personal essay about blended learning

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 15 February 2018

Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies

• Charles Dziuban 1 ,
• Charles R. Graham 2 ,
• Patsy D. Moskal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6376-839X 1 ,
• Anders Norberg 3 &
• Nicole Sicilia 1  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  15 , Article number:  3 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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This study addressed several outcomes, implications, and possible future directions for blended learning (BL) in higher education in a world where information communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly communicate with each other. In considering effectiveness, the authors contend that BL coalesces around access, success, and students’ perception of their learning environments. Success and withdrawal rates for face-to-face and online courses are compared to those for BL as they interact with minority status. Investigation of student perception about course excellence revealed the existence of robust if-then decision rules for determining how students evaluate their educational experiences. Those rules were independent of course modality, perceived content relevance, and expected grade. The authors conclude that although blended learning preceded modern instructional technologies, its evolution will be inextricably bound to contemporary information communication technologies that are approximating some aspects of human thought processes.

Introduction

Blended learning and research issues.

Blended learning (BL), or the integration of face-to-face and online instruction (Graham 2013 ), is widely adopted across higher education with some scholars referring to it as the “new traditional model” (Ross and Gage 2006 , p. 167) or the “new normal” in course delivery (Norberg et al. 2011 , p. 207). However, tracking the accurate extent of its growth has been challenging because of definitional ambiguity (Oliver and Trigwell 2005 ), combined with institutions’ inability to track an innovative practice, that in many instances has emerged organically. One early nationwide study sponsored by the Sloan Consortium (now the Online Learning Consortium) found that 65.2% of participating institutions of higher education (IHEs) offered blended (also termed hybrid ) courses (Allen and Seaman 2003 ). A 2008 study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education to explore distance education in the U.S., defined BL as “a combination of online and in-class instruction with reduced in-class seat time for students ” (Lewis and Parsad 2008 , p. 1, emphasis added). Using this definition, the study found that 35% of higher education institutions offered blended courses, and that 12% of the 12.2 million documented distance education enrollments were in blended courses.

The 2017 New Media Consortium Horizon Report found that blended learning designs were one of the short term forces driving technology adoption in higher education in the next 1–2 years (Adams Becker et al. 2017 ). Also, blended learning is one of the key issues in teaching and learning in the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s 2017 annual survey of higher education (EDUCAUSE 2017 ). As institutions begin to examine BL instruction, there is a growing research interest in exploring the implications for both faculty and students. This modality is creating a community of practice built on a singular and pervasive research question, “How is blended learning impacting the teaching and learning environment?” That question continues to gain traction as investigators study the complexities of how BL interacts with cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of student behavior, and examine its transformation potential for the academy. Those issues are so compelling that several volumes have been dedicated to assembling the research on how blended learning can be better understood (Dziuban et al. 2016 ; Picciano et al. 2014 ; Picciano and Dziuban 2007 ; Bonk and Graham 2007 ; Kitchenham 2011 ; Jean-François 2013 ; Garrison and Vaughan 2013 ) and at least one organization, the Online Learning Consortium, sponsored an annual conference solely dedicated to blended learning at all levels of education and training (2004–2015). These initiatives address blended learning in a wide variety of situations. For instance, the contexts range over K-12 education, industrial and military training, conceptual frameworks, transformational potential, authentic assessment, and new research models. Further, many of these resources address students’ access, success, withdrawal, and perception of the degree to which blended learning provides an effective learning environment.

Currently the United States faces a widening educational gap between our underserved student population and those communities with greater financial and technological resources (Williams 2016 ). Equal access to education is a critical need, one that is particularly important for those in our underserved communities. Can blended learning help increase access thereby alleviating some of the issues faced by our lower income students while resulting in improved educational equality? Although most indicators suggest “yes” (Dziuban et al. 2004 ), it seems that, at the moment, the answer is still “to be determined.” Quality education presents a challenge, evidenced by many definitions of what constitutes its fundamental components (Pirsig 1974 ; Arum et al. 2016 ). Although progress has been made by initiatives, such as, Quality Matters ( 2016 ), the OLC OSCQR Course Design Review Scorecard developed by Open SUNY (Open SUNY n.d. ), the Quality Scorecard for Blended Learning Programs (Online Learning Consortium n.d. ), and SERVQUAL (Alhabeeb 2015 ), the issue is by no means resolved. Generally, we still make quality education a perceptual phenomenon where we ascribe that attribute to a course, educational program, or idea, but struggle with precisely why we reached that decision. Searle ( 2015 ), summarizes the problem concisely arguing that quality does not exist independently, but is entirely observer dependent. Pirsig ( 1974 ) in his iconic volume on the nature of quality frames the context this way,

“There is such thing as Quality, but that as soon as you try to define it, something goes haywire. You can’t do it” (p. 91).

Therefore, attempting to formulate a semantic definition of quality education with syntax-based metrics results in what O’Neil (O'Neil 2017 ) terms surrogate models that are rough approximations and oversimplified. Further, the derived metrics tend to morph into goals or benchmarks, losing their original measurement properties (Goodhart 1975 ).

Information communication technologies in society and education

Blended learning forces us to consider the characteristics of digital technology, in general, and information communication technologies (ICTs), more specifically. Floridi ( 2014 ) suggests an answer proffered by Alan Turing: that digital ICTs can process information on their own, in some sense just as humans and other biological life. ICTs can also communicate information to each other, without human intervention, but as linked processes designed by humans. We have evolved to the point where humans are not always “in the loop” of technology, but should be “on the loop” (Floridi 2014 , p. 30), designing and adapting the process. We perceive our world more and more in informational terms, and not primarily as physical entities (Floridi 2008 ). Increasingly, the educational world is dominated by information and our economies rest primarily on that asset. So our world is also blended, and it is blended so much that we hardly see the individual components of the blend any longer. Floridi ( 2014 ) argues that the world has become an “infosphere” (like biosphere) where we live as “inforgs.” What is real for us is shifting from the physical and unchangeable to those things with which we can interact.

Floridi also helps us to identify the next blend in education, involving ICTs, or specialized artificial intelligence (Floridi 2014 , 25; Norberg 2017 , 65). Learning analytics, adaptive learning, calibrated peer review, and automated essay scoring (Balfour 2013 ) are advanced processes that, provided they are good interfaces, can work well with the teacher— allowing him or her to concentrate on human attributes such as being caring, creative, and engaging in problem-solving. This can, of course, as with all technical advancements, be used to save resources and augment the role of the teacher. For instance, if artificial intelligence can be used to work along with teachers, allowing them more time for personal feedback and mentoring with students, then, we will have made a transformational breakthrough. The Edinburg University manifesto for teaching online says bravely, “Automation need not impoverish education – we welcome our robot colleagues” (Bayne et al. 2016 ). If used wisely, they will teach us more about ourselves, and about what is truly human in education. This emerging blend will also affect curricular and policy questions, such as the what? and what for? The new normal for education will be in perpetual flux. Floridi’s ( 2014 ) philosophy offers us tools to understand and be in control and not just sit by and watch what happens. In many respects, he has addressed the new normal for blended learning.

Literature of blended learning

A number of investigators have assembled a comprehensive agenda of transformative and innovative research issues for blended learning that have the potential to enhance effectiveness (Garrison and Kanuka 2004 ; Picciano 2009 ). Generally, research has found that BL results in improvement in student success and satisfaction, (Dziuban and Moskal 2011 ; Dziuban et al. 2011 ; Means et al. 2013 ) as well as an improvement in students’ sense of community (Rovai and Jordan 2004 ) when compared with face-to-face courses. Those who have been most successful at blended learning initiatives stress the importance of institutional support for course redesign and planning (Moskal et al. 2013 ; Dringus and Seagull 2015 ; Picciano 2009 ; Tynan et al. 2015 ). The evolving research questions found in the literature are long and demanding, with varied definitions of what constitutes “blended learning,” facilitating the need for continued and in-depth research on instructional models and support needed to maximize achievement and success (Dringus and Seagull 2015 ; Bloemer and Swan 2015 ).

Educational access

The lack of access to educational technologies and innovations (sometimes termed the digital divide) continues to be a challenge with novel educational technologies (Fairlie 2004 ; Jones et al. 2009 ). One of the promises of online technologies is that they can increase access to nontraditional and underserved students by bringing a host of educational resources and experiences to those who may have limited access to on-campus-only higher education. A 2010 U.S. report shows that students with low socioeconomic status are less likely to obtain higher levels of postsecondary education (Aud et al. 2010 ). However, the increasing availability of distance education has provided educational opportunities to millions (Lewis and Parsad 2008 ; Allen et al. 2016 ). Additionally, an emphasis on open educational resources (OER) in recent years has resulted in significant cost reductions without diminishing student performance outcomes (Robinson et al. 2014 ; Fischer et al. 2015 ; Hilton et al. 2016 ).

Unfortunately, the benefits of access may not be experienced evenly across demographic groups. A 2015 study found that Hispanic and Black STEM majors were significantly less likely to take online courses even when controlling for academic preparation, socioeconomic status (SES), citizenship, and English as a second language (ESL) status (Wladis et al. 2015 ). Also, questions have been raised about whether the additional access afforded by online technologies has actually resulted in improved outcomes for underserved populations. A distance education report in California found that all ethnic minorities (except Asian/Pacific Islanders) completed distance education courses at a lower rate than the ethnic majority (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office 2013 ). Shea and Bidjerano ( 2014 , 2016 ) found that African American community college students who took distance education courses completed degrees at significantly lower rates than those who did not take distance education courses. On the other hand, a study of success factors in K-12 online learning found that for ethnic minorities, only 1 out of 15 courses had significant gaps in student test scores (Liu and Cavanaugh 2011 ). More research needs to be conducted, examining access and success rates for different populations, when it comes to learning in different modalities, including fully online and blended learning environments.

Framing a treatment effect

Over the last decade, there have been at least five meta-analyses that have addressed the impact of blended learning environments and its relationship to learning effectiveness (Zhao et al. 2005 ; Sitzmann et al. 2006 ; Bernard et al. 2009 ; Means et al. 2010 , 2013 ; Bernard et al. 2014 ). Each of these studies has found small to moderate positive effect sizes in favor of blended learning when compared to fully online or traditional face-to-face environments. However, there are several considerations inherent in these studies that impact our understanding the generalizability of outcomes.

Dziuban and colleagues (Dziuban et al. 2015 ) analyzed the meta-analyses conducted by Means and her colleagues (Means et al. 2013 ; Means et al. 2010 ), concluding that their methods were impressive as evidenced by exhaustive study inclusion criteria and the use of scale-free effect size indices. The conclusion, in both papers, was that there was a modest difference in multiple outcome measures for courses featuring online modalities—in particular, blended courses. However, with blended learning especially, there are some concerns with these kinds of studies. First, the effect sizes are based on the linear hypothesis testing model with the underlying assumption that the treatment and the error terms are uncorrelated, indicating that there is nothing else going on in the blending that might confound the results. Although the blended learning articles (Means et al. 2010 ) were carefully vetted, the assumption of independence is tenuous at best so that these meta-analysis studies must be interpreted with extreme caution.

There is an additional concern with blended learning as well. Blends are not equivalent because of the manner on which they are configured. For instance, a careful reading of the sources used in the Means, et al. papers will identify, at minimum, the following blending techniques: laboratory assessments, online instruction, e-mail, class web sites, computer laboratories, mapping and scaffolding tools, computer clusters, interactive presentations and e-mail, handwriting capture, evidence-based practice, electronic portfolios, learning management systems, and virtual apparatuses. These are not equivalent ways in which to configure courses, and such nonequivalence constitutes the confounding we describe. We argue here that, in actuality, blended learning is a general construct in the form of a boundary object (Star and Griesemer 1989 ) rather than a treatment effect in the statistical sense. That is, an idea or concept that can support a community of practice, but is weakly defined fostering disagreement in the general group. Conversely, it is stronger in individual constituencies. For instance, content disciplines (i.e. education, rhetoric, optics, mathematics, and philosophy) formulate a more precise definition because of commonly embraced teaching and learning principles. Quite simply, the situation is more complicated than that, as Leonard Smith ( 2007 ) says after Tolstoy,

“All linear models resemble each other, each non nonlinear system is unique in its own way” (p. 33).

This by no means invalidates these studies, but effect size associated with blended learning should be interpreted with caution where the impact is evaluated within a particular learning context.

Study objectives

This study addressed student access by examining success and withdrawal rates in the blended learning courses by comparing them to face-to-face and online modalities over an extended time period at the University of Central Florida. Further, the investigators sought to assess the differences in those success and withdrawal rates with the minority status of students. Secondly, the investigators examined the student end-of-course ratings of blended learning and other modalities by attempting to develop robust if-then decision rules about what characteristics of classes and instructors lead students to assign an “excellent” value to their educational experience. Because of the high stakes nature of these student ratings toward faculty promotion, awards, and tenure, they act as a surrogate measure for instructional quality. Next, the investigators determined the conditional probabilities for students conforming to the identified rule cross-referenced by expected grade, the degree to which they desired to take the course, and course modality.

Student grades by course modality were recoded into a binary variable with C or higher assigned a value of 1, and remaining values a 0. This was a declassification process that sacrificed some specificity but compensated for confirmation bias associated with disparate departmental policies regarding grade assignment. At the measurement level this was an “on track to graduation index” for students. Withdrawal was similarly coded by the presence or absence of its occurrence. In each case, the percentage of students succeeding or withdrawing from blended, online or face-to-face courses was calculated by minority and non-minority status for the fall 2014 through fall 2015 semesters.

