BLENDED LEARNING QUOTES

Kathryn VandenBosch

Dean, College of Agricultural & Life Sciences

“The CALS Strategic Framework calls on us to honor and engage the ideas, enthusiasm, and commitment of our students through excellence in teaching and learning experiences and to ‘encourage and reward innovation.’ Blended learning is a terrific example of combining the strengths of multiple methods into powerful educational experiences that benefit our students.”

John Karl Scholz

Dean, College of Letters & Science

“Blended learning is an increasingly important approach that our outstanding Letters & Science faculty and instructional staff use to create deeply engaging courses. Online experiences allow students to reach outside classroom walls for guided learning experiences, which in turn, allows for creative, provocative and meaningful interaction during face-to-face class time.”

Paul Robbins

Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

“What makes the university special has always been its seamless connection between people, places and experiences on-campus, with those OFF campus. Knowledge and learning that uses new technology to move back-and-forth, from classrooms and home offices, and from distant field sites and library study groups is simply an extension of what the UW already does well. By further breaking the bounds of classroom, the lab, and the campus, blended learning vindicates the unshackled learning we do really really well.”

François Ortalo-Magné

Albert O. Nicholas Dean, Wisconsin School of Business

Education is about more than pushing knowledge into young brains. Schools that move from teaching students a sequence of classes, to developing coherent learning outcomes that span an entire curriculum, will define the future of higher education. The Wisconsin School of Business is a leader in Educational Innovation (EI) and blended learning is among our key strategies. Grounded in our KDBIN™ framework, we have developed integrated classroom experiences that are student-centered, experiential and active, using a range of face-to-face and technology-enhanced approaches. Blended learning is an integral part of our efforts to move from delivering great teaching to inspiring deep learning for all WSB students.”

Soyeon Shim

Dean, School of Human Ecology

“I am a consumer behavior researcher. Two decades ago, I conducted a research in the online shopping space. At that time, there were two thoughts – either online will take over the brick-and-mortar stores, or online will never make it. But my forecasting research on consumer behaviors predicted that those businesses that embrace both venues will do the best. I think this theory applies to learning. Those universities and programs that embrace both technology and classroom learning + experiential learning on campus and in the fields will be the ones that will prosper. Kudos to UW and UW faculty members who are embracing it all for student learning.”

Robert N. Golden

Dean, School of Medicine and Public Health

“Health care is in an unprecedented era of change. These changes are affecting not only how our doctors care for patients, but also how we train future generations of physicians.The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is committed to innovations that will prepare our students to meet society’s evolving health care needs and become leaders in the health care systems of the 21st century.”

Kathryn May

Dean, School of Nursing

“The science and practice of nursing requires our graduates to learn and collaborate in technology-rich environments, and to do so across time and space. Blended learning helps them to do just that and has become an integral part of our approach to teaching and learning in the School of Nursing. I am proud to say that nursing was among the first fields on campus to move into blended learning in the 1990’s with the establishment of our BSN@Home program, which became the first BS degree at UW-Madison to be made available almost entirely by distance. That spirit of innovation continues today as nursing faculty explore how combining online and experiential learning can increase student engagement and accountability and build collaboration skills among team members within and across disciplines – competencies they will need in professional practice.”

Steve Swanson

Dean, School of Pharmacy

“Our goal for using blended learning is to enhance student engagement and success.”

Mark D. Markel

Dean, School of Veterinary Medicine

“Blended learning, a platform that combines online as well as in-person learning activities, is transforming how students learn, whether they are undergraduate, graduate or professional students. To remain at the forefront of excellence in teaching and continue to serve as a national leader in veterinary medical education, the UW School of Veterinary Medicine is focused on incorporating innovative learning strategies including blended learning.”

Robb Hardie

Associate Dean, Professional Programs
School of Veterinary Medicine

“Although I am aware that different is not necessarily better and that change can be hard, there is substantial evidence that blended learning strategies can improve student performance, retention, and participation and faculty should be open to evolving their teaching to include these strategies. Eventually “Blended Learning” will just be “Learning” as institutions, faculty, and students become more aware of and embrace the many different teaching and learning methods that are available today, as well as those of the future.”

Ian Baird

Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies

“Active learning is crucial for helping students reach their potentials, and for reducing the achievement gap. Blended learning provides some important tools for promoting active learning.”

Randy Stoecker

College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

“We live in a world where information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer both great potential and great distraction. Blended learning provides a framework that can maximize the potential and minimize the distraction. By linking ICTs with active learning pedagogy, blended learning can move students from passive observers in the learning process to active participants.”

Beth Martin

School of Pharmacy

“I’ve come to realize that it’s really not about what we teach, but how we teach. I’m successful as a teacher when I’ve integrated technology and active learning seamlessly into my classroom. We cannot afford to use our face-to-face time with students in a passive way. My goal for every classroom experience is to see students talking about what they are learning, relating it to past experiences, reflecting on it and applying it to new experiences. Blended learning allows us to create more opportunities for students to retrieve and use the knowledge and skills they are learning – and that kind of learning is more likely to stick.”

Katherine Judson

UW Law School

“To be successful lawyers, students need to learn more than just the law. Blended learning can help support and reinforce crucial skills for attorneys like collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking.”

