Teaching in Blended Learning Environments:
Creating a Community of Inquiry to Promote Engagement and Deep Learning

The unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic has accelerated the transition of teaching and learning from face-to-face to online mode, and blended learning will likely be the future trend even in the post-pandemic era. Embracing the values of face-to-face teaching while taking advantage of the affordances of online technologies, blended learning has proven to be an educational approach that could enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of teaching and learning in higher education. However, blended learning calls for a significant rethinking and redesigning purposeful learning activities to fully engage learners and to ensure the quality of learning experiences.

This seminar will first introduce Community of Inquiry as the pedagogical framework for teaching in the blended learning environments. Guided by this framework, this seminar will further discuss instructional design principles, as well as how digital technologies and specific teaching strategies could be used to create a collaborative community of inquiry that promote student engagement and deep meaningful learning. Finally, based on the challenges and problems participants identify in their own teaching practice, participants will learn how to conduct an action research to analyze, design, implement, reflect, and iterate a blended teaching activity.

This seminar will be the first of a series of advanced professional developments focusing on improving teaching skills provided for HKUMed staff. The tentative topics for the following sessions will be Online Assessment and Effective Feedback.

Dr Binbin Zheng, Associate Professor
BIMHSE

Dr Binbin Zheng joined the Bau Institute of Medical and Health Sciences Education as Associate Professor in April 2021. Dr Zheng obtained her PhD degree in Language, Literacy, and Technology from the University of California, Irvine. Before joining HKUMed, Dr Zheng was an assistant professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University, and later an assistant professor in the Office of Medical Education Research and Development in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Dr Zheng’s research focuses on online teaching and learning effectiveness, students’ learning processes and outcomes in technology-enhanced learning environments, and self-regulated learning. Her work has been widely published in top-tier education and educational technology journals such as Review of Educational Research, Computers & Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, and so on.

Poster