Online and Blended Learning Fundamentals: Learning from the Pioneers

As the pandemic has required schools to innovate, including with online, blended, and hybrid models that are unfamiliar to them, too many educators have suffered from trying to reinvent the wheel. The alternative is to look at pioneering virtual and blended schools that have won hard-fought battles to design teaching and learning experiences that are happy and effective. Their successes and failures can lead the way for educators who are new to the online world.

In this class, you’ll look backward at how online and blended learning emerged over the past 20 years. With that context, you’ll look forward to imagine and create the online and blended solutions for the future. You’ll consider your personal openness to trying new strategies. You’ll analyze your learning design to check for the quality of engagement. And you’ll prioritize how to optimize the teacher’s use of time.

Length

1 hour 14 minutes

Learning targets

1. Understand online and blended learning and which of their characteristics as disruptive innovations are worth considering as you design the instructional strategy for your school or classroom.

2. Cultivate a personal openness to trying new strategies with online/blended learning.

3. Envision the core building blocks of a flexible learning arc to scaffold the student experience.

4. Analyze options for creating independent online work.

5. Free up your time to prioritize individual feedback and coaching with each of your students.

Have on hand during the class

Graphic Organizer: Online and Blended Learning Fundamentals

Featured in this class

• Clayton Christensen explains Disruptive Innovation (Website)

• Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (Book)

• Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools (Book)

• Thomas Arnett, “Distance Learning: Let’s Not Reinvent the Wheel” (blog)

• How to Create Learning Arcs (Ready to Blend Podcast #25: Hacks for Esteem Gaps)

• Professor Eric Mazur (Video from SSAT Conference)

• Relationships of Trust: What Great Coaches Do (Video)

Podcast version of this class

To listen to this class, subscribe to the Ready to Blend podcast on iTunes, Google, Stitcher, or TuneIn. Go to Episode 30: Online and Blended Learning Fundamentals.

Engage further

Complete the six Foundations for Blended Learning Micro-credentials to prove your competency in implementing the concepts discussed in this class. The micro-credentials are brought to you by BloomBoard and Ready to Blend.