STLHE 2016 SAPES

The Master Teacher Program (MTP) of the Université de Sherbrooke is a graduate program designed for teachers in Anglophone colleges in the province of Quebec. It targets educational psychology, pedagogy, pedagogical content knowledge and discipline based learning. The MTP courses are all given in the Montreal region. One of the premises of the program, is that participants should be able to take courses whether they live in the Montreal area or not. Therefore, the Blended Synchronous Delivery Mode (BSDM) has been used for courses. The BSDM is defined as "Learning and teaching where remote students participate in face-to-face classes by means of rich-media synchronous technologies such as video conferencing, web conferencing, or virtual worlds" (Bower, Dalgarno, Kennedy, Lee & Kenney, 2015, p.1).


This approach was adopted in the MTP because of its advantages: it provides greater educational access, the opportunity to increase enrolment, and a more inclusive and equitable learning experience, especially for those who live at a distance. BSDM, however, also presents limitations in the pedagogical approaches that can be used and difficulties with integrating online students and face-to-face students within the same learning environment. In order to address these issues, the graduate program committee has developed a Blended Session Protocol (BSP). The use of this protocol by the instructors in the MTP will be shared in this session. The participants will be invited to describe the context of their programs, identify the difficulties and challenges they face in blended and online learning, and discuss the elements in the BSP that might help them expand and enhance their teaching practices.


Bower, M., Dalgarno, B., Kennedy, G. E., Lee, M. J., & Kenney, J. (2015). Design and implementation factors in blended synchronous learning environments: Outcomes from a cross-case analysis. Computers & Education, 86, 1-17.