Here something important (and perhaps obvious) that I've learned from taking online courses and from teaching a blended course:
It's just like a traditional course in this way: A majority of students will put in a minimum amount of effort unless the assignment/reading/discussion is graded. When one of my professors has an "optional" discussion or assignment, only a handful of students participate. We are all focused on the many assignments and readings that are graded and often don't have (or take) the time for "extra" work. With respect to this blended class, many "students" want to get whatever is easy and comfortable--like coming to the F2F sessions but don't want to put out the effort necessary to do the online part of the course. The lesson for us is that we must think very carefully about the incentives we provide for our E and P students in the new blended programs to make sure they stay involved and engaged in the course between the F2F sessions. The assignments and discussions must be meaningful and necessary for success in the course. For this blended course (Blend 101), anything that those who are taking the course can learn from the experience is a plus. For our MBA programs, engaging the students is not optional. It is critical to the success of our programs.

I spent way too much time listening to webinars on blended learning this week! The one message I that I came away with from each of them was this: INSTRUCTOR PRESENCE is crucial to a good online experience for the student. That's a combination of a good syllabus, good materials, audio and video presence (students love to see you and/or hear you), and participation in the discussion boards. In my own online experiences, I can confirm the importance of this. A good student (and that is one thing that I have always been) is on the course website everyday and loves to see that the instructor is, too. While you may not need any advice from me about teaching, please know that you can trust my advice as a student! Who else would go back to school for a master's degree at 62. Heck, I'll be 63 when I finally get it!

It positively doesn't work to take a face-to-face class and simply slap it on the Internet -- and think you have a decent blended course. It takes an enormous amount of planning to put together a good blended course. Luckily, there are tons of resources floating around out on the web to help us. I hope that everyone who reads this blog will participate by sharing websites, experiences, ideas, and tools with all of us who are constantly striving to improve our courses.