IT for Education

In the previous post we looked at the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional vs. e-learning approaches to teaching. Here, we'll combine them into the concept of blended learning to see how well they can work together. Hopefully it's obvious that blending two established methods allows us to draw on the strengths of each individually, while giving us scope to eliminate the drawbacks of either. It's simple reduction: if a process works better in one method over the other, then use that method; if it doesn't work as well then don't use it. It sounds like an ideal scenario. In practice, the combination introduces some wrinkles all of its own that we need to be aware of.

If we're going to make our e-learning site as effective as possible, we'll need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both elements of the blended approach . Let's look at each individually, then in the next post we'll consider how they might work together. Traditional teaching We've all experienced traditional classroom based teaching, it is compulsory for every child in the UK between ages 5 and 16 after all (Citizens Advice, 2017). As with most things we're told we must do there's an instinctive urge to dislike it, but what legitimate pros and cons can we come up with?