Blended Learning
Blended learning is in fact nothing revolutionary. It is a progression, where traditional methods step by step embrace the integrative aspects previously described, as well as the constantly evolving digital learning tools, in increasingly developing and varied learning environments. What then are the basic aspects of blended learning?
Imagine a spectrum where traditional education finds itself at an end diametrically opposed to distance online education. Blended learning thus finds itself somewhere in between, where part of the teaching is done in classrooms at school, and other elements of the teaching are offered digitally at home or in computer labs for smaller teams, also known as learning pods. The hybrid aspects of these up-and-coming methods aim at diversifying pedagogical approaches as teachers offer an increased level of student engagement and help to preserve the best aspects of traditional teaching and learning.
With the intention of reducing the less effective facets of teaching in large classes, such as the lack of content adaptation to the individual needs of each student, blended learning increases flexibility while using adaptive methods of active pedagogy and the emerging technologies for distance education. In this context, the teaching options become much more varied and thus allow all students to find their avenue to a more individualised developmental path. We argue that the formation of small learning groups as well as individualised lesson plans increase the ability to assimilate various concepts. This variety helps to develop a synergy through learning.
Unfortunately, constructive personalised feedback and differentiation do not always adapt well to the new digital platforms available today. This is why several aspects of traditional education, such as hands-on workshops and aesthetic and artistic activities must be preserved on a face-to-face level.
However, with the digital educational tools that we have previously described, it will be easier and easier to offer development paths better suited to the individual and collective needs of students. Thus, the role of the educator becomes more that of a facilitator, which also helps to develop the qualities necessary for the development of autodidactic learning. It is a matter of offering mixed interactive models in order to offer the tools necessary for teachers to develop strategies to integrate different technologies into traditional teaching methods better adapted to the conditions available in school environments.
The level of customisation can vary from session to session, ranging from bitesize chunks of information to longer, structured independent study time intersected with in-person classroom lectures. This variety would allow teachers to focus more on developing students' higher thinking skills instead of just making sure that students understand basic concepts.
In an environment where each student can receive adaptive and personalised instruction, teachers can also give instructions in smaller groups, where instructional tasks can be further adapted based on real-time data, allowing instructional adjustments to be made on a daily or weekly basis using digital tools in order to better meet the collective and individual needs of students. With the eventual goal of contributing to the longevity of each student's knowledge and know-how, blended learning offers many more educational tools for teachers to ensure that each and every one achieves their full potential.
In addition, schools can make substantial savings by creating a hybrid learning environment between traditional school and distance education using digital platforms dedicated to teaching and developing self-study. This allows schools to redefine themselves while allowing a more efficient allocation of its resources, premises, and equipment. These are the main lines of blended learning, but there are a few more aspects to consider: traditional class rotations, flexible classes, and pod classes, as well as lab or workshop rotations.
The laboratory and workshop rotation allows students to enter and leave a classroom or the school building for field study or to have access to a digital or physical laboratory to perform tasks as well as experiments. They might have access to these various workspaces after having received clear and precise instructions from teachers, instructors in-person or digitally, so that the theory is used in a practical way.
In this way, students have the chance to develop the sustainable skill of adaptability that they will need in their future learning endeavours. The juxtaposition of the two models will serve to help them accomplish their tasks successfully, regardless of their learning preferences. This form of integration between face-to-face and distance education is also a form of transdisciplinary pedagogy which can contribute to the sustainability of the knowledge and skills acquired.
Nevertheless, this hybridisation is only the beginning of an integrative learning cycle, as the information collected during each laboratory offers valuable data to better adapt the traditional teaching periods, as algorithms will most probably make it possible to offer advice to instructors. The digital data available at the end of each workshop will be collected by the teachers, and the interpretation of these results will provide live assessment and allow teachers to better supervise individual progress. It is also important to regularly create different groups of different sizes in order to better equip educators to make better use of the resources, premises, and available material in order to create cohesion and contribute to increased collaboration of colleagues within a team of teachers.
Charlotte Graham
For logistical purposes, it is all the more important to use this hybrid approach to promote teacher initiative. In addition, by breaking the routine of traditional school, the significance of laboratories and workshops where manual activities are emphasised takes on increased importance. In other words, much larger classes can be used to teach theoretical aspects for traditional lectures or video instructions, while pods and team activities at school take on increased importance in terms of active and sustainable learning. Online teaching becomes de facto more theoretical, as face-to-face learning workshops, laboratories, and hands-on learning activities will be carried out in smaller constellations, where students will have the best chance to communicate and share their know-how with their classmates.
As this method allows increased rotation between different learning stations, it also creates an educational environment that is more stimulating for most students. By inspiring initiative, blended learning redefines certain social relationships between students, which is sometimes difficult to maintain in larger learning groups. By adding some variety, students will have the chance to develop new affinities, with some of their classmates by participating more frequently in interactive team activities in person or online.
Despite this recurring restructuring of classes and learning groups, teachers will still be able to develop group cohesion as, using the data collected by the digital platforms used, group creation will be easier to perform. Furthermore, the digital data collected will make it possible to better tailor the content of each active learning workshop or laboratory to the specific needs (educational, emotional, or social) of the students on each team.
By creating digital or face-to-face break-out rooms, the lecturers' interventions can thus be made in real time in turn and divided into short periods where the instructions will be more concise and adapted to the needs of each group of participants in class rotations. By establishing learning pods, students will be able to take charge of their own learning more independently, as the role of teachers will be redefined, and students might only need a facilitator or sometimes even behavioral specialist (counsellor) in order to better achieve group collaboration to reach their individual goals.
The digital content of learning activities arguably allows for increased engagement on the part of students compared with some traditional methods. As we previously mentioned, digital platforms can provide instant feedback, enabling independent support of their own individual and collective development goals, without having to wait for teachers to perform laborious assessments. Digital platforms make it possible to offer this feedback in real time, and this might be included into the gamification aspects previously described.
The advantage of this division of tasks between teachers and digital platforms can offer a new synergy contributing to a differentiation of the content for each learning sub-group and individual, which allows the teachers in charge to adapt the educational content to the specific needs of everyone while simultaneously offering a chance to develop a heightened level of engagement on the part of the students.
Blended learning can also offer more flexibility for a work team striving to integrate different subjects for collaborative transdisciplinary learning projects. It provides a stage for multimedia experimentation, and, with time, it will be possible to evaluate the efficacy of the new forms of remote education. It grants opportunities to test the limits of digitisation within any organisation and might contribute to the implementation of new methods. For example, instead of having groups of students attending class from home in an online class setting, blended learning offers the opportunity to also try the opposite.
Let’s imagine that a teacher is forced to stay at home to take care of a sick child; he or she might still be able to give a planned lecture with the help of adapted multimedia support to a large group of students sitting in a classroom under the supervision of a class assistant or group tutor. You might also envisage a scenario where an expert teacher is utilised to give instruction to much larger groups of students remotely, which would have an equalitarian effect on education, where a greater number of people would get the benefit of the better teachers.
Furthermore, the teacher can also be available to cover multiple classes at once, when offering lectures using interactive multimedia platforms where groups of students can remotely attend as they see and hear what is going on in another classroom and participate interactively, as if they were there in a virtual setting. With the right kind of equipment, students will be able to interact with a teacher that is performing in another classroom, as if they were there. It is even possible for a teacher to hop in and out of a classroom to give a lecture to larger groups of students simultaneously. This provides many opportunities to rethink class scheduling, as well as spatial management in schools, and might provide an increased flexibility for school leadership to better allocate resources within their organisations.