Find the Latest Resources in Education Today
SUBSCRIBE
Report: Blended learning could hit or miss
Policy makers, ed-tech companies need to help blended learning reach its full potential
There are still obstacles that are preventing blended learning from reaching its full potential, says the report.
Blended learning has the ability to transform education, according to a new report—but if certain guidelines and practices aren’t ensured, blended learning could become just another add-on to an archaic system on its way out, the report warns.
The report, titled “The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning,” by Michael B. Horn, co-founder and executive director of education at the Innosight Institute, and Heather Clayton Staker, a senior research fellow for education practice at the institute, describes how blended learning can affect education, but why it also could fall short of its potential.
The report defines blended learning as “any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.”
According to the report, online learning has grown exponentially over the past decade. For example, in 2000 roughly 45,000 K-12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K-12 students did. One analysis the report mentions reveals that 50 percent of all high school courses will be delivered online by 2019.
“What was originally a distance-learning phenomenon no longer is,” explains the report. “Most of the growth is occurring in blended learning environments. … As this happens, online learning has the potential to transform America’s education system by serving as the backbone of a system that offers more personalized learning approaches for all students.”
However, the report also notes that policy makers and education leaders must adopt the right policies for this to happen.
“There is a significant risk that the existing education system will co-opt online learning as it blends it into its current flawed model—and just as is the case now, too few students will receive an excellent education,” the report states.
“Today’s education system is a monolithic one that was built to be like a factory system,” Horn explained to eSchool News. “Rather than measure learning and move individual students along to new concepts as they master previous ones, it measures seat time and moves students along when they hit certain dates on a calendar.”
Watch an interview with Horn about his book Disrupting Class on eSN.TV:
“Time is fixed,” he continued, “and the learning is variable. This system worked really well in the past. But now that we are asking it to educate every student to his or her highest potential, it was never built to do this job.”
The big danger with integrating technology into education, said Horn, is “that we do what we’ve always done, which is to implement it as a sustaining innovation rather than a disruptive one—that we simply layer technology over the traditional system, which would then co-opt it.”
5 Responses to Report: Blended learning could hit or miss
You must be logged in to post a comment Login
M
February 10, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I have taken several online courses (because that was all that was being offered for required classes) and basically hated them (even though I worked hard and received ALL A’s). Besides the fact that collaboration on any projects (one of those “21st Century skills” we are all supposed to be working on) is next to impossible, there are other more subtle issues for me.
As an auditory interpersonal learner, the format does not play to my strengths. If the courses I took had been conceptually difficult to understand, I would not have succeeded.
I know this for sure because I took a very, very difficult upper-division math class a few semesters ago in which I went to (and listened in) all the classes and all the recitation sessions, did all (i.e., struggled through) all the homework (by myself), asked questions in class but was doing very poorly. When I finally found some other students I could teach it to, I got an A in the class.
If the material is really difficult, I NEED opportunities to talk (not email, not text, not Skype, not “chat” in a textbox, TALK face-to-face with a real, breathing person) about it. For things that are less difficult, I can get along, but it is not my preferred arrangement.
I am glad I have just about finished my education and will not be forced into any more completely online classes. Fortunately, I am the only auditory interpersonal learner anywhere, so no one else will ever have this issue.
M
February 10, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I have taken several online courses (because that was all that was being offered for required classes) and basically hated them (even though I worked hard and received ALL A’s). Besides the fact that collaboration on any projects (one of those “21st Century skills” we are all supposed to be working on) is next to impossible, there are other more subtle issues for me.
As an auditory interpersonal learner, the format does not play to my strengths. If the courses I took had been conceptually difficult to understand, I would not have succeeded.
I know this for sure because I took a very, very difficult upper-division math class a few semesters ago in which I went to (and listened in) all the classes and all the recitation sessions, did all (i.e., struggled through) all the homework (by myself), asked questions in class but was doing very poorly. When I finally found some other students I could teach it to, I got an A in the class.
If the material is really difficult, I NEED opportunities to talk (not email, not text, not Skype, not “chat” in a textbox, TALK face-to-face with a real, breathing person) about it. For things that are less difficult, I can get along, but it is not my preferred arrangement.