Next, a classification and regression tree (CART) analysis (Brieman et al. 1984 ) was performed on the student end-of-course evaluation protocol ( Appendix 1 ). The dependent measure was a binary variable indicating whether or not a student assigned an overall rating of excellent to his or her course experience. The independent measures in the study were: the remaining eight rating items on the protocol, college membership, and course level (lower undergraduate, upper undergraduate, and graduate). Decision trees are efficient procedures for achieving effective solutions in studies such as this because with missing values imputation may be avoided with procedures such as floating methods and the surrogate formation (Brieman et al. 1984 , Olshen et al. 1995 ). For example, a logistic regression method cannot efficiently handle all variables under consideration. There are 10 independent variables involved here; one variable has three levels, another has nine, and eight have five levels each. This means the logistic regression model must incorporate more than 50 dummy variables and an excessively large number of two-way interactions. However, the decision-tree method can perform this analysis very efficiently, permitting the investigator to consider higher order interactions. Even more importantly, decision trees represent appropriate methods in this situation because many of the variables are ordinally scaled. Although numerical values can be assigned to each category, those values are not unique. However, decision trees incorporate the ordinal component of the variables to obtain a solution. The rules derived from decision trees have an if-then structure that is readily understandable. The accuracy of these rules can be assessed with percentages of correct classification or odds-ratios that are easily understood. The procedure produces tree-like rule structures that predict outcomes.

The model-building procedure for predicting overall instructor rating

For this study, the investigators used the CART method (Brieman et al. 1984 ) executed with SPSS 23 (IBM Corp 2015 ). Because of its strong variance-sharing tendencies with the other variables, the dependent measure for the analysis was the rating on the item Overall Rating of the Instructor , with the previously mentioned indicator variables (college, course level, and the remaining 8 questions) on the instrument. Tree methods are recursive, and bisect data into subgroups called nodes or leaves. CART analysis bases itself on: data splitting, pruning, and homogeneous assessment.

Splitting the data into two (binary) subsets comprises the first stage of the process. CART continues to split the data until the frequencies in each subset are either very small or all observations in a subset belong to one category (e.g., all observations in a subset have the same rating). Usually the growing stage results in too many terminate nodes for the model to be useful. CART solves this problem using pruning methods that reduce the dimensionality of the system.

The final stage of the analysis involves assessing homogeneousness in growing and pruning the tree. One way to accomplish this is to compute the misclassification rates. For example, a rule that produces a .95 probability that an instructor will receive an excellent rating has an associated error of 5.0%.

Implications for using decision trees

Although decision-tree techniques are effective for analyzing datasets such as this, the reader should be aware of certain limitations. For example, since trees use ranks to analyze both ordinal and interval variables, information can be lost. However, the most serious weakness of decision tree analysis is that the results can be unstable because small initial variations can lead to substantially different solutions.

For this study model, these problems were addressed with the k-fold cross-validation process. Initially the dataset was partitioned randomly into 10 subsets with an approximately equal number of records in each subset. Each cohort is used as a test partition, and the remaining subsets are combined to complete the function. This produces 10 models that are all trained on different subsets of the original dataset and where each has been used as the test partition one time only.

Although computationally dense, CART was selected as the analysis model for a number of reasons— primarily because it provides easily interpretable rules that readers will be able evaluate in their particular contexts. Unlike many other multivariate procedures that are even more sensitive to initial estimates and require a good deal of statistical sophistication for interpretation, CART has an intuitive resonance with researcher consumers. The overriding objective of our choice of analysis methods was to facilitate readers’ concentration on our outcomes rather than having to rely on our interpretation of the results.

Institution-level evaluation: Success and withdrawal

The University of Central Florida (UCF) began a longitudinal impact study of their online and blended courses at the start of the distributed learning initiative in 1996. The collection of similar data across multiple semesters and academic years has allowed UCF to monitor trends, assess any issues that may arise, and provide continual support for both faculty and students across varying demographics. Table  1 illustrates the overall success rates in blended, online and face-to-face courses, while also reporting their variability across minority and non-minority demographics.

While success (A, B, or C grade) is not a direct reflection of learning outcomes, this overview does provide an institutional level indication of progress and possible issues of concern. BL has a slight advantage when looking at overall success and withdrawal rates. This varies by discipline and course, but generally UCF’s blended modality has evolved to be the best of both worlds, providing an opportunity for optimizing face-to-face instruction through the effective use of online components. These gains hold true across minority status. Reducing on-ground time also addresses issues that impact both students and faculty such as parking and time to reach class. In addition, UCF requires faculty to go through faculty development tailored to teaching in either blended or online modalities. This 8-week faculty development course is designed to model blended learning, encouraging faculty to redesign their course and not merely consider blended learning as a means to move face-to-face instructional modules online (Cobb et al. 2012 ; Lowe 2013 ).

Withdrawal (Table  2 ) from classes impedes students’ success and retention and can result in delayed time to degree, incurred excess credit hour fees, or lost scholarships and financial aid. Although grades are only a surrogate measure for learning, they are a strong predictor of college completion. Therefore, the impact of any new innovation on students’ grades should be a component of any evaluation. Once again, the blended modality is competitive and in some cases results in lower overall withdrawal rates than either fully online or face-to-face courses.

The students’ perceptions of their learning environments

Other potentially high-stakes indicators can be measured to determine the impact of an innovation such as blended learning on the academy. For instance, student satisfaction and attitudes can be measured through data collection protocols, including common student ratings, or student perception of instruction instruments. Given that those ratings often impact faculty evaluation, any negative reflection can derail the successful implementation and scaling of an innovation by disenfranchised instructors. In fact, early online and blended courses created a request by the UCF faculty senate to investigate their impact on faculty ratings as compared to face-to-face sections. The UCF Student Perception of Instruction form is released automatically online through the campus web portal near the end of each semester. Students receive a splash page with a link to each course’s form. Faculty receive a scripted email that they can send to students indicating the time period that the ratings form will be available. The forms close at the beginning of finals week. Faculty receive a summary of their results following the semester end.

The instrument used for this study was developed over a ten year period by the faculty senate of the University of Central Florida, recognizing the evolution of multiple course modalities including blended learning. The process involved input from several constituencies on campus (students, faculty, administrators, instructional designers, and others), in attempt to provide useful formative and summative instructional information to the university community. The final instrument was approved by resolution of the senate and, currently, is used across the university. Students’ rating of their classes and instructors comes with considerable controversy and disagreement with researchers aligning themselves on both sides of the issue. Recently, there have been a number of studies criticizing the process (Uttl et al. 2016 ; Boring et al. 2016 ; & Stark and Freishtat 2014 ). In spite of this discussion, a viable alternative has yet to emerge in higher education. So in the foreseeable future, the process is likely to continue. Therefore, with an implied faculty senate mandate this study was initiated by this team of researchers.

Prior to any analysis of the item responses collected in this campus-wide student sample, the psychometric quality (domain sampling) of the information yielded by the instrument was assessed. Initially, the reliability (internal consistency) was derived using coefficient alpha (Cronbach 1951 ). In addition, Guttman ( 1953 ) developed a theorem about item properties that leads to evidence about the quality of one’s data, demonstrating that as the domain sampling properties of items improve, the inverse of the correlation matrix among items will approach a diagonal. Subsequently, Kaiser and Rice ( 1974 ) developed the measure of sampling adequacy (MSA) that is a function of the Guttman Theorem. The index has an upper bound of one with Kaiser offering some decision rules for interpreting the value of MSA. If the value of the index is in the .80 to .99 range, the investigator has evidence of an excellent domain sample. Values in the .70s signal an acceptable result, and those in the .60s indicate data that are unacceptable. Customarily, the MSA has been used for data assessment prior to the application of any dimensionality assessments. Computation of the MSA value gave the investigators a benchmark for the construct validity of the items in this study. This procedure has been recommended by Dziuban and Shirkey ( 1974 ) prior to any latent dimension analysis and was used with the data obtained for this study. The MSA for the current instrument was .98 suggesting excellent domain sampling properties with an associated alpha reliability coefficient of .97 suggesting superior internal consistency. The psychometric properties of the instrument were excellent with both measures.

The online student ratings form presents an electronic data set each semester. These can be merged across time to create a larger data set of completed ratings for every course across each semester. In addition, captured data includes course identification variables including prefix, number, section and semester, department, college, faculty, and class size. The overall rating of effectiveness is used most heavily by departments and faculty in comparing across courses and modalities (Table  3 ).

The finally derived tree (decision rules) included only three variables—survey items that asked students to rate the instructor’s effectiveness at:

Helping students achieve course objectives,

Creating an environment that helps students learn, and

Communicating ideas and information.

None of the demographic variables associated with the courses contributed to the final model. The final rule specifies that if a student assigns an excellent rating to those three items, irrespective of their status on any other condition, the probability is .99 that an instructor will receive an overall rating of excellent. The converse is true as well. A poor rating on all three of those items will lead to a 99% chance of an instructor receiving an overall rating of poor.

Tables  4 , 5 and 6 present a demonstration of the robustness of the CART rule for variables on which it was not developed: expected course grade, desire to take the course and modality.

In each case, irrespective of the marginal probabilities, those students conforming to the rule have a virtually 100% chance of seeing the course as excellent. For instance, 27% of all students expecting to fail assigned an excellent rating to their courses, but when they conformed to the rule the percentage rose to 97%. The same finding is true when students were asked about their desire to take the course with those who strongly disagreed assigning excellent ratings to their courses 26% of the time. However, for those conforming to the rule, that category rose to 92%. When course modality is considered in the marginal sense, blended learning is rated as the preferred choice. However, from Table  6 we can observe that the rule equates student assessment of their learning experiences. If they conform to the rule, they will see excellence.

This study addressed increasingly important issues of student success, withdrawal and perception of the learning environment across multiple course modalities. Arguably these components form the crux of how we will make more effective decisions about how blended learning configures itself in the new normal. The results reported here indicate that blending maintains or increases access for most student cohorts and produces improved success rates for minority and non-minority students alike. In addition, when students express their beliefs about the effectiveness of their learning environments, blended learning enjoys the number one rank. However, upon more thorough analysis of key elements students view as important in their learning, external and demographic variables have minimal impact on those decisions. For example college (i.e. discipline) membership, course level or modality, expected grade or desire to take a particular course have little to do with their course ratings. The characteristics they view as important relate to clear establishment and progress toward course objectives, creating an effective learning environment and the instructors’ effective communication. If in their view those three elements of a course are satisfied they are virtually guaranteed to evaluate their educational experience as excellent irrespective of most other considerations. While end of course rating protocols are summative the three components have clear formative characteristics in that each one is directly related to effective pedagogy and is responsive to faculty development through units such as the faculty center for teaching and learning. We view these results as encouraging because they offer potential for improving the teaching and learning process in an educational environment that increases the pressure to become more responsive to contemporary student lifestyles.

Clearly, in this study we are dealing with complex adaptive systems that feature the emergent property. That is, their primary agents and their interactions comprise an environment that is more than the linear combination of their individual elements. Blending learning, by interacting with almost every aspect of higher education, provides opportunities and challenges that we are not able to fully anticipate.

This pedagogy alters many assumptions about the most effective way to support the educational environment. For instance, blending, like its counterpart active learning, is a personal and individual phenomenon experienced by students. Therefore, it should not be surprising that much of what we have called blended learning is, in reality, blended teaching that reflects pedagogical arrangements. Actually, the best we can do for assessing impact is to use surrogate measures such as success, grades, results of assessment protocols, and student testimony about their learning experiences. Whether or not such devices are valid indicators remains to be determined. We may be well served, however, by changing our mode of inquiry to blended teaching.

Additionally, as Norberg ( 2017 ) points out, blended learning is not new. The modality dates back, at least, to the medieval period when the technology of textbooks was introduced into the classroom where, traditionally, the professor read to the students from the only existing manuscript. Certainly, like modern technologies, books were disruptive because they altered the teaching and learning paradigm. Blended learning might be considered what Johnson describes as a slow hunch (2010). That is, an idea that evolved over a long period of time, achieving what Kaufmann ( 2000 ) describes as the adjacent possible – a realistic next step occurring in many iterations.

The search for a definition for blended learning has been productive, challenging, and, at times, daunting. The definitional continuum is constrained by Oliver and Trigwell ( 2005 ) castigation of the concept for its imprecise vagueness to Sharpe et al.’s ( 2006 ) notion that its definitional latitude enhances contextual relevance. Both extremes alter boundaries such as time, place, presence, learning hierarchies, and space. The disagreement leads us to conclude that Lakoff’s ( 2012 ) idealized cognitive models i.e. arbitrarily derived concepts (of which blended learning might be one) are necessary if we are to function effectively. However, the strong possibility exists that blended learning, like quality, is observer dependent and may not exist outside of our perceptions of the concept. This, of course, circles back to the problem of assuming that blending is a treatment effect for point hypothesis testing and meta-analysis.

Ultimately, in this article, we have tried to consider theoretical concepts and empirical findings about blended learning and their relationship to the new normal as it evolves. Unfortunately, like unresolved chaotic solutions, we cannot be sure that there is an attractor or that it will be the new normal. That being said, it seems clear that blended learning is the harbinger of substantial change in higher education and will become equally impactful in K-12 schooling and industrial training. Blended learning, because of its flexibility, allows us to maximize many positive education functions. If Floridi ( 2014 ) is correct and we are about to live in an environment where we are on the communication loop rather than in it, our educational future is about to change. However, if our results are correct and not over fit to the University of Central Florida and our theoretical speculations have some validity, the future of blended learning should encourage us about the coming changes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the contributions of several investigators and course developers from the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida, the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, and Scholars at Umea University, Sweden. These professionals contributed theoretical and practical ideas to this research project and carefully reviewed earlier versions of this manuscript. The Authors gratefully acknowledge their support and assistance.

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Dziuban, C., Graham, C.R., Moskal, P.D. et al. Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 15 , 3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0087-5

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• Blended learning
• Higher education
• Student success
• Student perception of instruction

Blended Learning: What It Is, Why It Matters & How to Apply It

Table of Contents

Blended learning is an educational approach that combines both traditional ways of teaching (e.g., inside the classroom) and online ways of teaching through a series of online educational materials and interactive activities.

If you are an educator interested in learning more about blended learning, you have come to the right place.

