Blended learning

Blended learning refers to using multiple approaches to teaching. Examples include combining technology-based materials and traditional print materials, group and individual study, structured pace study and self-paced study.

Current usage of the term

With today's prevalence of high technology in many countries' schools, blended learning often refers specifically to the provision or use of resources which combine e-learning with other educational resources.

Some would claim that key blended-learning arrangements involve e-mentoring or e-tutoring .

These arrangements tend to combine e-learning with some form of human intervention in the learning process, although the involvement of an e-mentor or e-tutor (whose role is performed online) does not necessarily need to be only in the context of e-learning.

E-mentoring or e-tutoring can also be provided performed as part of a 'stand alone' ('un-blended') e-tutoring or e-mentoring provision.

Researchers Heinze and Procter have developed the following definiton for Blended Learning in higher education:

Blended Learning is learning that is facilitated by the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning, and founded on transparent communication amongst all parties involved with a course.

Criticisms of such definitions revolve around the insistence upon features of the definition such as 'communication', transparency', 'parties' and 'courses', which do not necessarily have any clear or unambiguous meaning in environments outside the narrow confines of higher (or other institutionalised) education, such as in environmentents where learning, and thus blended learning (e.g., AI systems, or animal training systems, which can be involved in blended learning, using combined resources) does not raise issues of 'transparency of communication' in the way envisaged in an institutional definition.

More on this definition can be found here: http://www.edu.salford.ac.uk/her/proceedings/papers/ah_04.rtf

At the moment Blended Learning has many names, therefore some authors talk about hybrid learning (this seems to be more common amongst the Northern American sources) or mixed learning. Overall, blended learning refers to integration (or the so-called blending) of e-learning tools and techniques with traditional methods. Two important factors here are the time spent on online activities and the amount of technology utilised, see Conception of Blended Learning on http://www.aheinze.me.uk

Alternative usage of the term

Alternatively, blended learning can be the term used to describe arrangements where 'conventional' offline non e-learning based provision happens to include online tutoring or mentoring services.

This combination of e-tutoring plus conventional non-elearning, although it is a perfectly valid example of blended learning, is the 'opposite way round' to most current blended learning provisions.

The non e-learning element of blended learning tends to be the availability of an individual with whom the learner establishes contact online, either as an integral part of an e-learning course, or as a 'support facility' who can be 'summoned' to contribute to the learning process on an on-demand, ad hoc basis.

Blended learning is typically defined as being a combination of instructor-led training and e-learning, or a combination of 'face to face' education and 'distance learning'.

'Pre e-learning' and 'non e-learning' usage of the term

As with many things prefixed with 'e' (originally standing for electronic, but eventually more specifically applied to the involvement of computer-based or more recently Internet-based technology) the e-learning aspect of blended learning can often mislead the unwary into believing that e-learning-based blended learning is the defining constituent of 'multi-resource' educational approaches.

Those involved in school education (as opposed to many of those exclusively responsible for deploying predominantly e-learning based occupational training resources) include a whole generation of teachers familiar with the provision of 'combined resource' educational tools involving:

• classroom based audio tape resouces (language laboratories)
• auditorium multimedia visual resources (movie projectors, slideshows, VCRs)
• textual resources: textbooks, exercise books (although these are obviously the mainstay of traditional school educational resources, they are actually a neglected and under-valued potential component of e-learning-based blended learning)
• home learning resources (video recordings, audio recordings)
• blackboard and whiteboard resources, including high-tech 'printing whiteboards' and 'online whiteboards'
• demonstration resources, including 'museum exhibits', 'laboratory experiments', live theatre, historic re-enactment, hands-on workshops, role-playing
• non-instructional education resources, such as examination, quizzes, envigilation, test-grading

The above, whilst they do not include e-learning, are noneletheless potential constituents of a blended learning provision which are often ignored when most current blended learning provisions (which are essentially 'e-learning software plus human trainer involvement) are being constructed.

Similarly, in the same way that 'non-human resources' which are not e-learning fail to be included in many blended learning solutions, the human resource constutuent of an e-learning-based blended learning provision does not need to be 'high-tech'.

Human resource access in e-learning based blended learning solutions is typically delivered through real-time chat systems or online message boards or email.

However, telephone contact with a tutor or trainer may be just as effective and potentially far more reassuring to the learner.

Current non-e-learning-based blended learning (computer based instructor-led training)

Sometimes, especially in IT training, learners may be in fact using computers as a training resource in a conventional classroom setting and the computers may or may not be used to deliver e-learning based lessons, but the setting and the presence of a class tutor often tends to prevent the training delivered in this way from being labelled as being either e-learning or blended learning,

Finally, instructor-led-training can itself be conducted completely online, using email, chat or message boards, and while there is a sense in which this not really 'blended' in that it may ultimately constitute just a single 'delivery method', the combination of human teacher and online interaction can certainly encourage providers and users of such resources to intuitively and understandably include them under the blended learning umbrella, especially if the online interaction is conducted using some of the more sophisticated online interactive whiteboard tools like NetMeeting .