how to apply their new skills beyond the LBS classroom in a meaningful way.
After searching over 100 resources collections and lists from Canada, the U.S., U.K. and Australia, we have developed a fully vetted collection of workbooks, modules and activities that address a range of instructional topics in our Open Educational Resources and Instructional Materials Collection.
To build the collection, Christine and Guylaine assembled a group of instructors from school boards and community groups, representing urban and rural communities across the province. Members work in program areas ranging from workforce development to academic, with diverse learner groups. They provided guidance to ensure the materials are
- Free and ad-free
- Shareable and reproducible
- Mostly modifiable for use in different formats and to change content
- Ready-to-use with instructional activities
- Accompanied by tips, ideas and strategies for educators to implement.
Take some time to explore the collection. You’re sure to find some gems that you can use right away.
On this site you can read our Position Paper on Blended Learning online and browse a collection of resources to help you and the audiences you communicate with learn about blended learning as an approach.
What else you will find on this site
- Presentations – AlphaPlus webinars about the position paper and the eNet introduction to blended learning.
- The Blended Learning Field Guide – a reflective practice tool about blended learning models and approaches.
- Blended Learning Overview – from the AlphaPlus Digital Technology for Learning site.
- The Blended Learning Toolbox – resources for applying a Blended Learning approach from the AlphaPlus Digital Technology for Learning site.
- The ProLiteracy Blended Learning Guide – and how it aligns with the AlphaPlus position paper.
and graphics you can share with staff, learners, volunteers and community partners
- Definition – the definition from the position paper
- My Life as a Blended Learner – how we Create, Communicate, Collaborate and Think Critically as lifelong learners
- Benefits – the four benefits of blended learning: Blended learning is supports self-confidence and self-reliance; encourages social connection and collaboration; provides flexibilities; and is helps manage systemic inequalities.
- Principles – the three principles of blended learning: Blended learning is learner centred; relevant and useful; and is enhanced by a strong teaching presence
- Blended Learning Infographic and the 4Cs – an infographic about the 4Cs: Be Creative, Communicate, Collaborate, and Critically Analyze
If you’d like a copy of this site to use as a starting point to adapt and expand for use in your program, please get in touch. AlphaPlus can give you a copy and support you in learning how to use a website builder such as Google Sites or Weebly as online learning spaces for learners, staff and volunteers.
Blended Learning Resources
The Digital Inclusion Playbook is filled with ideas, information and resources you can use to support local digital inclusion efforts. We hope the site builds awareness at a provincial and national level on behalf of all literacy and basic skills (LBS) programs and the many learners who find themselves excluded from full and equitable participation in a digital society.
Resources, articles and mini-infographics you can use
Digital inclusion and literacy development work together, and LBS plays a key role in digital inclusion as a provider of digital learning opportunities for adults. LBS educators, volunteers and program co-ordinators are on the front lines of digital inclusion work and often address issues — such as access to devices for learning and low-cost internet plans — that go beyond everyday teaching and learning work. The playbook’s facts, resources, articles and mini-infographics can be used to:
- Help adult learners access affordable internet and devices.
- Discuss key issues with colleagues and stakeholders.
- Make a presentation to your board or institutional partners.
- Build a case for support with funding partners and community partners.
- Get involved and take action.
Information, ideas and strategies to help build awareness
Digital inclusion is bigger than LBS and involves affordable and adequate broadband internet service, internet-enabled devices that meet the needs of the user, quality and affordable technical support along with applications and online content designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation and collaboration. The playbook contains information, ideas and strategies that explore the following topics:
- Digital inclusion and the digital divide.
- Impacts of digital exclusion.
- Digital literacy in learners’ lives and leveraging their use of smartphones.
- Sources of free and open digital literacy resources.
We invite you to explore the site and share your feedback with us. We’d also love to hear about your digital inclusion initiatives and stories.
You can also contact Christine (Christine@alphaplus.ca) or Alan (Acherwinski@alphaplus.ca) directly.
When students receive their own computer — and it’s really theirs — it sends a strong message. You don’t just own the computer; you own your education and your own future.
Alison Canning, executive director of Let’s Get Together
Access to Technology
Literacy practitioners know that limited access to technology can create insurmountable barriers for lifelong learners in Ontario.
Learn more about the issue of access to technology
“I’ve always found this compilation of models quite mind-boggling. I find it very difficult to keep all the permutations of a blended learning approach straight. In a conversation with some very wise literacy practitioners from Ontario, I suddenly realized why. I think that instead of reading these models of prescriptions of how to design the delivery of blended learning, we should read them as descriptions of all the ways that educators have developed and adapted a blended learning approach to specific contexts and to meet the needs and circumstances of specific learners.