This article presents a complete guide that takes you through the main concept of blended learning and its core characteristics. We also discuss the models and benefits of blended learning, as well as how you can offer blended learning in your online academy.

Table of contents

Blended learning in education, the main characteristics of blended learning, the key blended learning benefits, what are the four models of blended learning, how can you offer blended learning.

A formal definition of blended learning that was introduced by Garrison and Kanuka (2004) explains that:

In informal language, blended learning – also known as hybrid learning, is an education program that combines two learning approaches – the traditional classroom learning, which is carried out in person, and the elearning approach, which is carried out online.

This ‘blend’ in how learning is provided is used mostly in public schools – high schools, colleges, and universities.

The emergence of digital technology in the 21st century and the customary use of smartphones, laptops, and tablets in every aspect of everyday life has slowly introduced this type of learning within the core structure of Higher Education.

The aim of its use is to make learning easier and more effective delivering an integrated learning experience that offers real value to learners and matches their needs.

When talking about blended learning, an important distinction that needs to be made is that blended learning is not simply tech-rich instruction or a standalone online course.

In “Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools ” (2015), Michael Horn and Heather Staker explain that a blended learning program is delivered:

a) Part online – online learning with some element of student control and flexibility over how they learn, including the time, place, pace, and path they take.

b) Part away from home – in part or in a combination with a brick-and-mortar location away from home (instruction at a physical classroom/school or on-campus).

c) Through a learning path – a personalized learning path that offers students the opportunity to learn through activities that capitalize on different learning modalities.

According to BlendedLearning.org , the key thing to remember here is ‘student control’:

‘The technology used for online learning must shift content and instruction to the control of the student in at least some way for it to qualify as blended learning from the student’s perspective, rather than just the use of digital tools from the classroom teacher’s perspective.’

In essence, it doesn’t define the type of technology learners use but how they use it and the degree of control they have over it.

This gives learners the ability to pause, go back, or skip forward through online content but also the opportunity to choose the time, the path, and the location at which they can learn a new concept and complete coursework or assessments, e.g., assignments or exams.

💡 Just like blended learning, distance learning is becoming increasingly popular. Read about it here .

Blended learning is used to facilitate and help meet students’ learning goals and needs more effectively. When properly implemented, blended learning courses can come with a range of advantages for both teachers (or instructors) and learners.

Flexibility

For teachers, there is more flexibility regarding how they can deliver synchronous or asynchronous online instruction and present learning resources. At the same time – because it is self-paced, learners can learn on their own time and choose which learning styles suit them the most.

Effectiveness

Research shows that blended learning strategies have the proven potential to enhance both the effectiveness and the efficiency of meaningful learning experiences. Interaction capabilities between instructors and learners using email , discussion boards, or chat rooms can enhance student engagement and allow space for collaborative learning.

Personalization

In a blended learning environment, instructors have greater insights into a learner’s progress and can easily identify learning gaps with the help of online learning tools. This leads to creating learning experiences and adopting learning methods that respond better to their personal needs and interests.

Greater reach

Face-to-face instruction is significantly decreased when following a blended learning approach. Usually, 30 to 70 percent of the learning is administered online, allowing teachers to expand their reach and the number of students they can take under their wing.

Reduced cost

What’s great about blended learning is that most of the associated costs faced by educational institutions or organizations are reduced. From traveling costs to renting big venues for events and printing out learning materials, educational organizations and schools can save a lot of money with digital learning.

Blending learning comes in many forms, as it can be personalized to each individual. If you are interested in blended learning, these are the most popular blended learning models you need to become familiar with:

Let’s discuss each one of these models in more detail.

Rotation Model

In the rotation model, students rotate on a fixed schedule or as the teacher advises, between learning modalities, at least one of which is online learning. Other modalities include face-to-face instruction – working in a small group or full class through group work/projects, 1:1 tutoring, and pencil-and-paper assignments. Students mostly learn by attending the brick-and-mortar school.

As the graph above shows, the rotation model has four different subcategories that are worth exploring further.

Within this educational framework, it’s crucial to consider the role of technology in supporting these methods. This involves integrating digital signage , interactive displays, and e-learning platforms for efficient information dissemination and an enhanced learning environment

Station Rotation

Most commonly used in elementary schools, the station rotation model allows students to rotate through stations within a classroom as group members.

Lab Rotation

This model requires students to rotate to a computer lab for the online-learning station. It offers flexible scheduling arrangements with teachers and paraprofessionals.

Individual Rotation

It allows students to rotate through stations but only on the stations that are set by the teacher or software algorithm. Students don’t need to rotate to every station but only to the individual activities scheduled on their playlists.

• Flipped Classroom

This model ‘flips’ the traditional role of each learning space. Students get to learn from home through online coursework and watching lectures, and they engage in group exercises, projects, and discussions with the guided support of the teacher.

The flipped classroom is a favorite amongst teachers and students, and it looks like it will be the future of education . This is because it effectively uses the two ends of the spectrum – online and offline learning.

The flex model allows students to have more control over their learning. Most learning happens online, but there are instances where additional face-to-face support and class-time instruction is needed. Students learn as part of a fluid schedule that is customized to each individual.

A La Carte Model

The A La Carte model – most popular in high schools, offers students the flexibility to take an online course with an online teacher of record that complements the learning experiences of face-to-face courses at a brick-and-mortar school.

Enriched Virtual Model

The enriched virtual model allows students to complete the majority of their coursework online but also attend school for face-to-face learning sessions. This model doesn’t require daily school attendance like the flipped classroom, but it’s not a fully online course either because some kind of attendance, e.g., twice a week, is required.

All of these blending learning models have a common goal. That is to move from a teacher-centered to a more learner-centered approach, improving student success.

Edutopia explains how this is possible through blended learning:

Perhaps the biggest consideration when it comes to using blended learning is that it is hugely based on technology. This can be a challenge for teachers and students who aren’t tech-savvy because it forces them to learn how to use it.

This means that your learning center, school, or organization needs to use digital tools that are:

• Easy to use

Choosing the right technology that checks all of these three points is critical to any successful education program.

Any technical issues occurring from a learning software that is not accustomed to the elearning standards, like SCORM , won’t bring the results you expect either.

To be able to offer blended learning, you will need to make use of educational technology. In fact, you will need a Learning Management System (LMS) or a learning platform that offers an impactful solution. An LMS is a must once you decide that the blended training approach is the best for your learners, employees, or even customers.

Many blended learning platforms can help you offer online learning but also help you prepare materials as part of a blended curriculum that can take place outside of the traditional classroom. Our very own platform, LearnWorlds, comes with a powerful set of features and tools that can help you deliver blended learning effectively.

Make use of the Interactive Video

Interactivity is important when discussing online learning since it helps to improve student retention and motivation.

With LearnWorlds, you can deliver unique learning experiences using interactive video. Interactive video allows you to add questions in the video flow, allowing learners to click on it to answer questions.

Apart from that, it also comes with interactive subtitles and transcripts, which aims to make it easier for teachers to teach students of any level. Here are a few amazing things you can do with interactive video transcripts:

• Auto-create your video transcript
• Present the whole narrated text to the learners
• Highlight in real-time the spoken words
• Enable learners to navigate to the video by clicking on the transcript text.

Learn through a customizable Course Player

Use LearnWorlds’ course player to deliver your online course and simplify the learning process for your students. The course player offers the possibility to create a learning path for each learner or group of learners. As a teacher, you can select whether learners will navigate freely, sequentially, or even set your own restrictions.

With drip feeding , you can also control which content or learning materials your students can access and when.

Last but not least, it allows learners to take notes or highlight key terms and ideas while reading the text.

Create learning activities to test knowledge

In terms of learning, you can create a variety of tests and quizzes to assess your students’ knowledge.

From informal quizzes that evaluate self-improvement to formal tests, questionnaires, and assignments relating to critical thinking and the attainment of skills, the choices are endless.

Upon completing the education program or online course, you can also offer a certificate as evidence of participation and success.

Build a thriving online community

With LearnWorlds, you get to build an inclusive learning environment where learners can easily interact with and learn from each other.

This is possible through the community page that you can find in your school’s dashboard as a LearnWorlds user.

As part of the community, learners can create their own profiles, comment, like, or follow other classmates. They can also reach out to others individually or as part of a group through course discussion groups.

💁 For more information on the community page, visit our Community and Groups support article.

Looking for an LMS to Apply Blended Learning?

Traditional face-to-face learning is very different from elearning, but when these two approaches are combined, they are super powerful. Blended learning is here to stay, and as we move forward into the digital age, more schools will be investing in it.

If you are an educator who wants to build an online school that complements classroom instruction, hosts and distributes engaging course material, and creates high-quality online resources, you need to invest in a reliable online learning management system like LearnWorlds. LearnWorlds comes with all the features you can find in any LMS (and many more) and can help you create unique and unforgettable learning experiences.

Experience LearnWorlds today with a free 30-day trial!

9000+ brands trust LearnWorlds to train their people, partners & customers.

Further reading you might find interesting:

• Starting an Online Course Business from Scratch
• 18 Amazing Outline Templates to use in Course Design [3 Downloadables]
• How to Start an Online School
• SCORM 101: The Definitive Guide to Choose a SCORM-Compliant LMS

What is a blended learning environment?

A blended learning environment is a learning environment that combines both traditional or face-to-face classroom learning and elearning activities. These may include online courses or ‘hybrid’ courses or classes and allow learners to study at their own pace, offering them increased flexibility in their studies.

What is the blended learning approach?

The blended learning approach describes the teaching method that uses technology and digital media to aid traditional instructor-led classroom activities. This ‘blend’ mixes both online instructional strategies to meet the needs and learning styles of individual learners more effectively.

What are the 4 types of blended learning?

There are many types of blended learning models, but these are the most common ones:

• Enriched Virtual

Kyriaki Raouna

Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.

Blended Learning Method Overview

Education is a necessary process that every modern person goes through in the course of their life, acquiring the essential knowledge and skills. However, in addition to what a person studies, the form of education itself is fundamental. The final result may depend on how this process is built and what teaching method is used. The most common today is the traditional teaching method, in which students receive knowledge and information directly from their mentor and teacher. In addition, in recent years, various digital learning methods are gaining more and more popularity, using the latest technological advances and allowing students to obtain the required knowledge without having to contact the teacher.

Nevertheless, each of these approaches has its opposing sides, being a certain kinds of extremes. That is why blended learning methods were created, combining the best qualities of both systems in order to minimize the negative aspects of each of them. The purpose of this paper is to explore this approach and the benefits it provides, in particular, for individuals who work full-time, have a family, and those who lack free time.

First of all, it is needed to decide what exactly is meant by blended learning methods. Although the name clarifies that this framework is a combination of other approaches, it is necessary to establish precisely where the border between traditional and fully digital learning lies in this case. In practice, the variety of techniques is realized through sessions of personal interaction with the instructor and by creating a particular platform for self-study (ELM Learning, 2020). Thus, the maximum number of positive points from both approaches is singled out. Structured learning, characteristic of personal interactions, is combined with the ability to choose the pace of work through a digital platform independently.

Thus, the blended learning method aims to reach the largest possible audience, which can be accustomed to both the first and second training options. Compared to the traditional approach, blended learning reduces the instructor’s personality factor of imperfection, which may be biased or under-qualified (Bleich, n.d.). Compared to digital learning alone, the combination method provides more rigor, structure, and ultimately efficiency. Thus, despite specific difficulties in implementing such a method, blended learning methods make it possible to perform training much more effectively and conveniently for many groups.

Many variations of these methods also provide the ability to adapt to different categories of people. The methods of building the educational process vary depending on the percentage of traditional and distance approaches, thus forming a list from face-to-face to online driver methods (ELM Learning, 2020). One of the most popular is the face-to-face method, which is primarily based on the traditional approach, but with the addition of technologies that allow learners to control the pace of learning independently.

In this case, the teacher’s role is reduced to conducting offline intensives, providing a deeper study of the material, feedback and practice, while using the online component, basic knowledge can be learned. Undoubtedly, this method has many advantages for different groups of people; however, it can be especially useful for working family people with a lack of free time.

While for students, educational activity is by default their main activity, graduates of educational institutions have to pay attention to other things, for example, work. That is why the use of blended learning methods in general and face-to-face models, in particular, can be a profitable solution for them since such education, in the first place, saves people time (Bleich, n.d.). A significant part of the training is carried out on a distance basis, thanks to which students can acquire basic knowledge at the pace they need. In addition, many boring topics, rich in terminology that must be carefully studied, are much easier to learn and perceive on their own.

Traditional classes take up much more time due to the banal need to get to the place of study. However, in this method, the time spent on a lesson with an instructor is minimized by increasing the intensity of the classes themselves. Thus, learners do not waste time on what they can do at home, getting ready-made knowledge and implementing practices with a mentor.

The second advantage of using this technique is saving not only time but also money. The two concepts are firmly related, as long courses often cost more money due to the need to pay instructors and provide learning materials (ELM Learning, 2020). In this case, offline intensives with a teacher are held less often, and their effectiveness is higher, allowing one to save on this factor. Online training is even more convenient since learners need to pay much less for using a specialized platform and its resources, especially if it is provided by the person’s employer. The saving factor is crucial for people with a family and, accordingly, a shared budget.

However useful it may be, education should not jeopardize the existing order of things and the established way of life in the family. Therefore, the less a family member can spend on additional knowledge, the more benefit the family can benefit from it.

Another vital factor demonstrating the attractiveness of this method for the described group of people in the comfort factor. Practice shows that some people are more inclined to work independently online, while for others, the strict order of the live conference is essential (Bleich, n.d.). Usually, attitudes towards learning depend on personal qualities and the habitual educational style that the individual has been a part of throughout his life.

For example, a person educated in a traditional setting will feel less comfortable facing the need for online-only learning. Thus, the blended method can make working people feel quite comfortable, regardless of their inclinations. Since participation in such educational programs is an additional stressful load for busy people, providing them with additional comfort means, for example, a more familiar environment, is vital.

