How can instructors balance online and in-person instruction effectively?

1 Identify your goals and outcomes

Before you start planning your blended learning course, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. What are the learning objectives and competencies that you want your learners to develop? How will you assess their progress and performance? How will you align your online and in-person activities with your goals and outcomes? Having a clear vision and purpose will help you create a coherent and meaningful blended learning course.

3 Integrate online and in-person components

One of the challenges of blended learning is to ensure that the online and in-person components are well integrated and complement each other. You don't want to create a disjointed or redundant learning experience for your learners. To avoid this, you need to design your online and in-person activities with a clear connection and alignment. For example, you can use online activities to prepare, review, or extend the in-person activities, or use in-person activities to apply, practice, or discuss the online activities. You can also use online tools to facilitate communication and collaboration between the online and in-person sessions, such as discussion forums, chat rooms, or wikis.

4 Support and engage your learners

Blended learning can offer more opportunities for learner autonomy, interaction, and feedback, but it can also pose some challenges for learner motivation, participation, and support. To address these challenges, you need to create a supportive and engaging learning environment for your learners. For example, you can provide clear instructions and expectations for the online and in-person activities, offer timely and constructive feedback, monitor and track learner progress and performance, and encourage learner reflection and self-regulation. You can also use a variety of online and in-person strategies to foster learner engagement, such as gamification, storytelling, peer learning, or problem-based learning.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?