Dive Brief:

• Blended learning can incorporate many different styles in classrooms, but there are key elements that do work — and several that don’t, writes teacher Rebecca Recco in EdSurge.

• In the best examples, teachers are fluent not only in digital tools but also excellent pedagogically, but students also need to find the work they’re assigned engaging whether they’re in school or at home online.

• In the worst cases of blended learning, educators use online tools as replacements for lecturing rather than weaving the digital experience successfully into lessons, and student support is also needed so they can navigate the digital content as easily as they would their classroom.

Dive Insight:

Pedagogy is critical whether learning is occurring online or face-to-face. Digital tools should not serve as a substitute for educators, but as a way to augment and enhance learning much like textbooks and other educational materials.

At its best, blended learning is as its name suggests: a way to blend different learning styles into one. But getting them to mesh well requires support. A 2017 report found that teacher-student interaction positively impacted outcomes for K-12 students in blended learning environments, whether they received academic feedback on their work in the form of comments or even “interpersonal support.”

Blended learning can successfully teach students about subject matter while also indirectly teaching them fluency in digital tools. But curriculum designers should take care to ensure this style does not turn into a shortcut for classroom teaching. Instead, teachers need to use online tools to augment a student’s time in school to boost their understanding of a subject, instead of short-changing their education.