In addition, this type of blended learning is more comfortable due to the pacing of work. In the same way that some people prefer traditional teaching to distance learning, for some individuals, it may take more or less time to study information (Bleich, n.d.). Imposing the same program on all students only guarantees that certain group members will fail (ELM Learning, 2020). The studied method allows one to go through most of the educational process independently, at the pace necessary for a person, following personal preferences. In addition, this flexibility allows for more efficient scheduling, which is especially beneficial for people with little free time.

Finally, this type of learning is especially effective in complex technical contexts with a precise approach to information. Professionals in this field can gradually learn, for example, a programming language, disassembling the elements of syntax using examples and then consolidating them with the instructor.

Finally, the final factor in favor of this type of training is its efficiency and productivity. When starting any educational course, people first strive to get a result, new knowledge, and skills that can be applied either in the current work context or in a new job. Traditional education, in this case, can be highly ineffective in terms of the time required to obtain a diploma and the quality of knowledge. More dynamic and flexible courses are often much more helpful in practice. Blended learning provides a unique opportunity to learn and immediately test new approaches in a secure environment (ELM Learning, 2020). In addition, as practice shows, it is the combination of preliminary online learning with the subsequent intensive consolidation of knowledge that demonstrates the most outstanding efficiency (Bleich, n.d.).

A variety of approaches allows one to reach the largest audience by addressing the needs and preferences of the most significant number of people. Since for people already employed on a full-time job, with responsibilities and insufficient free time, the effectiveness of actions is essential, this way of learning is ideal for them.

Thus, it can be noted that this type of blended learning is one of the most preferable and most effective for the designated group of persons. The existing combination of factors: saving time and money, ensuring comfortable conditions, the ability to adjust the pace of work, as well as the overall effectiveness of the approach, makes this educational method extremely attractive. Given the complexity of combining education, work, and family, it is necessary to be extremely careful and careful when choosing an educational model. However, thanks to the described advantages, face-to-face blended learning interferes with the existing order of affairs as little as possible. It allows people to effectively combine all types of activities while gaining qualified knowledge and self-improvement.

Bleich, C. (n.d.). 8 benefits of blended learning in the workplace . Edgepoint Learning. Web.

ELM Learning. (2020). What is blended learning? A guide to everything you need to know . Web.

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Essay On Blended Learning

As educators, we need to stay ahead of the pack and stay informed on trends taking place. One of the trends taking place in education is blended learning. Even though blended learning has been around for a while, it still counts as a trend because it is constantly changing and developing. The idea goes as far back as the 1840’s when Sir Isaac Pitman used shorthand and would use mail and postcards to grade assignments and make corrections. Students would make corrections if needed and mail them back to him. Obviously, technology has gone far and allowed massive growth in what is available today. In the late 70’s, early 80’s companies would use video networks to train their employees, later in the 90’s web-based instructions became a part of the classroom. By the 2000’s blended learning was becoming an integrated part of learning.  

Oxford dictionary describes blended learning as a style of education in which students learn via electronics and online medial as well as face-to-face teaching. The way that it works is that it gives the student an opportunity to go at their own pace and it is often more convenient and is often helpful for a student that is a visual learner. The instructor gives lectures, assignments, feedback, and test via on-line which for some could cause less anxiety than if in a classroom. Blended learning fosters the idea of independent learning because it allows them to learn on their own and to use the materials and resources presented to them in ways that work best for them. Another approach and there are several to blended learning is Lab Rotation Blended Learning, in which students via the computer go from one lab station to another. This set up is based on a fixed schedule to add flexibility and convenience to the students. 

The main purpose to use blended learning is that it offers students a visual to go on and allows for flexibility in a student's often busy schedule. Students learn differently and for some students this is a beneficial way of learning, and they don’t feel like they are put on the spot everyday like in a traditional classroom. The educational theory behind blended learning comes from Maslow’s and Vygotsky’s educational theory. Maslow’s educational theory has to do with blended learning by wanting to meet the students' needs to get the most out of the student. They do this by making it more convenient for students with a busy schedule to take some of the stress off so they can work to their full potential. Vygotsky’s educational trend has to do with blended learning by using the zone of proximal development to helping guide the students. There will be some assignments where the students will not need help and some where they do. The teacher will come in and guide the students to find the correct solutions to their problems. 

Blended learning is being adopted in and out of classrooms at higher and lower institutions in the past decade. Blended learning allows students to work at home or other locations and not even have report to school to get work done. This has been extremely helpful through the pandemic. If it wasn’t for blended learning and the use of technology, then students all over the world would be missing out on an education. With blended learning, teachers are able to record lectures, assigns homework, and tests online while also being able to connect with the students to provide feedback. With this approach, students learn how to become more independent and manage their time. If a student isn’t very independent and can’t make time to do the assignments, then they aren’t going to do very well in the class. 

Blended learning has its pros and cons just like any other method. Online education and face-to-face education can be very beneficial when combined, but only when applied correctly. Not all students are independent enough to support their learning needs. Some may love to do blended learning, while others are confused about it. Blended learning can help reach a larger audience in a shorter amount of time because the teacher doesn’t have to be there constantly. Blended learning helps with better preparation and feedback if the students are doing their work. When students can come to class with the same knowledge level, then there is more time for useful discussions and to practice what they have learned. If a student is lost, you may assist the student having problems and provide feedback to help them out. Blended learning also helps cut costs because there’s fewer instructors to be paid and less commuting time. 

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The School of Education Blog

University of Bristol

Reflections on Blended Learning

  blog by mark neild, edd student, soe, university of bristol.

This article is a personal reflection on the best and worst of blended learning from the perspective of a senior lecturer in innovation and entrepreneurship teaching a unit with 35 and another with 160 students, who is also a student at the School of Education.

The positives of online learning

In some ways the forced move to “blended learning” has enabled us to accelerate a move towards the “flipped classroom” in which students consume prepared material individually and come together for “meaning making” through shared dialogue. One advantage of individual consumption is that students can learn at their own pace, stop and rewind in a way impossible with a real time “lecture”. This has benefits for interactivity, particularly for students whose first language is not English.  Such “asynchronous” interaction allows those who (for whatever reason) process new information more slowly to still engage in online discussions rather than missing out because by the time they are ready to contribute, the discussion has moved on. We have also been able to invite visiting experts for 20-minute guest Q&A sessions without the need for hours of travelling and recorded some great guest interviews.  The weekly outline for our unit of 160 students looked like this.

Greater Engagement

Real time engagement stats from Blackboard also enable us to see who is / is not participating and check in with those not to ensure they are ok.  It was really rewarding to reach out to a student and tell him how his team was missing his input and then witness (like a fly on the wall) his ensuing interactions with the team.  We have had to make time to teach teamworking and online collaboration skills in a way that we would not never have done previously.  It was quite exciting in May to be working with multicultural teams with members in India, China and South America collaborating on a common project – but it did make scheduling tricky given the spread of timezones.

Easier Research

Students also report that conducting research is easier.  People are more available online even if the range of research methods is necessarily reduced by this medium.  Real time transcription of recorded interviews or focus groups’ impressions of digital prototypes makes it much easier to faithfully capture what was really said.  So much better than relying on fragments of handwritten notes with all of the sub-conscious bias this entails.  The downside of course is the ethics considerations for information governance

But it is not all good.

I find it hard to speak to a screen full of anonymity, which reduces my fluidity when recording material. I hate to admit quite how much procrastination this induces when preparing recorded videos.  Students, like other workers are finding it harder to get on with work when the distinction between study time and social time becomes blurred.  The lack of the boundary created by travelling to and from campus and because social life is so disastrously curtailed leads to longer hours that are less productive. It is no surprise that this is impacting mental wellbeing. What I miss most is the ability to wander around and see how students in their teams are progressing with their coursework.  Attempting this in mask and visor with students spread around curious bone-shaped tables designed for social distancing just does not work.  Add in the fact that any “on-campus” learning also needs to cater for those in quarantine or self-isolating and we end up with a hybrid that feels like the worst of both worlds.  Little wonder then that over time students voted with their feet with online “on-campus alternative” sessions attracting 10 times as many participants.  The few that did come in said it was mostly just an excuse to leave the building.

Embracing new technologies?

We have embraced a lot of new technologies to provide the best possible learning experience, but it has been a steep learning curve and a straw poll among colleagues suggests that delivering the same teaching takes 50%-75% more effort than the old ways.  It is frustrating for us and confusing for students that no single platform delivers everything we need for teaching. Students report problems with Internet connectivity due to infrastructure simply not built for the higher “contention” when everyone’s online all the time.  I was grateful for digital skills courses put on over the summer.  I did not learn much about digital delivery – I have been teaching entrepreneurship over Skype to Africa since 2013 – but it certainly showed me how to use the tools we had to best effect.

Looking back over 9 months or so of blended learning, on balance, I think that we are delivering a better learning experience.   But this is against a backdrop of the overall student experience being very much diminished – particularly for extracurricular activity. These added stresses have required great paroral efforts.  Let us hope that the next academic year starts to bring some semblance of normality and that we can keep the best while happily relinquishing the worst aspects of this year.

Follow Mark Neild: Twitter:  @mpneild LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/markneild

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Blended learning

Ivan Andreev

Demand Generation & Capture Strategist, Valamis

May 11, 2021 · updated April 2, 2024

14 minute read

In this article, we will shed light on what blended learning is and discuss ways it can help your organization improve employee engagement and learning outcomes .

Plus, we will identify some common mistakes organizations make with blended learning and then, more importantly, highlight some best practices.

What is blended learning?

The benefits of blended learning, the drawbacks of blended learning, examples of blended learning.

• Rotation model
• A la carte model
• Enriched virtual model

Blended learning best practices

Blended learning is a type of learning that allows learners to utilize the ability to learn both face-to-face and online through digital platforms.

The goal is not to complement or replace conventional learning styles, but rather to incorporate necessary changes to make the educational path for learners more effective and personalized.

According to one study ( Preparing for the Digital University 2015, page 71 ), blended learning has proven to generate better learning outcomes when compared with other learning styles, such as solely online or face-to-face.

1. Higher employee engagement

Through blended learning, employees have more opportunities to learn and engage.

They can learn from trainers face-to-face, and if they need to work more on a new concept or practice, they have access to all useful material online at all times.

Employees can revisit this material to strengthen their understanding on their own, and also meet with trainers to discuss questions and problems face-to-face.

2. More effective

Blended learning enables employees to learn through different styles.

Only learning face-to-face can increase dependency on trainers.

Being able to learn independently as well as face-to-face is empowering and motivating for employees.

Also, it allows trainers to manage training sessions more efficiently, especially when training large groups.

3. Increased flexibility

Employees have more opportunities to learn on their own, at their preferred pace and time.

Plus, training instructors are no longer bound to cover everything in the face-to-face training sessions.

They can break down the course for increased efficiency and have the freedom to decide what they want to emphasize in training sessions.

Also, if all employees are not on the same level, using an online learning platform means that every individual can be evaluated and given the attention they need to learn and make progress.

Overall, blended learning bridges the gap between what is taught and what is learned.

4. Saves time and money

Conducting online training sessions, when it makes sense, can save a lot of time and money.

For example, multinational companies often conduct training sessions in one location, and employees from other countries have to travel to be there.

Also, renting a large seminar hall to host a training session can be very expensive.

Therefore, from saving on travel costs to seminar rooms rental, blended learning minimizes operational costs significantly. In addition, it saves the time that companies have to invest in organizing training events on a large scale.

And some of the hours that it usually takes to go over everything in a face-to-face training can now be divided between online and in-person work.

5. Much more accurate analysis of learning

In a face-to-face training session, it can be difficult for the instructor to determine whether everyone is on the same page or not.

Some employees absorb the material quickly, while others might be struggling.

On the other hand, an online platform that contains various types of learning material, such as videos, ebooks, lectures, and presentations, can be used to track individual progress more effectively.

These tools incorporate built-in analytics that can evaluate and present a more accurate analysis of individual learning.

Thus, in a blended scenario, earning becomes more predictable, accurate, and measurable.

6. Something for everyone

Not every employee performs well during face-to-face training sessions.

Similarly, some might find the online-only learning platform too complicated.

Blended learning provides employees a perfect approach; with different modes of learning, everyone can benefit in one way or another and take advantage of the provided opportunities to learn and grow.

7. Improved communication

Face-to-face training by itself might not provide employees with the opportunity to communicate effectively with the instructor, especially in large groups.

With only a limited time allotted for the in-person training session, a trainer only can entertain a few questions as they need to cover all aspects of the training module.

With blended learning, online platforms become a part of the learning process.

At the same time, employees can find plenty of opportunities to communicate with the instructor and their team members through the dashboard and other built-in communication tools.

Similarly, employers and instructors can reach out to their employees more efficiently and assign different tasks, address problems, and discuss ideas more conveniently through the online platform.

L&D strategy framework

You will receive a list of questions along with a spreadsheet template to help you analyse your L&D strategy.

1. Cost of implementation

The setup cost of developing and implementing a blended learning approach can be high, including the cost of ownership of an online platform.

Ensuring that the software is customized to meet specific learning goals can be tricky and tiring as it involves trial and error to identify which features to include and how to streamline processes for enhanced productivity.

2. Lack of IT skills

It is necessary to have a reliable tech support team on board that can also train the staff.

Otherwise, instead of helping, the new system can become challenging for both trainers and employees.

3. More work for instructors

The new learning approach can overburden trainers, especially in the beginning.

They might have to revamp an entire course to make it suitable for the new blended learning approach.

Plus, understanding how the new system works and how to make the best use of it inevitably means more work.

4. Misuse of the online platform

If trainers misinterpret the purpose of an online platform, they might begin using the online learning platform as a place to dump loads of educational material they do not want to go over face-to-face.

That density of the material can be distracting and even demotivating for employees.

5. Disturbance in the workplace

Implementing a new learning system in the workplace can be a challenge, as all staff members need to embrace the new approach to make it work.

Changes can lead to conflicts, causing a disturbance in the workplace.