There is a lot of professional knowledge and wisdom here and, perhaps more importantly, demonstrations of how that wisdom and knowledge is applied in the real world. These models are the curriculum planning frameworks in action.“
Tracey Mollins.
Contact me at tracey@alphaplus.ca to talk about blended learning delivery models.
Here are the models described on the website:
- Four Project-Based Learning Models
- Five Rotation Models
- Station Rotation Blended Learning
- Lab Rotation Blended Learning
- The ‘Flipped Classroom’ Blended Learning
- Individual Rotation Blended Learning
- The Playlist Model
- Two Hybrid Models
- Supplemental Blended Learning
- Mastery-Based Blended Learning
- Three Remote Learning Models
- A La Carte model
- Remote Blended Learning (also referred to as Enriched Virtual)
- Flex Blended Learning
Blended Learning Research
Blended Learning Resources
These frameworks were developed to help educators design and develop technology-rich learning environments. The frameworks help us determine the level of technology integration in the learning environment and evaluate if the technology is enhancing, extending and/or transforming learning.
Tracey Mollins
Contact me at tracey@alphaplus.ca to talk about blended learning delivery models.
These are the Frameworks described on the website
- Designing for Learning Outcomes
- A blended learning framework – ISTE Standards for Students
- A computer basics framework – Northstar Digital Literacy Framework
- A computer basics / blended learning framework – Maryland Department of Labor Digital Literacy Framework for Adult Learners
- A roadmap to reach the City of Seattle’s vision to become a more digitally equitable city, where technology’s opportunities equitably empower all residents and communities – Seattle Digital Equity Initiative Digital Skills Framework
- Designing for Learning Experiences
- The Technology Integration Matrix
- The Triple E Framework
- Thinking about Teaching Innovation
- The SAMR Model – SAMR = Substitution – Augmentation – Modification – Redefinition and describes a way to think about the result of integrating digital technology for learning into a curriculum.
- The LoTi Framework – Levels of Teaching Innovation – This is a Teaching Innovation Framework that is similar to SAMR but includes a resource for reflecting on how different learning activities fit into the framework.
- Designing for Modes of Learning
- Bloom’s Taxonomy – Some people have done some work to align the Bloom’s Taxonomy learning domains to SAMR.
- HEAT – H.E.A.T Framework = Higher-order thinking – Engaged learning – Authentic connections – and Technology use is a student learning framework that describes what learners are doing at different levels of digital technology integration with reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Blended Learning Research
Blended Learning Resources
The Wayfinders Studio is a creative, imaginative space for literacy practitioners.
The Wayfinders are people just like you – and perhaps you – who are exploring, experimenting, piloting and reflecting on how digital technology can enhance learning.
- Are you a literacy practitioner thinking about how you can respond to the ways that digital technologies are changing how we learn, work and engage in daily life?
- Are you wondering about what colleagues in other programs are doing?
Visit The Wayfinders Studio to see what others are doing and thinking about and to make connections.
Join us this Fall to create, collaborate, empower learners
– and, most importantly, have fun.
Contact Tracey (tracey@alphaplus.ca) to find out more and to join the Wayfinders Mailing list.
What we’ve been up to
Wayfinders 2020-2021
Wayfinders 2022-2023
Wayfinders 2023 to present
- More Makerspace! We are working with Communities of Practice to creating interactive activities for learner autonomy, independence and empowerment. Check out the Educator Makerspace page to see what we are up to.
What some Wayfinders are saying about the 2020-2021 studio
It has been a great move towards creating a community of practice among literacy instructors who have been experiencing a new challenge that was forced by Covid-19.
Besides the valuable information and experiences, it is great to know various instructors’ perspectives.
AlphaPlus has collected a set of interesting frameworks, approaches and theoretical foundations that are relevant to adult literacy practice and can inform planning, designing and decision-making.
We’ve included a blended learning toolbox, an annotated bibliography of tools, apps and websites curated using the framework principles.
If you’re interested in exploring blended learning options for your program, please get in touch.
- AlphaPlus coaches will work with you to create an individualized plan and develop blended learning solutions for the learners in your program.
- As an Educator Network (eNet) participant, you’ll join a cohort of Ontario literacy practitioners in a reflective practice process and have access to both AlphaPlus knowledge and peer experience.
- If you get stuck while trying something new, the AlphaPlus Quick Tech Help option can help.