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Blended flavours and other recipes

Blended learning as a term covers quite a wide range of possible interpretations. Integrating digital technology could be as basic as bringing up a web page in a lesson, or as integrated as every learner having a centrally managed iPad leading them through the syllabus.

The more I've thought about this personally, the more I wonder if we even need to differentiate blended learning from other methods. This is not because there is no worth in the approach, but I wonder why we need to slap a label on it, when all we are really doing is moving with the times. We still teach in the classroom, we still give tasks to learners for outside class times. It's just the medium that has changed. When classrooms started having whiteboards and digital projectors installed to aid teaching did we give it a fancy name, or did we just see it as the progress of technology giving us additional tools to integrate into our lessons? A colleague of mine who was previously a school teacher when it happened described it as giving them extra tools, which were embraced by some and ignored by others. Their basic job didn't change.

Still, it's a term we are stuck with, so to what degree am I embracing the paradigm for my own site? There are several 'models' that have been described by some to describe the degrees of integration, but it is perhaps futile to expect to be able to pigeonhole it in this way. For example, I am hoping my e-learning site will be used within the classroom directly as part of the delivery - this can be thought of as following the 'labs model', where the delivery of lectures is done entirely using a digital platform, but in a physical location. At the same time, I want learners to use the site at home, with support from the tutor via IM or videoconferencing, more accurately called the 'online driver model'. What I'm not making, is a module that can be undertaken without any tutor input; I require that students attend classes to do the syllabus - the intent is not to allow students to avoid lesons entirely, such that on its own, the site shouldn't be enough to learn all the content.

What it seems like I'm trying to create, at least by the 'models' above, is a blended blended module, picking concepts from different paradigms to suit my goals. The closest suitable model name I've seen is 'a la carte', but that refers to blended learning across different modules where mine is all in one. Really though it's just the case that categorising the approach to such a versatile concept is pointless; I'd rather just call it blended teaching and be done with it. Sorry, theorists.

There is one model of blended learning I do think has some merit as a stand-alone concept: flipped learning. Despite being another buzzword picked up on by management types, flipped learning has an interesting dynamic, pushing the onus to learn onto the students, backed up by discussion and support from the tutor. For a technical subject such as the one I'm doing it maybe has less usefulness - I believe there needs to be more direct guidance to help learners orient themselves in a very logical, methodological subject, but that's not to say I can't set research tasks as homework, to be picked up on in subsequent lessons.

Bibliography

  • Clayton Christensen Institute. (n.d.). Blended Learning Models. Retrieved March 25, 2017, from Blended learning Universe: http://www.blendedlearning.org/models/
  • Dreambox Learning. (2013, October 23). 6 Models of Blended learning. Retrieved from Dreambox Learning: http://www.dreambox.com/blog/6-models-blended-learning
  • Friesen, N. (2012, August). Report: Defining Blended Learning. Retrieved from learningspaces.org: http://learningspaces.org/papers/Defining_Blended_Learning_NF.pdf
  • Welham, H. (2014, March 30). Flipped learning: benefits, challenges and best practice. Retrieved from The Guardian - Teacher Network: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/30/flipped-learning-benefits-challenges-best-practice-live-chat
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