• Employees being introduced to new principles and procedures at work face-to-face, with relevant material and exercises available on an online platform that comes with built-in communication tools.
• Conducting short face-to-face coaching sessions with employees to connect with them and to observe their responses to various topics and issues, and then incorporating a blending learning approach that best fits their needs while maintaining a balance between face-to-face and online coaching.
• Chatting with employees face-to-face in a problem-solving session to mentor them, as well as providing them with online resources such as ebooks and case studies that they can access anytime. This supplies them with a perfect blend of in-person and online support to become a high-achieving team member.
• Providing employees with resources to learn online in the form of short courses, before having them out those new skills to the test with practical exercises at work. Such exercises could be done as a team, working on projects and tasks utilizing the training received through the online course.
• Having Employees review and learn training material in the form of videos and text online to get up to speed with new developments before deepening their understanding through face-to-face discussions with the instructors at work.

Blended learning models

There are four models of blended learning that offer different approaches employers/trainers can take to develop an advanced and personalized learning environment for learners.

1. Rotation model

This model is also a part of the traditional learning mode, but in a blended learning environment, online education is a big part of the rotation mix.

Following this model, employees of the same group rotate among different tasks and exercises, one of which is online learning.

This way, everyone gets to take equal part in all activities, like attending on-site training, watching online lectures, etc.

There are four different methods of implementing the rotation model:

a) Station rotation

As the name suggests, this approach requires employees to switch among activities, allotting equal time to every aspect of the training program and acquiring knowledge in the most practical and advanced ways.

Example: dividing employees into groups and assigning them different tasks in the form of stations.

For instance, group A starts at station one (online), learning a new subject by reading articles, watching videos, lectures, presentations, etc., while group B is at station two (also online), where they have to check for practical examples and case studies.

Group C begins at station three, learning through discussions and brainstorming face-to-face.

These groups rotate through these three stations.

b) Lab rotation

Similar to how employees rotate among different activities in the Station Rotation method, here employees rotate between face-to-face sessions and computer labs for online training.

c) Flipped rotation

This method involves switching roles between trainers and online platforms so that employees get all instruction and training online in the form of lectures and exercises.

During face-to-face sessions, trainers help them with problems and provide assistance where needed.

d) Individual rotation

Rather than managing the whole group in the same way, this method requires dealing with every employee’s training individually.

As everyone comes from a diverse background and has different strengths and weaknesses, based on their profiles, individuals rotate between online and face-to-face activities in a way that is most effective in improving their individual learning outcomes.

2. Flex model

With this learning model, employees are in charge and they learn mainly through online platforms, while the trainers are there to help them when needed.

It is empowering for the employees and makes them feel responsible, allowing them the freedom to decide how they want to learn, plus the relief of being able to learn at their own pace.

3. A la carte model

This model implies that employees can decide which courses they want to take online and in which they prefer to have face-to-face training sessions.

Either way, they have a trainer to help them with their learning, which could even be an online trainer.

This model is somewhat similar to the flex model, as it allows employees to choose how they prefer to learn for optimal learning outcomes.

4. Enriched virtual model

Under this model, employees follow a schedule provided by trainers that contain virtual learning as well as face-to-face training.

What makes this model unique, is that unlike a virtual-only learning system, where there is no on-site training, with this model employees must participate in on-site training when asked.

However, for the most part, they can obtain all learning material and engage in exercises virtually.

1. The focus should be on improving learning outcomes

As there are various approaches that you can take, you need to choose one that helps improve employee learning outcomes in your organization.

At times, employers make the mistake of incorporating learning modalities that are trending.

The whole point of blended learning is to provide your organization with an opportunity to customize learning, so as to train your employees in the best way possible.

You should take an approach that is most suitable for your organization, regardless of what other companies are doing.

2. Measuring the impact of the improved learning process on business

Understanding how learning affects business is critical.

Alongside improving the learning process, it is crucial to track how it is affecting business operations overall.

An improved learning process should contribute to the increased productivity and performance of different departments.

3. Maintain a balance between online and on-site learning

The purpose of blended learning is to provide organizations with the ability to modify the learning approach to attain the best results.

It should not be used to avoid the responsibility of providing effective, ongoing training, by relying, for example, entirely on online platforms to conduct staff training.

When it is beneficial, take time out to offer on-site training, perhaps to introduce new changes or developments in the organizational structure to employees.

4. Make it more personalized

Employees come from different backgrounds, and they may or may not be familiar with blended learning.

Often, when something is new, some people might find it hard to take it seriously or might be unable to understand its purpose and benefits.

Therefore, your employees must share your vision and be on the same page.

Carry out proper training and face-to-face sessions to explain the blended learning approach, emphasizing its benefits.

Be sure to provide training for how to use the online platform and any different tools in order to remove any potential obstacles.

The key is to personalize the experience, so it is relevant and helps employees improve their learning outcomes.

5. Take a collaborative learning approach for increased engagement

Collaboration is critical to learning, as it helps employees brainstorm and develop new ideas.

When aligned with learning goals and within a structured environment, collaborative learning can be very impactful in terms of increasing team members’ engagement and fulfilling learning objectives.

You can implement this approach in various ways, such as through the online platform on its discussion forum, where employees can work on a problem collaboratively and come up with a solution within an allotted time.

6. Employee feedback and preferences are crucial

If you want to be successful in improving the learning outcomes, it is critical to know which learning approach is most suitable for your employees.

After all, what good is the ability to customize and make alterations in the system if you cannot use it to make specific changes based on learners’ preferences for better results?

Don’t just assume: conduct surveys and ask employees for their suggestions. That will also help increase morale and motivation.

7. Identify the problems blended learning can help you solve

As the old saying goes, don’t do things just for the sake of it; everything needs to be backed by a purpose.

To apply blended learning in your workplace, first, figure out why you need to change your current practices.

As there are so many techniques involved in blended learning, you have to know the problem areas that you will be targeting with the new approach in order to ensure it works out for your organization.

This way, you will be able to deploy a customized blended learning system that will prove its worth from day one.

8. Maximize process efficiency

Once you have identified the problems you are looking to overcome with blended learning, employ techniques that help you generate the best outcomes.

An example of this would be using on-site training to introduce new concepts while using online platforms to evaluate an individual’s performance through various exercises, or reinforcing what is taught in-person through short online videos and quick notes accessible to employees 24/7.

9. Incorporate practical based learning

If you want to test the waters and see how effective the deployed blended learning system is in your workplace, then get ready for some experimentation.

After all, what good is learning if it does not help in practical matters?

That is why you should think about bringing training and organization goals together in a way that enables employees to participate and use the training they receive through hybrid learning to achieve these goals while working in collaboration with their peers.

All of this should be part of the learning process.

10. Seek continuous improvement

So when everything is said and done and you have an effective blended learning system in place, can you move on and pay attention to other matters?

That is the kind of mistake employers often make.

We all know how frequently changes occur, and that nothing ever stays the same. And we all know what happens to those who do not change and grow with time.

Therefore, always keep an eye out for opportunities to improve whatever blended learning system you adopt.

Employee feedback, current trends, and other factors could be of great help in evaluating the effectiveness of the deployed system and seeing how it can be improved.

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Blended Learning in the Age of COVID-19

• Share article

(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

This new series continues a 25-post “blitz” that began on Aug. 1 supporting teachers as we enter a pandemic-fueled school year.

You can see all the posts from this month, as well as the 60 from the spring, at All Classroom Q&A Posts on the Coronavirus Crisis .

Many schools will begin this year in a hybrid situation, with students attending a physical school part time and spending the remaining hours in remote asynchronous instruction. Other districts, like ours, will begin the year entirely online, with students spending part of their time in live classes while working on their own during other parts of the day.

This series may be able to provide some support for teachers trying to figure out how to make this new learning environment work...

Today, Alfonso Gonzalez, Janice Wyatt-Ross, and Kait Gentry share their advice.

The Core 4 of distance learning

Alfonso Gonzalez has been teaching grades 4-8 for 29 years. He is a national-board-certified teacher in the area of early-adolescent generalist with a master’s of arts in teaching and has completed two ISTE Capstone certifications. He tweets regularly at @educatoral and blogs often at Mr. Gonzalez’s Classroom :

With schools all over the world redesigning because of COVID-19, blended learning is becoming a new normal. Blended learning has been around for a while and is the combination of traditional face-to-face instruction with aspects of online instruction all while students are in the classroom with the teacher. Blended learning strives to provide students the best of both face-to-face and online learning experiences. Blended classrooms include face-to-face instruction techniques such as direct instruction or lecture, group discussions, and small-group work while also using technology to provide in-class online learning that students can do at home provided they have access to necessary technology.

Online instruction is often facilitated by a Learning Management System or LMS. An LMS is where the instructor puts all the lessons and activities that students must work through to successfully complete the course. Typical LMS’s that schools use include Canvas , Schoology , Blackboard , and even Google Classroom . If you’re looking for an LMS that can support gamification , check out Classcraft . Just as whole-class discussion and small-group work are staples of face-to-face instruction, discussion forums and asynchronous learning are staples of online learning. Blended classrooms can empower students who are introverted or shy to share their ideas and learn from others using discussion forums where conversations that were started in class can continue well after the class ends.

Teachers who never taught an online course, never used an LMS, and maybe even hardly used technology in their classroom with their students had to learn how to use an LMS and put their often analog or nondigital work, assignments, activities, labs, etc., on an LMS, and they had to do that very quickly. Now that many of us have some time before school starts up again, we can better prepare.

During the spring, as we were offering 100 percent online education to our students, many teachers from my district and all over Washington state took an online course to learn how to teach online. The course, offered by Reimagine WA ED, a Jeff Utecht Consulting Co ., called Shifting School: Implementing Distance Learning, gave us strategies to support our students during their forced at-home-online-learning.

One of the big takeaways for me from the course that applies to online learning and therefore blended learning is what they call the Core 4 of distance learning. School districts, or at least schools, should agree on what systems they are going to use to provide online learning. First, schools need to determine which LMS they will use so that all students, regardless of grade level or teacher, are using the same system. Many schools that already used Google Education tools chose Google Classroom . Second, schools need to determine what teachers and students will use for file storage and sharing. Google Education schools used Google Drive, for example. Third, schools need to determine how teachers will connect with students synchronously for online meetings. Many schools used Zoom or Google Meet . Fourth, schools need to determine what teachers will use for recording video lessons for asynchronous learning. Chrome users use Screencastify for screencasting (recording what you are doing on your computer screen), but services such as Loom and Screencast-O-Matic were also quite popular.

With your Core 4, you can provide your students online learning experiences when they are with you in class, and if or when schools have to shut down again and go 100 percent online, your students will be ready because they will have learned how to use the tech tools needed to learn at home! Now that schools and teachers are being forced to incorporate educational technology and seriously implement blended learning because we will have students working from home, all students will have access to this learning model. Even before COVID, kids were very likely to learn, get higher education degrees, or do on-the-job training through blended learning or online learning, so the sooner kids are exposed to those modes of learning the better prepared they will be for their future learning. It is my hope that two of the many good things to come from this pandemic are more equitable access to technology and connectivity as well as more teachers incorporating technology in their courses.

Flexibility is key

Janice Wyatt-Ross has a bachelor’s in special education from the University of Central Arkansas, a master’s in special education from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and a doctorate in urban educational leadership from the University of Cincinnati. Her career began as an elementary special education teacher, and she has held such positions as a consulting teacher, compliance specialist, field-service assistant professor with the University of Cincinnati, gap-reduction specialist, associate principal at Bryan Station High School in Kentucky, administrative dean at Cardinal Valley Elementary in Kentucky, assistant professor at Asbury University, and director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. She is now the program director for the Success Academy of the Fayette County public schools in Kentucky :

In recent years, it has been harder and harder to educate students in the age of social media. Gone are the days when students would be docile and compliant while sitting and listening to a teacher lecture for an hour. How do teachers in the classrooms compete with upbeat music, realistic photos, flashy videos, and friends there to like and share content with all from the palm of students’ hands? How do you harness these features and bring all of this to the classroom? Now add the barrier of high school students who are delayed in their progression toward graduation and a diploma because many of them got caught up in the frenzy of being social. As the director of a dropout-prevention and re-engagement center, I am addressing this dilemma every day. One way we address re-engaging students in school is through blended learning.

Blended learning for our program is a combination of digital learning, which can be accessed anywhere the student has internet access, 24 hours a day, seven days a week; face-to-face instruction with a certified instructor; and project-based community-service learning activities. Combining all of this with a staff who is persistent in making sure students visualize the goal of completing high school and beyond, there is no justification for students being left behind. Students are attracted to this model because they can work at their own pace while having teachers on hand to give guidance in the areas that they need help, and they can give back to the community. Students receive grades based on a combination of their completion of coursework through the digital learning system and lessons teachers create based on standards addressed in the community-based projects. We have developed a curriculum framework around five elements that are the foundation of our blended learning model. The most energizing aspect of this framework is that teachers have the autonomy to take risks and be as innovative as they can think to be.

We plan to continue this model even in the era of COVID-19 with virtual instruction. As we plan for what school will look like this year, we will incorporate live virtual instructional sessions with recorded on-demand lesson presentations. Students will still have access to their digital learning program, but this will be supplemented with live sessions and prerecorded teacher mini-lessons that students can also watch if they are unable to attend the live sessions and need additional help. Each teacher will have virtual office hours to answer student questions and to provide feedback on assignments. Community members will be invited to speak with students during virtual sessions to aid students in their project-based learning activities.

This framework is not for everyone. Teachers and administrators have to be willing to be flexible and be vulnerable enough to admit mistakes and not take it personally when an idea is not successful. Re-engaging students back into school does not lend itself to following a prescribed pacing guide or teacher’s manual. This framework requires lots and lots of planning, reflection, and sometimes revising on the spot. Did I mention that this framework requires flexibility? Every new group of students will have a new set of needs and interests. To be student-centered, culturally responsive, and tailored to student interests, this framework has to be flexible. Our framework is individualized, intervening, intensive, intentional, and immediate.

