Blended Learning and Its Major Trends

Source: bit.ly/1u4Stfr

Blended learning might be a term evoking a sense of much mystery for the uninitiated. It happens to be form of formal education where the student too is an active part of the learning process enjoying a amount of control over the time, place, path or pace of the learning procedure facilitated by the online delivery of content and instruction while still attending a physical school. Collection of related data and the ability to customize the instruction provided and the assessment of the learner are the two major benefits enabled by such a teaching methodology.

Blended learning has the promising prospect of being a wonder cure for many teachers for many of their teaching conundrums teaching in what could often be vastly different scenarios. Its range of applications can be as varied as 1:1 classrooms and schools, or BYOD classes filled with various types and quantum of technology blended learning can help nearly every teacher make learning more personalized and more interesting for their students.  Implementing a blended learning program in your classroom can be a great way to put the technology tools you have to use. In the lines below we will take look at six of the blended learning trends prevalent today.

Source: bit.ly/SMWQQy

1. Soaring numbers of digital learners – the number of students participating in classroom-only education is shrinking (albeit slowly) while the number of students participating in some type of online learning is steadily growing (despite making up a much smaller percentage of students). 


2.  Building higher order thinking skills – students are required to look at information more critically rather than just trying to memorize what is presented to them in class. This moves upwards from remembering to creating with the middle processes of understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating. 


3. A personalized learning approach – by a lean, blended and interactive approach. 


4. The mobile world is where learners live now however more so for personal than school use. The statistics show that in U.S. 41% of Grade 3 students have smartphones compared to 59% of grade 6 students, 75% of Grade 9 students, and 82% of grade 12 students. The figures stand at 44%, 53%, 48%, 40% respectively for tablets. In case of Laptops 61% of grade 3 students have laptops, 68% for grade 6, 69% for grade 9 and 73% of grade 12 students. 


5.  Students have personal access to mobile devices – smartphones, tablets, laptops and digital reading devices trump desktops. 18% of K-2 students have access to smartphones, 26% have access to tablets, 12% have access to digital readers and 41% have access to laptops while the figures stand at 40%, 41%, 30% and 54% for grade 3-5 students. 


6.  The need for more broadband – 72% of schools in the US lack the broadband access they need to support digital learning.
   

In the daily routine of learning in the virtual classroom, teaching at an online school, or parenting a student who attends an online school, we may be unaware of how our experiences are both shaping and being shaped by broader trends in education. The above paragraphs were intended to serve as pointers to give us an indication of where the digital revolution is heading towards as far as education especially blended education is concerned.