WHAT IS BLENDED LEARNING?

Think for a moment about some related practices and phrasing blended education, e-learning, remote learning, hybrid learning, flipping the classroom. All of these practises involve learning. the concept of place or distance, the use of technology, whatever one choses to call it.

Blended learning combines classroom and online education and births in improvements in both school curriculum and digital technology, as a learning model, it continues to gain momentum as a medium on how to reach and teach students more effectively. The oxford dictionary defines blended learning as a style of education in which students learn via electronic and online media as well as traditional face-to-face learning.

Blended learning is an approach to learning that combines face to face and online learning experiences ideally, each both online and offline will compliment the other by using its particular strength, while generally seen as a trend in progressive learning, blended learning can also be viewed as a kind of relic symbolic of the gap between traditional education and the new norm, the point though is blended learning is a mix of physical and digital learning.

A typical example of this can be students doing a face to face group work in a classroom, then going home to analyse that work and turn in a video as an assessment form; taking a course online then receiving face to face tutoring between online lessons.

However it is important to keep in mind that not all students learn the same way, this is not a particularly novel concept, but an important one, students never outgrow their learning styles, so why do traditional college classrooms fail to engage them?

Teachers must be committed and well trained in all forms of teaching, be it blended and hybrid education, and students must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them in this new environment.