Blended Learning: what is it and is it useful?

The term blended learning was first used in American literature and following what Gynther (2005) explains,  it intends to understand the blend of traditional teaching and technology-based teaching making use of various pedagogical methods and different forms of technology.

As it was said before, blended learning is mostly understood as a way of blending face-to-face and technology-based teaching. Blended learning does not intend to replace any method in particular; as Tiirmaa-Oras & Torrao (2007) say, its main intention is to merge the two delivery modes into one, finding the right approach considering the possibilities, advantages, aspects and different priorities in face-to-face and technology-based teaching.

These two authors state that blended learning is not a new approach, instead, what they consider new is the wide range of components in a blend so the teacher’s job would be to decide the way in which these components should be blended to produce right blends, constantly striking a balance between face-to-face education and technological components in didactical methods.

Thorne (2003) suggests that blended learning, if it is to succeed, has to fit into the broader context i.e. that every time a teacher attempts to design, develop and deliver different types of blends, the learning outcome must be in focus and this could be achieved by investigating with a look at learners, culture, learning resources, electronic infrastructure, and so on. 

The potential of blended learning is almost infinite and represents a natural evolution from traditional ways of learning to a more personalized and focused way, so our task as future teachers would be to get involved and give it a try.  

Thorne, K.  (2003). Blended Learning: How to Integrate Online and Traditional Learning. Great Britain: Kogan Page Limited

Tiirmaa-Oras, S.; Torrao, S. (2007). Blended Learning: Research reports & examples of best practices. Estonia. University of Tartu.