The flipped-classroom model

Kait Gentry is the middle school learning and support coordinator at Calvert School in Baltimore, where she has taught for 12 years in both middle and lower school. Kait has overseen the development and expansion of Calvert’s Lyceum learning center, which serves the entire middle school student body through both structured and optional enrichment and support periods:

Like many educators, I leapt into the world of virtual learning last spring due to COVID-19 school closures. While some teachers have spent years immersed in the world of technology, many of us were adjusting to sitting behind a screen and figuring out how to best translate the benefits of in-person learning to the virtual world and how to use technology-supported instruction to enhance student learning.

Blended learning, in the traditional sense, combines in-person teacher-student interactions with online learning tools to support overall instruction for both the teacher and student. And with the widespread use of technology in teaching and learning, there are numerous ways to approach blended learning today.

However, as we shifted to distance learning last spring, we had to take the best of blended learning and adjust it to exist in a completely virtual world. Prior to COVID-19, we had explored the flipped- classroom model, which is a popular form of blended learning that typically layers instructional videos to be consumed independently at home, with time spent in the classroom focused on working through assignments, extension activities, or application problems. As we transitioned to remote learning, we worked to capture the benefits of “traditional” in-person learning through live, virtual small-group classes, which allowed students to ask clarifying questions in real time and to provide peer-to-peer learning opportunities, as well as critical social interactions. While there were so many educational losses this spring, this virtual flipped classroom provided opportunities for students to engage in discussions and instruction in smaller groups than would normally occur in a classroom setting. I found that this was ideal for our quieter students (who loved using the chat feature to share ideas) and also allowed teachers to connect with students in even deeper, more authentic ways despite the distance.

The flipped-classroom model, whether virtual or in person, has been a gift for many of my students, most notably those with learning differences or more introverted kids. This model provided the opportunity for students to review new learning materials prior to class beginning, which increased their confidence in the materials and academic engagement during live discussions, as well as encouraged all students to process new material independently. One of the biggest challenges that some students face is relying on peers and teachers to do the work of content “digestion” for them—making connections to prior knowledge or predicting future connections or patterns. The flipped model places a greater emphasis on the student putting in more of their own intellectual effort, leading to greater retention of the material and a significant increase in confidence.

Blended learning also incorporates online learning tools, whether it is in class or at home, that can offer more personalized learning experiences for students. For example, vocabulary development can vary drastically among individual students. Using an online tool like InferCabulary allows my students to work through developing new vocabulary words at their own pace and level. Over time, the program learns what words a student has mastered and which words still need additional work, providing a more customized learning experience than traditional pen and paper vocabulary assignments. This leads to greater retention as well as broader extension and usage of the words in a variety of contexts. Furthermore, the program incorporates gamification to keep students engaged and motivated.

As teachers work through the unknowns of the 2020-21 school year, educators will have to continue to examine and evaluate how to maximize teacher-student interactions as well as online learning tools to support instruction and student development. While this year is sure to bring more challenges, it is equally likely that there will be incredible growth and development along the way.

Thanks to Alfonso, Janice, and Kait for their contributions!

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What is ‘blended learning’ and how can it benefit post-secondary students?

Associate Professor of Teaching, Geography Department, University of British Columbia

PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia

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Siobhán McPhee receives funding from internal teaching and learning grants within the University of British Columbia.

Micheal Jerowsky receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

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Blended learning combines face-to-face and virtual instruction through the use of online learning technologies . Post-secondary students attend lectures in real-time, either virtually or in person, and this is accompanied by online learning activities completed outside of class time.

These blended classrooms can help support the educational needs of university students. When combined with traditional instruction, a judicious use of digital tools can encourage collaboration and personal responsibility for learning while allowing students to work at their own pace and adapt to rapidly changing technologies.

Incorporating technology into teaching and learning doesn’t mean throwing out previous approaches. The key is to adapt and create a new system of learning by designing classrooms that are more reflective of the world students will engage in once they graduate.

For universities to be more relevant to people’s daily lives , the walls of the university lecture room must be more porous, as students begin making critical connections between theory and application.

By adopting a blended approach to learning, educators support students’ transitions into the world of work, and how students draw upon and consolidate their learning in meaningful ways.

Best practices in blended learning

While many educators have embraced blended approaches to classroom design , this shifted to large-scale emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some discussions about emergency remote learning in the pandemic focused on different online tools and how or whether these tools can compensate for the loss of regular in-person education .

But in ordinary times, and when relying on best blended learning practices , teaching approaches should be rooted in learning objectives or students’ experiences — and these considerations aren’t the same as whether course components are online or in-person.

Read more: Machines can't 'personalize' education, only people can

Embracing a creative and flexible approach to learning can enable a new ecosystem of learning to develop, but this should be supported, rather than defined by, an instructor’s mode of delivery.

We advocate for empowering students by helping them to learn how to use new digital technologies so they can critically integrate and construct new knowledge for themselves while communicating their thoughts with teachers and peers .

Students’ responses to a blended classroom

We conducted a survey of university students taking a first-year geography course at the University of British Columbia . Instructors used different platforms / softwares to support ways of teaching (pedagogies) in the classroom:

Microsoft Teams supported student collaboration by providing a platform through which they could co-create and share documents, or video-conference with one another;

Tapestry , a platform that allows professors to create dynamic websites that link together media to help students learn about interconnected concepts, encouraged students to engage in self-directed learning;

Through Echoes , we created self-directed field trips students could run on their mobile device, and we used this to encourage students to explore course concepts in their local community;

We used Voice Flow to support students through the interactive chat bots that could help them navigate topics (like plagiarism or developing term paper ideas).

Real-time and self-paced course components

An entry survey of 332 students revealed the majority of students had used learning technologies before — overwhelmingly for communication or accessing course materials.

Generally, they were excited by learning new technologies and eager to develop new expertise. However, a lack of experience was also a source of stress and anxiety for some students who were concerned these might require additional time to learn and navigate.

The exit survey of 189 participants showed a blended approach to learning gave students a strong motivation to learn while working at their own pace. Overwhelmingly, a balance of real-time (synchronous) and self-paced (asynchronous) delivery helped reinforce course learning objectives.

Students found all of the tools relatively easy to use. They rated Microsoft Teams, used to navigate arranging meeting times and work on a weekly shared assignment, as most challenging. We believe these challenges were due to the nature of group work and collaboration, as our past experience indicates no matter what tool is used, students usually struggle with group assignments. Yet students said the most common benefit of Microsoft Teams was collaboration and social interaction outside of class.

The results of the exit survey provided a heartening picture of how educational technologies can support more student independence and responsibility. Overall, students felt there was a good balance between asynchronous and synchronous learning, and this helped them make connections between lectures, assignments and course learning materials while collaborating.

Insights for designing a blended classroom

It’s important for instructors to choose digital tools that are easy to use and navigate;

A blended classroom should be student-centred. The tools used in our course allowed students to work at their own pace, improved their ability to collaborate and communicate with others, and encouraged them to explore course concepts more fully;

Instructors should choose digital tools that support course learning objectives. A common trap is adapting a course to a specific tool. But in a successfully blended classroom, digital tools should enhance learning rather than restrict it.

Consider how to enhance students’ ability to use different tools so that they can adapt to rapidly changing labour markets and classrooms.

A blended approach to teaching and learning does not mean less teaching because now technology does it. Rather, educational technology can help foster better learning environments, and more engaged and flexible ways of teaching.

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A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews on Blended Learning: Trends, Gaps and Future Directions

Muhammad azeem ashraf.

1 Research Institute of Education Science, Hunan University, Changsha, People’s Republic of China

Meijia Yang

Yufeng zhang, mouna denden.

2 Research Laboratory of Technologies of Information and Communication & Electrical Engineering (LaTICE), Tunis Higher School of Engineering (ENSIT), Tunis, Tunisia

Ahmed Tlili

3 Smart Learning Institute, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

4 School of Professional Studies, Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA

Ronghuai Huang

Daniel burgos.

5 Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, 26006, Spain

Blended Learning (BL) is one of the most used methods in education to promote active learning and enhance students’ learning outcomes. Although BL has existed for over a decade, there are still several challenges associated with it. For instance, the teachers’ and students’ individual differences, such as their behaviors and attitudes, might impact their adoption of BL. These challenges are further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as schools and universities had to combine both online and offline courses to keep up with health regulations. This study conducts a systematic review of systematic reviews on BL, based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, to identify BL trends, gaps and future directions. The obtained findings highlight that BL was mostly investigated in higher education and targeted students in the first place. Additionally, most of the BL research is coming from developed countries, calling for cross-collaborations to facilitate BL adoption in developing countries in particular. Furthermore, a lack of ICT skills and infrastructure are the most encountered challenges by teachers, students and institutions. The findings of this study can create a roadmap to facilitate the adoption of BL. The findings of this study could facilitate the design and adoption of BL which is one of the possible solutions to face major health challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

Blended Learning (BL) is one of the most frequently used approaches related to the application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in education. 1 In its simplest definition, BL aims to combine face-to-face (F2F) and online settings, resulting in better learning engagement and flexible learning experiences, with rich settings way further the use of a simple online content repository to support the face-to-face classes. 2 , 3 Researchers and practitioners have used different terms to refer to the blended learning approach, including “brick and click” instruction, 4 hybrid learning, 4 dual-mode instruction, 5 blended pedagogies, 4 HyFlex learning, 6 targeted learning, 4 multimodal learning and flipped learning. 3

Researchers and practitioners have pointed out that designing BL experiences could be complex, as several features need to be considered, including the quality of learning experiences, learning instruction, learning technologies/tools and applied pedagogies. 7–9 Therefore, they have focused on investigating different BL perspectives since 2000. 10 Despite this 21-year investigation and research, there are still several challenges and unanswered questions related to BL, including the quality of the designed learning materials 9 , 11 , 12 applied learning instructions, 9 the culture of resisting this approach, 13 , 14 and teachers being overloaded when applying BL. 15 The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the challenges associated with BL. Specifically, international universities and schools worldwide had to take several actions with respect to health regulations, such as reducing classroom sizes. 16 Therefore, they combined online and offline learning to maintain their courses for both on-campus and off-campus experiences. 16 For instance, as a response to the effort made by the government of Indonesia to carry out physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, in all domains including education, some elementary schools used BL with Moodle platform to ensure the continuity of learning. 17 In this context, several teachers raised concerns about implementing BL experiences, such as the lack of infrastructure and competencies to do so, calling for further investigation in this regard. Several international organizations, such as UNESCO and ILO, claimed that teacher professional development for online and blended learning is one of the priorities for building resilient education systems for the future. 18

Based on the background above, it is seen that there is still room for discussion of designing and implementing effective BL. Researchers have suggested that conducting literature reviews can help identify challenges and solutions in a given domain. 19–21 Review papers may serve the development of new theories and also shape future research studies, as well as disseminate knowledge to promote scientific discussion and reflection about concepts, methods and practices. However, several BL systematic reviews were conducted in the literature which are of variable quality, focus and geographical region. This made the BL literature fragmented, where no study provides a comprehensive summary that could be a reference for different stakeholders to adopt BL. In this context, Smith et al mentioned that a logical and appropriate next step is to conduct a systematic review of reviews of the topic under consideration, allowing the findings of separate reviews to be compared and contrasted, thereby providing comprehensive and in-depth findings for different stakeholders. 22 As BL is becoming the new normal, 23 this study takes a step further beyond simply conducting a systematic review and conducts a systematic review of systematic reviews on BL. By systematically examining high-quality published literature review articles, this study reveals the reported BL trends and challenges, as well as research gaps and future paths. These findings could help different stakeholders (eg, policy makers, teachers, instructional designers, etc.) to facilitate the design and adoption of BL worldwide. Although several systematic reviews of literature reviews have been conducted in different fields, such as engineering, 24 healthcare 25 and tourism, 26 no one was conducted on blended learning, to the best of our knowledge. It should be noted that one study was conducted in this context, but it mainly focused on the transparency of the systematic reviews that were conducted 27 and was not about the BL field itself.

Guided by the technology-based learning model (see Figure 1 ), this study aims to answer the following six research questions:

Blended learning model.

RQ1. What are the trends of blended learning research in terms of: publication year, geographic region and publication venue?

RQ2. What are the covered subject areas in blended learning research?

RQ3. Who are the covered participants (stakeholders) in blended learning research?

RQ4. What are the most frequently used research methods (in systematic reviews) in blended learning research?

RQ5. How blended learning was designed in terms of the used learning models and technologies?

RQ6. What are the learning outcomes of blended learning, as well as the associated challenges?

The findings of this study could help to analyze the behaviors and attitudes of different stakeholders from different BL contexts, hence draw a comprehensive understanding of BL and its impact from different international perspectives. This can promote cross-country collaboration and more open BL design that more worldwide universities could be involved in. The findings could also facilitate the design (eg, in terms of the used learning models and technologies) and adoption of BL which is one of the possible solutions to face major health challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodology

This study presents a systematic review of systematic review papers on BL. In particular, this review follows the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. 28 PRISMA provides a standard peer-accepted methodology that uses a guideline checklist, which was strictly followed for this study, to contribute to the quality assurance of the revision process and to ensure its replicability. A review protocol was developed, describing the search strategy and article selection criteria, quality assessment, data extraction and data analysis procedures.

Search Strategy and Selection Criteria

To deal with this topic, an extensive search for research articles was undertaken in the most common and highly valued electronic databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, 29 using the following search strings.

