Lots of Small Sections and Efficiency Too? The Economic Case for Building Competency in Blended Classroom + Online Learning
Source: AVI CHAI Educational Technology Blog
Dr. Harry Bloom addresses the day school tuition crisis, pointing out that a key challenge to school productivity is thinly populated class sections. An emerging powerful solution is for schools to build their competency in blended classroom instruction and online instruction to enable fewer, larger sections coincident with more individualized instruction and high quality student learning.
He writes:
"In a blended classroom, teachers can utilize online resources in a variety of ways to complement their own teaching: to convey new concepts and/ or reinforce concepts taught in the classroom through structured exercises tailored to each individual student. Teachers can also utilize new learning management systems to monitor the precise degree of mastery of concepts by each student and group students with common learning needs in small groups so they learn together independently.
The range of online course offerings and curricular materials is proliferating. Open source learning management systems like Moodle enable faculty members to put their own blended curricula together. We are on the cusp of a golden opportunity to blend efficiency and higher quality learning experiences. Now is the time for active experimentation with blended learning by all schools."
Read the entire post at the AVI CHAI Educational Technology Blog.