In the mixer

Blended. It used to be something you did in the kitchen. With a machine. Saved you having to mix ingredients with your hands or a utensil. Took away a lot of the effort. Hopefully, the end result was edible.

Now blended has come to mean something else, at least in the education domain. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about blended learning?

Once, blended learning was an easy concept to understand. It described the difference between traditional and distance education. You mixed your face to face learning experience with remote learning, usually mediated through some kind of technology. First it was paper based, and then there was a rapid evolution of technology, and now the distance side of blended learning comes in many shades and hues. The most common form of blended learning today is where you spend some time in the classroom, but the majority of your time studying online. Some people call it the flipped classroom. Whatever. It's blended. Local and remote. There you go.

But it's not a simple as that now. Blended learning is taking on a number of other connotations, because thanks to the advent of the digital device, there are now many more modes of learning. Consider for example the blend between mobile and tethered learning experiences. You can be mobile and take your learning beyond the classroom, but you can be away from the classroom and still be tethered to your technology. What are the issues here? There is plenty of debate and much research in this area, not least around student preferences. Some people prefer to learn on the move, while others are more comfortable with larger screens, and with all their resources physically around them.

Then there is the blend between paper based texts and e-readers. Which is best? Who prefers which? It's a blend we are taking an increasing interest in, throughout the education community. Both can support learning on the move, but then, learning has always taken place exactly where the learner goes.

This blog post was inspired by the above illustration by Amy Burvall

What about the blend between social learning and personal learning? Surely this is another important dimension to contemporary education? You can learn different things when you're in close proximity to others, especially if they are intent on reaching similar goals to you. And yet, personalised approaches to learning are also on the increase, and although social and personal learning are not mutually exclusive, they tend to be separated out because they afford different possibilities. My view is that social learning amplifies personal learning, and all can benefit from the knowledge of each individual in the community. Blended again.

There is also learning within the same time frame, and learning outside of the time frame. In education we call these modes synchronous and asynchronous, and each has its own benefits. For example, in asynchronous mode, you don't have to respond immediately to a prompt - you can take your time, reflect, go and do some research, and then come back to contribute to a forum or online discussion. Another kind of blended.

So blended learning is becoming an increasingly complex concept, with multiple possibilities and infinite options. Blended is about choice, and about maximising your learning in the modes you find most convenient. Learning in all its forms is a little like the blender in your kitchen. Put in the right ingredients, and use a little effort, and hopefully the result will turn out to be very useful.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Flickr
Image by Amy Burvall


In the mixer by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.