Blended Learning Amplifies Teaching

Blended Learning is changing teaching. Changing teaching from something which happens once to something which is available to a student as s/he is ready. The focus turns to the learner and his/her needs. There is something exotic in the idea of redesigning school to fit each learner over just fit the learner to what we previously called school.

Still, Blended Learning seems risky to some educators. Closely examining the benefits of amplifying teaching might convert the reluctant.

How does Blended Learning Amplify Teaching?

Amplify Yourself 2

Whether teaching practices are great or *meh* is not a question for Blended Learning; Blended Learning only amplifies the teaching. (Maybe a future post on why Administrators might still be skeptical of Blended Learning?)

Blended Learning offers students asynchronous, unlimited access to content for an immediate upgrade from the traditional model of one-and-done teaching. It is an upfront investment for the teacher, but pays dividends each school year. Teachers can share the responsibilities of creating content or build over time themselves, but the upfront investment pays off for teachers as well as students.

Multiply

The single teacher in a classroom is multiplied via Blended Learning. By offering a student to progress through levels of your lessons you are at multiple levels and on multiple days of your lesson plan – all at once. Instead of a frustrated feeling of working with one student yet knowing others are waiting for you, you are ‘working’ with all students and can pull students into a small group or for a one-on-one as needed without that rushed feeling.

Repeat. Repeat.

How many deep breaths did you take before repeating yourself to that one students who asked again? How many students did not ask you to say something yet one-more-time? A major upgrade to traditional face-to-face is the offering that Blended Learning makes to the student who needs to pause, replay, reread, and look at that example again. The student is the driver in accessing the asynchronous content; helpfully the teacher can usually collect the data of the amount and frequencies of access.

Just-in-time

A teacher can (over time) lay out a Blended Learning course so that students have a variety of ways to interact with content, a variety of ways to receive assistance, and a variety of ways to show what they know. A good approach is to build one facet each year. Each of these elements when added in feel like a just-in-time support for your Blended Learning classroom. Until you implement all elements provide details online and via traditional methods how to receive help, procedures, guidelines as uploaded documents and replace with more interactive elements as you develop those.

Will you Amplify your Teaching with Blended Learning?

No doubt, to create a Blended Learning course from scratch is challenging, but the reward of designing a classroom which is fit to each learner is exciting. That seems worth the risk to me. Are you ready to start the journey? How can I help?