the basics of blended learning
key objectives
content summary
overview of blended learning
the future of education
today’s students are entering a world in which they need a student-centered schooling system. student-centered learning— the opposite of what we call today’s predominant factory-model school system in which students learn in lockstep—is essentially the combination of two related ideas: personalizing learning and competency-based learning (also called mastery-based learning, mastery learning, proficiency-based learning, or sometimes standards-based learning).
personalizing learning
there are several notions of what personalized learning is, but when we say it, we think of it as a verb: personalizing learning. that means tailoring learning to an individual student’s particular needs—in other words, customizing or individualizing to help each individual succeed, given that students learn at different paces, possess different background knowledge, and harbor different interests that ignite their learning. the power of personalizing learning, understood in this way, is intuitive. research shows that when students receive one-on-one help from a tutor instead of mass-group instruction, they typically do significantly better. this makes sense, given that tutors can do everything from adjusting their pace if they are going too fast or too slow to rephrasing an explanation or providing a new example or approach to make a topic come to life for a student. a personalized approach also implies that students can receive a one-on-one learning experience when they need it, but can also partake in group projects and activities when that would be best for their learning.
competency-based learning
the second critical element of student-centered learning is competency-based learning; that is, the idea that students must demonstrate mastery of a given subject—including the possession, application, or creation of knowledge, a skill, or a disposition—before moving on to the next one. students don’t move on from a concept based on the average pace of the class or within a preset, fixed amount of time, as they do in the traditional factory-model school system. competency-based learning embeds aspects of perseverance and grit because in order to progress, students have to work at problems until they succeed; they can’t just wait it out until the unit is over. if students move on to a concept without fully understanding a previous one, it creates holes in their learning. no wonder sal khan and many other luminaries have latched on to the many studies that show competency-based learning producing better results than timebased learning.
blended learning as the enabler
when implemented well and jointly, personalizing learning with competency-based learning form the basis of a studentcentered learning system. an important part of studentcentered learning is that students build agency so that they can ultimately be effective lifelong learners, which is necessary in today’s rapidly changing world, in which knowledge and skills become outdated quickly.
the challenge lies in how to implement student-centered learning at scale. paying for a private tutor for every student would of course be wonderful, but it’s prohibitively expensive. differentiating instruction for each child—a step toward personalizing learning that teachers across america try valiantly to do—is difficult in today’s factory-model education system. similarly, allowing all students to progress in their learning as they master material may be possible in a school with a small student-to-teacher ratio and flexible groupings, but it is taxing on an individual teacher who has to provide new learning experiences for students who move beyond the scope of a course, and it therefore strains the resources of most schools.
this is why blended learning is so important. blended learning is the engine that can power personalization and competency-based learning. just as technology enables mass customization in so many sectors to meet the diverse needs of so many people, online learning can allow students to learn any time, in any place, on any path, and at any pace—at scale. at its most basic level, it lets students fast-forward if they have already mastered a concept, pause if they need to digest something, or rewind and slow something down if they need to review. it provides a simple way for students to take different paths toward a common destination. it can free up teachers to become learning designers, mentors, facilitators, tutors, evaluators, and counselors to reach each student in ways never before possible.
of course, just because a school adopts online learning does not guarantee that learning will be personalized or competency based; we wrote blended and this accompanying workbook to help educators and students around the world realize these benefits. the blend of online learning into schools marks the most powerful opportunity the world has known to make studentcentered learning a widespread reality.
what is blended learning?
blended learning is critically different from—but easily confused with—the much broader trend of equipping classrooms with devices and software. the common use of “blended learning” in education circles and the media suffers from a goldilocks problem. people use the term either too broadly, to refer to all education technology (“edtech”) crammed into a classroom, or too narrowly, to point to only the types of blended learning that they like best.
beginning in 2010, we interviewed the educators behind more than 150 blended-learning programs to arrive at a “just right” middle-ground definition that is broad enough to allowfor variation but narrow enough to differentiate it from the bottomless category of edtech in schools. the definition has three parts.
blended learning is:
one note for clarity. when we say “modalities,” we mean the different mediums and formats in which a student learns— whether the learning occurs online, offline, in a project, through direct instruction, and so forth.
blended examples
blended provides a breakdown of each of these parts of the definition. this section offers hypothetical situations to help you understand whether a student is experiencing blended learning.