I am glad I have just about finished my education and will not be forced into any more completely online classes. Fortunately, I am the only auditory interpersonal learner anywhere, so no one else will ever have this issue.
twodele
February 11, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Hmmmmm, did you read this article?
twodele
February 11, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Hmmmmm, did you read this article?
virginiamcgregor
February 11, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Believe me there are many of us who are like you. Hopefully, the tools for online learning will evolve to make it easier to communicate in real time online. Online instructors of every level should be available for hard working students to learn. Just because the teacher, whether online or in B&M classroom, doesn’t hear from students, the teacher should not assume that all is well. If asked, there will usually be a wealth of questions and help needed by the student at all levels. A master online teacher is asking questions and checking with individual students to see if more help is needed and checking to see how understanding is growing. A robot could monitor an online class that just gives out worksheets and articles to be discussed. ” I hear you, I care, and I will help you!” is the motto of the master teacher.
virginiamcgregor
February 11, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Believe me there are many of us who are like you. Hopefully, the tools for online learning will evolve to make it easier to communicate in real time online. Online instructors of every level should be available for hard working students to learn. Just because the teacher, whether online or in B&M classroom, doesn’t hear from students, the teacher should not assume that all is well. If asked, there will usually be a wealth of questions and help needed by the student at all levels. A master online teacher is asking questions and checking with individual students to see if more help is needed and checking to see how understanding is growing. A robot could monitor an online class that just gives out worksheets and articles to be discussed. ” I hear you, I care, and I will help you!” is the motto of the master teacher.
davidloertscher
February 11, 2011 at 1:27 pm
While there is great promise in blended education, online education can be as deadly boring as classroom teacher lecturing is. After teaching online for a decade, I have discovered that the instructional designs used must engage the student into a true learning community where each person develops and brings their personal expertise to the table and then the group constructs collaborative intelligence and then completes a learning experience with a metacognitive big think that reflects on what is now known and also on our learning journey together and finally, how we can get better next time. Using a plethrora of Web 2.0 tools and constructivist knowledge building, I find that online ed can be as powerful if not more than face to face. However, it requires complete rethinking and I have yet to see a commercial product that does anything more than duplicate traditional behaviorist instruction.
davidloertscher
February 11, 2011 at 1:27 pm
While there is great promise in blended education, online education can be as deadly boring as classroom teacher lecturing is. After teaching online for a decade, I have discovered that the instructional designs used must engage the student into a true learning community where each person develops and brings their personal expertise to the table and then the group constructs collaborative intelligence and then completes a learning experience with a metacognitive big think that reflects on what is now known and also on our learning journey together and finally, how we can get better next time. Using a plethrora of Web 2.0 tools and constructivist knowledge building, I find that online ed can be as powerful if not more than face to face. However, it requires complete rethinking and I have yet to see a commercial product that does anything more than duplicate traditional behaviorist instruction.
Whitlerk
February 11, 2011 at 2:24 pm
whitlerk saith:
Alas, poor M!
Let’s acknowledge that everyone has an unique learning style wired in. Still, we’re talking “blended” learning here, not the exclusively “online” variety, so there should be- in any well-planned, blended course-ware- adequate opportunity for students with any dominant learning style to engage effiectively with the content. Sorry if the specific courses you took failed you!
Moreover, one of the meta concepts of “learning”- IMHO
- is learning to adapt. I myself am probably wired a visual learner, but my experience of K-12 education soon led me (dare I say, “forced me?”) to engage with content in many various- sometimes very other- ways. In retrospect, I think I’m better off for that.
So, I read this article’s author as looking to modern, blended learning environments to engage their resident students in as many ways as possible in order to maximize “positive outcomes” or whatever else a theorist cares to call learning that helps every individual prosper in their reality.
Whitlerk
February 11, 2011 at 2:24 pm
whitlerk saith:
Alas, poor M!
Let’s acknowledge that everyone has an unique learning style wired in. Still, we’re talking “blended” learning here, not the exclusively “online” variety, so there should be- in any well-planned, blended course-ware- adequate opportunity for students with any dominant learning style to engage effiectively with the content. Sorry if the specific courses you took failed you!
Moreover, one of the meta concepts of “learning”- IMHO
- is learning to adapt. I myself am probably wired a visual learner, but my experience of K-12 education soon led me (dare I say, “forced me?”) to engage with content in many various- sometimes very other- ways. In retrospect, I think I’m better off for that.
So, I read this article’s author as looking to modern, blended learning environments to engage their resident students in as many ways as possible in order to maximize “positive outcomes” or whatever else a theorist cares to call learning that helps every individual prosper in their reality.