Empowering Teachers to Create Engaging Blended Learning Experiences
Dr. Catlin Tucker is a highly sought-after speaker who has delivered keynotes all over the world on the topics of blended learning, teacher engagement, and shifting to sustainable student-led workflows. Bring Dr. Tucker’s enthusiasm, expertise, and insights on how to effectively implement blended learning in the classroom to your next event.
NEW KEYNOTE
Shifting Workflows: Let Students Lead & Avoid Teacher Burnout
Teachers are burning out at record levels. They’re drowning in unrealistic expectations and doing the lion’s share of the work in classrooms. It’s time to shift from time-consuming, teacher-led, and often frustratingly ineffective workflows to sustainable student-led workflows that position learners at the center of the learning experience. Grounding these student-led workflows in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles and leveraging blended learning models to shift control to students can help all students develop into expert learners capable of acquiring information and making meaning. These reimagined workflows also free teachers from the front of the room to spend more time working alongside individual and small groups of learners.
NEW KEYNOTE
Harnessing AI to Design Equitable Learning Experiences
Educators teach beautifully diverse groups of students with various skill levels, needs, language proficiencies, and learning preferences. Too often, this diversity is seen as problematic or a challenge to be overcome. Before AI, designing for this diversity and learner variability was an arduous, time-consuming process that felt unsustainable. AI simplifies this design work, alleviating the pressure on teachers to spend hours designing lessons and providing feedback. Educators using AI should view it as a powerful thought partner, inspiring purposeful and creative design that strives to remove barriers, create flexible pathways, and free teachers to work directly with learners. AI should elevate the teaching profession and amplify the teacher’s impact in classrooms.
Activating Agency, Differentiation, Community, and Inquiry with Blended Learning
The pandemic taught educators several lessons:
- Learning can happen anywhere, any time.
- Human connection and participation in a learning community make learning rich and engaging.
- Students are more likely to be motivated if they enjoy autonomy and agency.
So, how can teachers move forward in the face of so much change to design and facilitate dynamic student-centered learning experiences? Instead of relying on one model for every lesson, teachers need a robust toolbelt full of instructional models and engagement strategies they use to design learning experiences that give students agency, differentiate effectively, build community, and drive inquiry! Blended learning provides a sustainable path forward that frees teachers from the front of the room, allowing them to work directly with small groups and individual learners. This shift makes it possible for teachers to spend their precious class time on the aspects of this work that are most engaging and rewarding.
Reignite Teacher and Student Engagement with Blended Learning
The last two years have been mentally and emotionally exhausting for teachers and students. The pandemic and its impact on education have left many teachers feeling tired and disillusioned. Yet, teacher engagement is critical to achieving high levels of student engagement and improving learning outcomes. Understanding the aspects of this work that are cognitively, emotionally, and socially engaging is critical if we want to reignite our teachers’ passion for this profession. In an era when many feel burnt out or question the sustainability of this work, we must leverage a strategic blend of online and offline learning that allows teachers to invest time and energy in the human side of teaching.
Join Dr. Catlin Tucker to explore how teachers can leverage blended learning to spend more time on the aspects of this work that positively impact their engagement and, in turn, increase student engagement.
Thrive in Any Teaching and Learning Landscape
As educational landscapes evolve, educators need to embrace a mindset, skillset, and toolset that allows them to thrive in class, online, or a blend of the two! It’s time to design and facilitate learning experiences that free teachers from their role as the expert at the front of the room and place students at the center of learning. Teachers who universally design learning using blended learning models to remove barriers, give students agency, develop dynamic learning communities, and cultivate expert learners will thrive in any teaching and learning landscape.
Achieve Balance with Blended Learning
Lack of time and energy are barriers to innovation. Too many teachers are exhausted because they are doing the lion’s share of the work. To achieve balance, teachers must shift their mindset, develop their skill set, and build a useful toolset. Teachers who partner with students can share the responsibility of learning to create dynamic learning environments both online and offline.
Blended Learning in Action
It’s impossible to meet the needs of diverse learners if you move lockstep through curriculum and learning activities as a whole class. A dynamic blend of active, engaged learning online and active, engaged learning offline can shift students to the center of learning. Explore how teachers can leverage blended learning models to give students more agency, differentiate consistently to meet student needs, and allow students more control over the pace of their learning.
The Community of Inquiry: Teaching & Learning Online
As learning moves online, many teachers are unsure how to navigate this new learning landscape. The Community of Inquiry theoretical framework can support teachers in understanding their roles in a blended or online course, helping students to develop their social presence online, and engaging students in the construction of knowledge as part of an online learning community.