Search string: ((blending learning substring) AND (literature review substring))

Blended learning substring: “Blended learning” OR “blended education” OR “hybrid learning” OR “flipped classroom” OR “flipped learning” OR “inverted classroom” OR “mixed-mode instruction” OR “HyFlex learning”

Literature review substring: “Review” OR “Systematic review” OR “state-of-art” OR “state of the art” OR “state of art” OR “meta-analysis” OR “meta analytic study” OR “mapping stud*” OR “overview”

Databases were searched separately by two of the authors. After searching the relevant databases, the two authors independently analyzed the retrieved papers by titles and abstracts, and papers that clearly were not systematic reviews, such as empirical, descriptive and conceptual papers, were excluded. Then, the two authors independently performed an eligibility assessment by carefully screening the full texts of the remaining papers, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria described in Table 1 . During this phase, disagreements between the authors were resolved by discussion or arbitration from a third author. Specifically, to provide high-quality papers, this study was restricted to papers published in journals.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

This research yielded a total of 972 articles. After removing duplicated papers, 816 papers remained. 672 papers were then removed based on the screening of titles and abstracts. The remaining 144 papers were considered and assessed as full texts. 85 of these papers did not pass the inclusion criteria. Thus, as a total number, 57 eligible research studies remained for inclusion in the systematic review. Figure 2 presents the study selection process as recommended by the PRISMA group. 28

Flowchart of the systematic review process.

Quality Assessment

For methodological quality evaluation, the AMSTAR assessment tool was used. AMSTAR is widely used as a valuable tool to evaluate the quality of systematic reviews conducted in any academic field. 30 It consists of 11 items that evaluate whether the review was guided by a protocol, whether there was duplicate study selection and data extraction, the comprehensiveness of the search, the inclusion of grey literature, the use of quality assessment, the appropriateness of data synthesis and the documentation of conflicts of interest. Specifically, two authors independently assessed the methodological quality of the included reviews using the AMSTAR checklist. Items were evaluated as “Yes” (meaning the item has been properly handled, 1 point), “No” (indicating the possibility that the item did not perform well, 0 points) or “Not applicable” (in the case of performance failure because the item was not applied, 0 points). Disagreements regarding the AMSTAR score were resolved by discussion or by a decision made by a third author.

Appendix 1 presents the results of the quality assessment of the 57 systematic reviews based on the AMSTAR tool. 19 were rated as being low quality (AMSTAR score 0–4), 30 as being moderate quality (score 5–8), and eight as being high quality (score 9–11). Specifically, no study has acknowledged the conflict of interest in both the systematic review and the included studies. Also, few studies provided the list of the included and excluded studies (3 out of 57), and reported the method used to combine the findings of the studies (13 out of 57). About half of the included studies assessed the scientific quality of the included studies (25 out of 57), but all the studies fulfilled at least one quality criterion.

Data Extraction

This study adapted the technology-based learning model, 31 which has been used in BL contexts, 32 , 33 as shown in Figure 1 . This model is based on six factors: subject area, learning models, participants, outcomes and issues, research methods and adopted technologies. The current study adopted most of the schemes from this model but made slight adjustments according to the features of different models in blended learning. Table 2 presents a detailed description of the coding scheme that was used in this study to answer the aforementioned research questions.

The Coding Scheme for Analyzing the Collected Papers

Results and Discussion

Blended learning trends.

Figure 3 shows that the first two systematic reviews on BL were conducted in 2012. The first, by Keengwe and Kang, 34 investigated the effectiveness of BL practices in the teacher education field. The second was by Rowe et al, 35 which investigated how to incorporate BL in clinical settings and health education. These findings show an early interest in providing teachers with the necessary competencies and skills to use BL, as well as in enhancing health education, where students need more practical knowledge and skills that could be facilitated through BL (eg, simulation health videos, virtual labs, etc.). The number of literature reviews conducted has since increased, showing an increased interest in BL over the years. Specifically, the highest peak of literature reviews conducted on blended learning was in 2020 (16 studies). This might be due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced most institutions worldwide to implement BL (online merged with offline) to accommodate the needs of learners in this disruptive time. 18 This has encouraged many institutions to make their own attempts to practice BL and thus furthered the research interest in examining the best practices of BL.

Distribution of studies by publication year.

Additionally, according to the authors’ affiliation countries (see Figure 4 ), China and the United States have the highest number of publications, with nine and seven studies respectively. This could be explained by the continuous rapid evolution of the technological education industry in both China and the United States, 36 which has made researchers and educators innovate to provide more flexible learning experiences by combining both online and offline environments. 37 This could also be explained by the number of blended learning policies that have been issued in these two countries to facilitate blended learning adoption. 38 , 39

Distribution of studies per country.

Interestingly, while several studies are from Europe (eg, Belgium, the UK, Italy, etc.), there are very few studies from the African and Arab regions. Similarly, in BL contexts, Birgili et al 40 conducted a systematic review about flipped learning between 2012 and 2018; they found very few studies coming from Africa. This indicates a trend where countries with more sufficient educational resources and infrastructure are exposed to more chances to develop BL environments and experiences. These findings call for more cross-country collaboration to facilitate the implementation of BL in the countries that have limited knowledge or infrastructure related to BL. For instance, such a collaboration could cover BL policies, ICT trainings and the development of educational resources and technologies.

Finally, the 57 reviews were published in 44 journals. Figure 5 shows the journals that have at least two publications. Education and Information Technologies has the highest number of publications (six studies), followed by Interactive Learning Environments (four studies) and Nurse Education Today (four studies). These journals are mostly from the educational technology and health fields.

Distribution of studies by publication venue.

Subject Area

Figure 6 shows that most of the literature review studies (n = 21) did not mention the covered subject area and discussed BL in general. For example, Wang et al proposed a complex adaptive systems framework to conduct analysis on BL literature. 41 This shows that, despite the popularity of BL, which has existed for a decade, educators and researchers are still finding it to be a complex concept that needs further investigation regardless of the subject. 2

Distribution of studies by subject area.

Other studies considered BL as being context-dependent, 42 investigating it from different subject areas, namely health (14 studies), STEM (five studies) and language (three studies). This could be explained by these three subjects requiring a lot of practical knowledge, such as communication and pronunciation, programming or physical treatments, where the BL concept could provide teachers with a chance to be more innovative and offer students the possibility of practicing this practical knowledge online by using virtual labs or online virtual programming emulators, for instance. Walker et al 43 and Yeonja et al 44 found that BL is considered to be crucial for health students, and health educators have tried to integrate a wide range of advanced technology and learning tools to enhance their skill acquisition.

From these findings, it can be deduced that more research should be conducted to investigate how BL is conducted in other subject areas that are considered crucial for student performance assessment, such as mathematics. This could help researchers and practitioners compare the different BL design and assessment approaches in different subjects and come up with personalized guidelines that could help educators implement their BL in a specific subject. In this context, studies have pointed out that teachers are willing to implement BL in their courses but do not know how. 45 Additionally, as shown in Figure 6 , most of the conducted literature reviews covered limited number of studies (less than 50). Therefore, the future literature reviews on BL should cover more studies (more than 50) to have an in-depth and broad view of how BL is being implemented in different contexts by different researchers.

Participants

As Figure 7A shows, the most targeted participants by the review studies were students (n = 42) followed by teachers (n = 13) and then working adults, health professionals and researchers (one study for each). This analysis shows that none of the review studies have targeted major players in the adoption of BL, such as policy makers. Owston stated that policies on different levels (eg, institutions, faculties, technology use, data collection procedures, learning support, etc.) are crucial to advancing the adoption of BL for future education. 38 Therefore, to advance BL adoption worldwide, more reviews about BL policies and the focus of these policies – including copyright, privacy and data protection, and others, 46 , 47 – should be investigated to develop a BL policy framework to which everyone could refer.

( A ) Distribution by educational level. ( B ) Distribution by participants.

Figure 7B , on the other hand, shows that most of the review studies (n = 33) focused mainly on higher education, followed by K–12 (six studies) and teacher education (five studies). Interestingly, these findings are in line with two older studies that were conducted in 2012 (Halverson et al) 48 and 2013 (Drysdale et al), 49 where they found that BL is mostly applied in higher education. These findings clearly show that, despite the long period of time since 2012, the research setting of BL application has not changed, which calls for more serious efforts and research about BL design in other contexts, such as K–12. Especially since younger students might lack the appropriate self-regulation skills compared to older students that can help them adopt BL, 50 more support should also be provided accordingly. Additionally, as few studies focused on teacher education, more research should investigate how to harness the power of BL for teacher professional development. There are limited empirical findings on BL for teacher professional development, 34 , 51–53 calling for more investigation in this context.

Research Method

Table 3 shows that most reviews conducted were systematic reviews (n = 47). As researchers note, systematic literature reviews are usually composed with a clearly defined objective, a research question, a research approach and inclusion and exclusion criteria. 54–56 Through systematic review, researchers can come to a qualitative conclusion in response to their research question. Only seven reviews conducted meta-analysis to assess the effect size and variability of BL and to identify potential causal factors that can inform practice and further research. Finally, three studies used both systematic reviews and meta-analysis in their studies, which can quantitatively synthesize the results in an even more comprehensive way. For instance, Liu et al 57 first reviewed the literature of the effectiveness of knowledge acquisition in health-subject learners and then conducted a meta-analysis to show that BL had a significant larger pooled effect size than non-BL health-subject learners. In this way, researchers are able to address the extent to which BL is truly effective in the learning. 57 Considering that only three review papers conducted both systematic review and meta-analysis, we must again address the usefulness of quantitative analysis. There are still many unanswered questions that could be addressed in a better way using quantitative analysis. Therefore, future research should consider conducting more meta-analysis in order to provide a better understanding of the nuanced effects of BL.

Distribution of Studies by Research Method and Subject Area

Design (Learning Models and Technologies)

Figure 8 shows that the majority of review studies (33 out of 57) discussed BL as a generic concept and did not mention any specific model. Additionally, the flipped model was the most frequently implemented model, mentioned by 27 review studies. This model is designed based on three stages: pre-class, in-class and post-class (optional). In the pre-class stage, the students engage with the course content through online resources, so that they spend in-class time doing practical activities and having discussions. Then, in the post-class stage, teachers can assess the students’ perceptions and performance in the flipped course. 32

Frequency of usage of blended learning models.

The second most frequently used models were the station rotation model and the flex model (each mentioned by three studies). In the station rotation model, the student can rotate at fixed points of time (on a fixed schedule or at the teacher’s discretion) between different stations, at least one of which is an online learning station). 58 For instance, the students can rotate between face-to-face (F2F) instruction, online instruction and collaborative activities. The flex model, on the other hand, relies entirely on online materials and student self-study, with the availability of F2F teachers when needed. 59

Two review studies mentioned the self-blend (also known as the “à la carte” model) and the enriched virtual model. The first model allows students to take fully online courses with online teachers, in addition to other F2F courses. 60 In the second model, students are asked to be able to conduct F2F sessions with instructors and then can complete their assignments online, but they are not required to attend F2F classes. 60

Finally, only one study applied the mixed model, supplemental model and online practicing model. Specifically, in the mixed model, content delivery and practical activities occur both F2F and online. In the supplemental model, both content delivery and practical activities take place F2F. In contrast, in the online practicing model, students can practice activities through a specific online learning environment. In particular, the reported BL models were implemented differently in many domains. It should be noted that some studies investigated more than one BL model. For instance, Alammary investigated flipped, mixed, flex, supplemental, and online-practicing models. 59

Table 4 presents the distribution of the reviewed studies by BL models and subject areas. 22 studies (seven multiple courses and 15 uncategorized) have focused on the design of BL in general or in multiple courses. This might be explained by the fact that teachers have limited knowledge about BL models that is why they always face challenges on how to design their blended courses and mix the offline and online settings. 58 This blended learning design problem was further emphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic, where several teachers raised concerns about this matter. 61 Therefore, more BL design trainings should be provided for teachers to help them efficiently design their blended courses.

Distribution of Studies by Blended Learning Models and Subject Area

Additionally, the flipped model was frequently used in health (seven studies), followed by STEM (five studies). This may be explained by health and STEM subjects requiring many hands-on practices to promote skill acquisition and long-term retention by the student. 62 , 63 In line with this, the flipped model enables teachers to reduce the in-class time by teaching all the courses online (in the pre-class stage) and counterbalance the students’ workload, so that the class time can be reserved for practical exercises instead of traditional lectures. For instance, in the health domain, the flipped model is applied by explaining the basic concepts of the course using different learning strategies in the pre-class stage, such as online learning platforms, instructional videos, animation, PowerPoint presentations and 3D virtual gaming situations. Also, students can use social media platforms such as Facebook for online discussions. In-class activities include instructor-led training, discussion of issues, practice or doing exercises (eg, assignments or quizzes), clinical teaching (eg, nursing diagnosis training) or lab teaching. In this context, several learning technologies were used, such as traditional computers and projectors, medical or teaching equipment and simulation teaching aids. Finally, in the post-class stage, some teachers used assessment methods to evaluate students’ perception of the applied model using peer evaluation, post-class evaluation and surveys. Similarly, in STEM subjects, the in-class time was reserved for more practice, including complex exercises where students can interact with each other and with the instructor (collaborative group assignments), active learning exercises rather than lectures, gaming activities, examinations and peer instruction.

Furthermore, as Table 4 shows, the mixed, flex, supplemental and online practicing models were also applied in STEM, specifically in programming courses. 59 This may be explained by the fact that STEM subjects – and programming courses in particular – allow for flexibility; combined with emerging technologies, this enables the teaching of this course in different ways, fully online or F2F. 64 For instance, in the mixed model, students received the course content and practical coding exercises in both F2F and online sessions, reserving most of the in-class time for practical exercises and discussion. In this context, in addition to the classical learning strategies such as online self-paced learning, online collaboration and online instructor-led learning, online programming tools were also used for coding and problem solving in online sessions. In the flex model, both course content and practical coding exercises take place online, but students are required to attend F2F sessions from time to time to check their progress or be provided with feedback. In the supplemental model, both course content and practical coding exercises take place F2F. However, online supplemental activities are added to the course to increase students’ engagement with course content. In the online practicing model, an online programming environment is used as the backbone of students’ learning. It allows students to practice programming and problem solving and provides them with immediate feedback about their programming solutions. The delivery of the course content is achieved through lectures and/or self-based online resources. In some cases, online resources are integrated within the online programming environment.

