There are many reasons schools may look to implement blended learning. Some students may be falling behind their classmates and need more one-to-one time with their teacher to work through assignments. When the right resources are in place, the rest of the class can continue onto the next lesson through online instruction and/or materials, and classroom teachers don’t have to worry about balancing their time between each student or keeping students from moving on to the next assignment.
On the other hand, some students may be progressing further than the rest of their classmates and want to jump ahead to the next lesson plan, and online tools such as learning management systems can help students do just that.
“Blended learning allows for individualized instruction that permits a student, group of students or an entire classroom to do assignments, access additional content or do other exercises that compliment what is going on in the classroom. The use of learning management systems and other technologies such as video allow for that type of instruction,” says Rob Yoegel, vice president of marketing at Gaggle.
An important part of choosing the right technology and resources for a blended learning environment is making sure the technology is going to create a unique learning experience for students, and not simply mimic what a teacher is already doing in the classroom.
“If you already have a face to face teacher and you’re instituting some online resources that either have a virtual teacher or have a lot of instructional power built into it, you’re in a way double-paying for teaching resources,” says Revenaugh.
Blended learning is more than just digitizing coursework that would traditionally be printed on a worksheet or studied in a book.
“I don’t think we can effectively call it blended learning if you just take a worksheet and put it into a PDF and after you teach a lesson send students off to an iPad with a PDF rather than give them paperwork,” says Hudson. “That’s not blended learning, that’s using technology to do something you were already going to do and it doesn’t change the learning experience for students.”
When schools understand the resources they already have available to them in the classroom, as well as which additional resources can help enhance the blended learning experience, they can make an informed decision on what technology to invest in when implementing a blended learning program.
Measure Progression
In order to ensure students are benefiting from blended learning, teachers and educators need to have a way to evaluate students’ work, both online and in the classroom.
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