Blended Learning

Editor's Notes

• #2: Many have raised questions about whether to resume face-to-face learning experiences or stick to strictly online learning this season in a way that is both physically safe and educationally sound for students and faculty members. A number of institutions still face significant increasing pressure to re-open from students and their families. This raises questions about the college student experience, both inside and outside of the classroom. Institutions now must question whether hybrid methods of learning are any better than moving forward with purely online learning, or returning to in-person classes.
• #5: bLearning should be a fundamental shift in instructional strategy. It is more than just combining an online component to traditional classroom instruction. It is not different from learning. It is a form of learning. Explosion of countless tools and technologies on the education scene. New ways to deliver, enhance and assess content. Education and assessment need to be redesigned to transform the flow and function of teaching / learning. Teachers need customizable instructional delivery models to retain teacher authenticity and to demonstrate teacher’s interest and investment in learner experience. Meeting different needs and learning styles. ❖  Provide more flexibility with regard to when and where students choose to learn ❖  Both instructors and students have the opportunity to develop their technology skills. ❖  Students prefer courses that have some online components. ❖  Enhance learning by allowing the use of pedagogical strategies that are not possible without learning technologies.
• #6: Integrating digital content (differentiated path and pace) Small group instruction (aligned to student needs and learning goals) Student reflection (awareness of student progress) Data driven decisions (frequent assessments of instructional decisions)
• #8: it is always important to first identify why you are blending. If you don’t, you can quickly fall into the hole of using technology for the sake of using technology instead of truly leveraging the technology to address an instructional challenge you have in your classroom. Also remember that you aren't expected to master blending right away. Blending your classroom takes time, patience, and a lot of fine tuning. 
• #9: flexibility is the most important. It is really unsettling to change from a routine that works decently (i.e. whole group instruction) Teachers will now need new skills to learn how to support students who are learning different things, at different paces, through different approaches. They will need to be able to facilitate different learning opportunities for students--such as one-on-one tutoring, small-group instruction, project-based learning,  and lectures. Teachers will need to be able to communicate via a variety of mediums, explore, identify, and use a variety of online tools to meet student needs, and be able to do basic troubleshooting— such as helping students reset passwords, download plug-ins, and so forth. For many teachers, being able to teach effectively offline as well as online will be critical.
• #11: Collaboration: With effective collaboration, comes strong communication skills. Blended learning gives opportunities to students to go beyond basic understanding and really see the content in action through various learning experiences and cross content collaborative projects that are not possible without the technology support at hand.  Engagement: Students are more likely to stay engaged when working on lessons that are personalized for their needs. Rotating through independent, small group and teacher-led centers can foster students’ ability to monitor their own engagement when they are working online away from the teacher. Content: When well implemented, blended learning can give students choice around the path and pace at which they are able to connect with content. Teachers are also able to have more one on one time with students to push rigorous analysis of the content in new and exciting ways. Beyond the classroom, blended also opens opportunities for more students to have access to high-level, rigorous curriculum because of all of the open source content Academic Ownership: An inherent advantage to personalizing students’ learning is they are required to take more ownership over their education. Even if things aren’t fully personalized, great educators in blended classrooms ensure students can explain their reasoning, articulate why they are attempting tasks or reviewing content online vs. in person. • Improved student academic outcomes • Increased student ownership of learning • Increased student engagement • Improved teacher satisfaction4 • Increased teacher retention
• #12: “When beginning to blend your classroom, it is always important to first identify why you are blending. If you don’t, you can quickly fall into the hole of using technology for the sake of using technology instead of truly leveraging the technology to address an instructional challenge you have in your classroom. Also remember that you aren't expected to master blending right away. Blending your classroom takes time, patience, and a lot of fine tuning. It is ok to make mistakes, iterate on your model, and try various recipes....the main goal is to just try!”
• #14: Evolving instructional media, advances in technology, increasing learning opportunities Integration of media and combination of media
• #17: Integrating digital content (differentiated path and pace) Small group instruction (aligned to student needs and learning goals) Student reflection (awareness of student progress) Data driven decisions (frequent assessments of instructional decisions)
• #19: Standards and methods that have been studiously crafted to teach in f2f sessions cannot simply be doubled-clicked into an online environment. An LMS will usually allow the instructor to create dynamic feedback depending on the answer a learner will give to a specific question. For instance, in a multiple-choice test if the learner chooses answer B over the correct answer C, the appropriate feedback will be given back to the learner, indicating fault in the thought process, or hints as to why another answer would be more appropriate. an LMS gives the instructor an overview of test scores, progress, and growth with graphical representation to make the analysis even easier to grasp especially when the class size is very large. That way, an instructor has the ability to analyze which students scored the highest/ lowest, and which questions were hardest/ easiest for the majority of students. Reporting is a handy tool that allows the instructor to see trends and act upon them to improve the curriculum.
• #22: Students love seeing videos that their own teachers have recorded!  We can deliver direct instruction through videos, without sacrificing personality or authenticity. It makes a huge difference. Putting direct instruction into videos allows students to take control of their own learning. But like any academic skill, self-direction is hard and must be scaffolded for students. Otherwise, students who are great at self-management flourish, while students that aren’t only fall further behind. This leads to a highly unequal classroom where successful students learn fast and independently through an online portal, while unsuccessful students fall quickly through the cracks and feel lonely and lost. Set hard end-of-unit deadlines, which prevent students from falling too far behind and allow students to reset at the end of each unit. Make the classroom a controlled-chaos environment of authentic learning.
• #24: If a bLearning model emphasizes greater flexibility, choice, and personalization of learning, then assessment practices need to do the same. In order to do this, assessment needs to be directly correlated to the learning outcomes of each course. Authentic assessment—assessing student abilities to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes to real world problems—is not only possible in an online environment; it is getting more popular. Faculty who evaluate their students’ performances by using a mixture of tests – some online, some offline – have experienced more fruitful outcomes. Supplying examples to read as text online or offline proves to be helpful. Presenting video explanations or examples online, where students can view a snippet of the content repeatedly gives enough exposure to solidify an idea or concept. Any tool that can be afforded the student should be considered to improve learning.
• #26: Essential for bLearning to succeed. 1. Comprehensive teacher or tutor training 2. Ongoing evaluation 3. students’ equitable access to technology How much weightage to testing? How many tests/are required? How to avoid creating a “high stakes” environment? What are expectations from online assessments? How to compare auto-scored online quizzes and project-based assessments? How to strike the right balance in bLearning courses? How to incorporate formal and informal assessments into bLearning? Will these all take place face-to-face, online, or in a combination?
• #28: “What,” I asked “were YOU learning from your students during the different phases of the lesson?” The challenge: truly enhances the quality of students’ learning experiences.
• #32: Blended learning is a joint venture and needs to include input from IT in order to make it efficient and effective Blended learning involves using technology to address an instructional challenge in a meaningful manner for students Like kitchen recipes, the blended recipes can be combined in numerous ways in order to best address your students’ needs