Outcomes and Challenges

Figure 9 presents the different learning outcomes investigated in the 57 review studies based on two categories: psychological and behavioural outcomes. 65 The majority of studies (49 studies) focused on investigating the psychological outcomes within the reviewed studies. Specifically, students’ self-regulation toward learning was the most investigated psychological outcome (10 studies), followed by satisfaction (nine studies) and engagement (eight studies). According to Van Laer and Elen, blended learning design includes attributes that support self-regulation, including authenticity, personalization, learner control, scaffolding and interaction. 66 The 10 studies found that students’ self-regulation was improved. Additionally, BL was found to improve students’ satisfaction and engagement in different domains, especially in health (seven studies). For instance, Li et al 67 and Presti 68 found that flipped learning enhanced students’ engagement and satisfaction in nursing education. Moreover, motivation, attitude, high-order thinking, social interaction and self-efficacy were found to be improved using BL.

Distribution of learning outcomes based on the number of studies addressing them.

The most investigated behavioural outcome is academic performance (26 studies), followed by skill progression and cooperation. In particular, the 26 studies showed that BL supports learning performance in different subject areas, including health, language and STEM. BL can also enhance students’ skills, such as clinical skills in the health domain, 35 , 69 and speaking skills in the language domain. 70 Additionally, its design may include several collaborative learning assignments (online or F2F) that encourage cooperation with students. 71 It should be noted that some studies investigated more than one type of learning outcomes. For instance, Atmacasoy and Aksu investigated students’ engagement with, collaboration in, participation in and academic performance with the blended learning course. 72

Despite the many advantages that BL offers, it also comes with several challenges. Figure 10 presents the most encountered challenges in the 57 review studies. Specifically, the lack of ICT skills is the most mentioned challenge (seven studies), followed by infrastructure issues (six studies) such as internet-related problems and lack of personal computers, course preparation time (three studies), design model and cost of technologies (two studies for each) and course quality content, student engagement and student isolation (one study for each). It should be noted that 47 studies did not mention any challenges and nine studies mentioned more than one challenge each. For instance, Rasheed et al found that students, teachers and institutions may face different challenges in BL, such as students’ isolation, lack of ICT skills for teachers and students and technological provision challenges (eg, cost of online learning technologies) for institutions. 73

Distribution of blended learning challenges.

Both teachers and students from different domains might lack ICT skills, which can negatively influence their adoption of BL. For instance, Atmacasoy and Aksu stated that teachers with low ICT skills may not have positive attitudes toward using BL since it is based on technology use. 72 Teachers might find difficulties in the ease of use of some technologies while creating a BL course, such as in recording videos, uploading videos and using online learning platforms. 73 Additionally, students may face some technological complexity challenges, such as accessing online educational resources or uploading their materials to the online learning environment. 73

ICT infrastructure is also a crucial layer for facilitating and implementing blended courses; however, it is still a major problem for several universities, especially in developing countries 74 and rural areas. 75 For instance, a lack of basic technologies, including internet, computers and projectors can limit the implementation of blended courses. Therefore, it is very important to improve institutes’ ICT infrastructure in order to improve education in general and enable teachers to teach using BL, which has proven to be efficient in many subject areas (see sections above).

In addition to issues with ICT skills and infrastructure, teachers may lack knowledge about designing BL models and hence face difficulties in selecting the appropriate design for their courses, 58 and they may also spend too much time preparing the blended course. 75 , 76 Moreover, some challenges of online learning, such as engagement and students’ isolation, may be faced in BL. In this context, teachers may integrate online collaborative assignments to solve the problem of isolation 77 and integrate new approaches, such as gamification, into the online learning environment in order to make students motivated and engaged while learning online. 78 , 79 In this context, Ekici found that gamified flipped learning enhanced students’ motivation and engagement while learning. 80

This study conducted a systematic review of systematic reviews on BL. It revealed several findings according to each research question: (1) the first two systematic reviews on BL were conducted in 2012, and this number rapidly increased over the years, reflecting a massive interest in BL. Additionally, more cross-country collaboration should be established to facilitate BL implementation in countries that lack, for instance, infrastructure or the needed BL competencies; (2) despite that several studies focused on specific subject area such as health or STEM, most studies did not discuss BL from a specific subject area; (3) most of the studies targeted students as stakeholders, and neglected major key players for BL adoption, such as policy makers; (4) most of the studies conducted a systematic review with qualitative analysis. Therefore, future research should follow a more quantitative approach through meta-analysis in order to provide a better understanding of the nuanced effects of BL; (5) the majority of studies discussed BL as a generic construct and did not focus on the learning models of BL. However, the flipped model was the most frequently implemented model in the papers that focused on learning models specifically in health and STEM ; and (6) BL can affect students’ psychological and behavioural outcomes. In terms of psychological outcomes, it can enhance students’ self-regulation toward learning, satisfaction and engagement while learning in different domains, especially in health. In terms of behavioural outcomes, BL supported students’ academic performance in different subject areas. Additionally, a lack of ICT skills and infrastructure are the most encountered challenges by teachers, students and institutions.

The findings of this study can help create a roadmap about future research on BL. This could facilitate BL adoption worldwide and thus contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG #4 – equity and high-quality education for all – which works as a backbone for some other SDGs, such as good health (#3), economic Growth (#8) and reduced inequality (#10). Despite the importance of the revealed findings, this study has several limitations that should be acknowledged. For instance, this study used a limited number of search keywords within specific electronic databases.

Future research might focus on: (1) dealing with these limitations; (2) investigating different BL models with specific application domains to test their impacts on students’ psychological and behavioural outcomes; (3) enhancing students’ motivation and engagement in online sessions by integrating new motivational concepts such as gamification in online learning platforms; and (4) dealing with BL challenges by providing some solutions to enhance the learning experience. For instance, for the challenge of a lack of ICT skills, research might work to provide ICT trainings for teachers and students to enhance their skills with technology.

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (The Research Fund for International Young Scientists; Grant No. 71950410624). However, any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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Essay on Blended Learning

Blended learning is a style of education that blends traditional place-based classroom techniques with online educational resources and possibilities for online engagement. It necessitates both the teacher’s and the student’s physical presence, as well as some student control over time, place, path, or location.

Blended Learning

A blended learning approach is unquestionably a fantastic method to enhance a learner’s experience, but its benefits extend well beyond that. Organizations that use blended learning to teach workers, partners, and customers, or arrange compliance training will reap several benefits.

You can use webinars in the instructor-led section of your course to get started with blended learning. A webinar tool is required to host a webinar. There are several alternatives accessible; all you have to do is choose the one that best meets your requirements. When selecting one, take into account the size of your audience, their needs, and the learner experience.

Keep in mind that the goal of blended learning is to utilize the benefits of both conventional and online learning techniques to provide a more interesting learning experience for your students. You’ll get the best of both worlds with blended learning, which will benefit both learners and educators.

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A Systematic Review of Research on Personalized Learning: Personalized by Whom, to What, How, and for What Purpose(s)?

• Review Article
• Published: 27 April 2021
• Volume 33 , pages 1675–1715, ( 2021 )

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• Matthew L. Bernacki   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1279-2829 1 ,
• Meghan J. Greene 1 &
• Nikki G. Lobczowski 2  

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Teachers, schools, districts, states, and technology developers endeavor to personalize learning experiences for students, but definitions of personalized learning (PL) vary and designs often span multiple components. Variability in definition and implementation complicate the study of PL and the ways that designs can leverage student characteristics to reliably achieve targeted learning outcomes. We document the diversity of definitions of PL that guide implementation in educational settings and review relevant educational theories that could inform design and implementation. We then report on a systematic review of empirical studies of personalized learning using PRISMA guidelines. We identified 376 unique studies that investigated one or more PL design features and appraised this corpus to determine (1) who studies personalized learning; (2) with whom, and in what contexts; and (3) with focus on what learner characteristics, instructional design approaches, and learning outcomes. Results suggest that PL research is led by researchers in education, computer science, engineering, and other disciplines, and that the focus of their PL designs differs by the learner characteristics and targeted outcomes they prioritize. We further observed that research tends to proceed without a priori theoretical conceptualization, but also that designs often implicitly align to assumptions posed by extant theories of learning. We propose that a theoretically guided approach to the design and study of PL can organize efforts to evaluate the practice, and forming an explicit theory of change can improve the likelihood that efforts to personalize learning achieve their aims. We propose a theory-guided method for the design of PL and recommend research methods that can parse the effects obtained by individual design features within the “many-to-many-to-many” designs that characterize PL in practice.

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Bernacki, M.L., Greene, M.J. & Lobczowski, N.G. A Systematic Review of Research on Personalized Learning: Personalized by Whom, to What, How, and for What Purpose(s)?. Educ Psychol Rev 33 , 1675–1715 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09615-8

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Middle School Writing Rubrics

In my book Blended Learning in Grades 4-12 , I shared the following middle school writing rubrics with my readers. Unfortunately, the short links I provided in my book have timed out, so I wanted to share these on my blog so any middle school teachers interested in using them have access! Feel free to make a copy and adjust as needed.

bit.ly/6-8ArgumentativeWritingRubric

bit.ly/6-8InformativeWritingRubric

bit.ly/6-8NarrativeWritingRubric

I will be posting the high school writing rubrics as soon as I can get them reformatted in a shareable version. If you have rubrics you use, love, and are willing to share, I’d love to crowdsource rubrics here!

45 Responses

Thank you for this wonderful resource! I love getting the emails from your site.

What are your thoughts on putting the high score description in the 2nd column next to the criteria? Students’ eyes are naturally drawn to the columns in order of left to right, so putting the high scoring description makes it the first thing they look at. It sets the tone for them, as if to say, “Do this! This is the best!”

Thank you again for providing this rubric. The descriptions and criteria are very well-written.

You are absolutely welcome to edit and rework them! My co-teacher prefers rubrics that start with 4 on the left side for those exact reasons. Mentally, it works better for me this way. That said, they are easy to copy and change!

Thanks so much!

[…] Middle School Writing Rubrics | […]

Thank you so much for sharing such a valuable resource!

Hello, are the high school rubrics available on the website, or in the book?

They are in the book, Carly. They are also so similar to the middle school rubrics that I did not want to publish a separate post for them.

Dear Ms Tucker

I was browsing and came across you rubrics for students writing. I read them and immediately fall in love with the simplicity of their structure. Thanks for making these resource available, easing research time.

I deem it a pleasure to be able to use them for my assessment.

You’re welcome, Emileta!

I’m glad these will save you time!

These are awesome rubrics! Thank you so much for sharing! They are a great resource.

Any ideas for a poetry rubric. I hate “grading” poetry. I truly believe students should have absolute freedom, but Texas TEKS say otherwise…..so…..

I so appreciate the clarity and ease of understanding these rubrics provide!!

I tend to agree with you. However, if you are expected to assess poetry, I’d start with the language in the TEKs and work backward. What do the TEKs want you to assess when it comes to poetry? Figurative language, sensory details, thematic progression? I’d isolate each “skill” or element of poetry they want you to assess then use those as your criteria and describe what that skill or element looks like in each stage–beginner, developing, proficient, mastery.

Thank you so much for sharing your rubrics with teachers! Extremely helpful and greatly appreciated.

You’re so welcome, Vanessa!

Take care. Catlin

Thank you for sharing your rubrics.

Thank you so much for sharing the rubrics. I use them in class for students’ projects.

Thank you so much for this lovely set up! It has helped a lot of new teachers!

Words can not describe how grateful I am.

Thank you so much! I am always having trouble teaching language art since I feel much comfortable with numbers..

You’re welcome, Helen! Happy to help 😊

Thank you for this very helpful resources, appreciated it!

You’re welcome, Shiela!

Thank you so much for this resource! This is the best rubric I’ve seen for middle school writing!

Thank you, Anna!

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful resource!!! You are amazing!!!

You’re welcome, Michelle! So glad these are useful. 😊

Thank you so much for providing these! I’m “Yearbook Teacher” and these are wonderful since I have no clue how to grade written work (I normally teach a CTE course but with virtual/hybrid staff is spread thin.

Nick Pascual

You’re welcome, Nicolas! I’m so glad these are useful 😊

It appears 28 possible points can be earned……the sum of points earned would be at what grade level…..for example, if a student earned all 4’s on the Argumentative Writing Rubric what grade level would his writing rank…….or are their ranges for the sum of points……I would prefer to have a grade level…..

Hi MaryIsabel,

I assess on a 4 point mastery scale, so the final score calculates an average then that number 1, 2, 3, 4 is inserted into the grade book (if you have a mastery-based grade book option). Otherwise, you will need to convert your number on a scale.

Thank you. You are so kind. God bless you.

You’re welcome, Jennifer!

I am unable to open the rubrics. Are they still available for teacher to access?

Hi Jennifer,

The short links are below each image of the rubric, and they force you to make a copy. You’ll need to be logged into your Gmail account so your copies save in your Google Drive.

These are excellent! Thank you for sharing Dr. Tucker!

You’re welcome, Laura!

Life saver! Thank you for sharing!

You’re welcome, Carolyn!

Thank you so much for sharing these rubrics! I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been mentioned in the posts above. Love the idea of creating a “rubric bank” available to all who may need it.

You are very welcome, Carolina! I’m thrilled they are useful.

Good Evening , Ms. Tucker

Have you published a persuasive writing rubric?

Hi Yolanda,

I do not have persuasive rubrics. I focused on argumentative writing instead.

THIS IS A LIFESAVER!! THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!

You’re very welcome, Tammy! 😊

WOW! I’m so loving these… as we are developing our standards for our program, this gives us a total jump start! By chance, do you have the High School writing rubrics?

My high school versions are very similar to these. Here is an example: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TLkY6Yt-AdXdwCwvXJ7YAqzsoYZmT6G3QiT_yefAHV8/edit

Good luck with your rubrics! AI can be a very helpful resources when generating rubrics with the skill descriptions!

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