Verda Blythe

Wisconsin School of Business

“Transforming my classroom to an active learning environment with blended approaches has been impactful to my students’ learning and inspired me to continuously innovate and improve as an instructor. Perhaps most importantly, research has demonstrated that blended approaches facilitate deeper learning and improve student learning outcomes.”

Lesley Sager

School of Human Ecology

“Blended learning is a valuable tool for both teaching and learning, since it provides a variety of ways for students to absorb information and the opportunity for educators to tap into their strengths.”

Ruth Sullivan

School of Veterinary Medicine

Just as we use technology in our personal lives to answer long-standing challenges and to achieve previously unattainable or even unimagined results, we use technology in the classroom to expand and enhance our practice of teaching and learning both by supporting existing best practices and by enabling new approaches.”

Kristen Pickett

School of Education

“Blended learning allows us to evolve our teaching and learning efforts into the next generation. It is it driven by the innovative and creative ideas that we as educators have for our classrooms. This approach gives us the means to reach the students who are often less likely to raise their hand and find a voice in the classroom.”

Parvathy Pillai

School of Medicine and Public Health

“While active learning is not necessarily a new concept, the idea of blended learning allows us to incorporate new, innovative teaching strategies to promote more active learning and improve learning outcomes.”

Jonathan Klein

College of Letters and Science

“Purposefully planned online learning experiences like those found in well-designed blended courses can extend the classroom to support rich interaction and engagement. Simultaneously, students get the valuable opportunity to develop as thoughtful and deliberate digital citizens, prepared for personal and professional lives that increasingly depend upon virtual collaboration skills.”

Mary Sesto

School of Medicine and Public Health

“Blended learning is a useful tool that can be used to help facilitate student engagement and active learning.”

Jerzy “George” Jura

School of Nursing

“Today’s healthcare requires expert knowledge, keen clinical judgement, quick decision-making, clear communication, and a wide range of hands-on skills that often require being familiar with fast-changing healthcare technology. If we want to make sure that our students are well prepared and successful, then blended learning is not just an option, but a necessity. Learning must take place in different types of environments and include diverse learning experiences: from problem-solving and teamwork in SoN’s active learning classrooms, complemented by interactive online content; to clinical simulation and hands-on lab practice in state-of-the-art Center for Technology-Enhanced Nursing (CTEN), and through clinical practice on the hospital floor in the real world.”

Stephen Young

College of Letters and Science

"Blended Learning means providing students with the tools they need to work through difficult questions together and draw their own conclusions. It is about creating more vibrant learning environments both in the classroom and beyond."

Andrea Porter

School of Pharmacy

"Utilizing a blended learning format can transform a classroom. Instead of solely listening to information being delivered, students come prepared to class where they are able to discuss the material with their classmates and apply that material to real-life situations. The blended delivery method prepares students for what they’ll experience during their experiential rotations as well as after graduation when they are a pharmacist providing patient care."

Ursula Weigold

UW Law School

"Blended learning provides students and professors ways to engage more actively both outside and inside of the classroom. Outside of class, blended learning can connect law students with theory, knowledge, and expertise in creative and appealing ways. In class, better-prepared students can focus on integrating and applying what they’ve learned, as they practice the skills they will need to fully answer their clients’ legal questions."

Suzanne Dove

Wisconsin School of Business

"Well-designed blended learning is one way that professors can help students explore and assimilate certain materials outside of class so that in-class time is spent engaging in higher-order skills such as analysis and reflection. Compared with traditional lecture, this delivery model is much closer to what will be expected of our graduates when they are in the workplace: business professionals need to know how to prepare in advance and come to the table ready to collaborate and add value."

Alicia Hazen

School of Human Ecology

"Blended learning could help the School of Human Ecology (SoHE) address space/scheduling issues with use of the Collaborative Learning Hall, our one large lecture hall in Nancy Nicholas designed to facilitate active learning and collaboration. Since all of our majors in SoHE are centered around people and relationships and include project-based work, this space continues to be highly sought after and hard to get into for many faculty and instructors whose courses could really benefit from an active learning environment. Blending courses in SoHE could free up time and space in that classroom that has been used for traditional lectures, to allow for more active engagement in the curriculum, as that space was intended. This may also allow for us to keep more SoHE courses being taught in our building vs. elsewhere on campus because of space issues."

Ivy Corfis

College of Letters and Science

"Blended learning fosters student engagement and instructional interaction, effective communication and assessment of learning goals, to create educational opportunities throughout the College of Letters & Sciences, even in classes facing increasing enrollment pressures, which, with budgetary changes, make this a concern in all departments and classes. Through blended learning, students feel more connected with the instructional material in small and large-class settings."

Duncan Carlsmith

College of Letters and Science

"Blended learning underpins the active engagement pedagogies being developed to address 21st century L&S learning objectives for on-campus students. Through exploitation of educational information technology, blended leaning can better prepare students for active face-to-face activities, enable asynchronous and synchronous collaborative activities, provide integrated external information and interactive resources, and permit more extensive and incisive assessments, all benefiting students and instructors alike."

Lisa Lenertz

College of Agricultural and Life Sciences

"Blended learning can help students feel like they are part of a supportive community."