I'm going to be running a blended learning experience next summer that will combine a weekend in Chicago to visit the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Field Museum as well as two other local museums with Egyptian collections. The students will meet online first and have a follow-up period after.
The question arises, how long should these pre- and post-trip periods last? I want participants to have plenty of time to do preparatory reading before the weekend and get to know eachother a little but don't want to have to spend a huge amount of time leading discussions beforehand. Likewise, I want to allow for sufficient time afterwards for follow up discussion online (and sharing of photos etc.) but need to take into account the fact that most participants will probably spend a day or two extra sightseeing in Chicago on their own before returning home so I can't assume that post-trip discussion would pick up immediately.
On the other hand, I don't want to drag these on for a long time as this is a short trip (and I will hopefully be running much longer trips to Egypt itself in the future) and in order to make my fee reasonable and in proportion to the amount the participants will pay for the hotel, entrance fees, transport and food (I am currently working with a tour company to arrange a package) I don't feel I can run the course for too long.
How would you handle it? Perhaps stagger the pre-trip portion? Open up the reading material somewhat early and then allow for discussion only in the period immediately before the trip (like 1 or 2 weeks)? And how long would you allow for follow-up? I may actually wind up running more than one of these trips a month or less apart if the first one fills up quickly so I don't want to run the risk of overlapping the online portion of the course and be too busy or worse yet, have an online portion of one course going during the weekend when I will be running another tour and be too busy to monitor what is going on online at all.
You can read more about this trip here, but be aware that you will need to register at my site to view the description.
In reply to N Hansen
Re: Blended Learning Travel Experience: How long before and after?
by Richard Treves -
Hi N,
My tuppence worth:
I would think that you can't count on people all joining in before hand so I would just use moodle as a set of resources before the trip, maybe 2 weeks? I would also leave the students a rest week after the trip before getting them to take part after the event, then run for not more than a couple of weeks. This gives those with previous committments chance to skip a week if necessary. I really like this design, let us know how it works!
Richard
My tuppence worth:
I would think that you can't count on people all joining in before hand so I would just use moodle as a set of resources before the trip, maybe 2 weeks? I would also leave the students a rest week after the trip before getting them to take part after the event, then run for not more than a couple of weeks. This gives those with previous committments chance to skip a week if necessary. I really like this design, let us know how it works!
Richard