How do you experiment with blended learning?

1 Plan your goals and outcomes

Before you start experimenting with blended learning, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. What are the learning objectives and standards for your course or unit? How will you align your online and face-to-face activities and assessments with these goals? How will you communicate your expectations and provide feedback to your students? How will you evaluate the effectiveness of your blended learning approach?

2 Choose your tools and platforms

The next step is to select the tools and platforms that will support your blended learning design. You may already have access to some online learning management systems (LMS), such as Moodle, Canvas, or Google Classroom, that offer various features and functions for creating and delivering online content, assignments, quizzes, discussions, and more. You may also want to explore other tools and platforms that can enhance your blended learning experience, such as video conferencing, podcasts, blogs, wikis, games, simulations, or digital portfolios. However, don't get overwhelmed by the number of options available. Choose the tools and platforms that best suit your goals, outcomes, content, and pedagogy.

3 Balance your online and face-to-face components

One of the main challenges of blended learning is finding the right balance between online and face-to-face components. You don't want to overload your students with too much work or create redundancy or inconsistency between the two modes of delivery. You also don't want to neglect the social and emotional aspects of learning that are often fostered by face-to-face interactions. A good way to balance your online and face-to-face components is to use the online mode for delivering content, providing resources, and facilitating self-paced and independent learning, and use the face-to-face mode for reinforcing concepts, applying skills, and promoting collaboration and communication.

4 Design engaging and meaningful activities

Designing activities for blended learning that are engaging and meaningful for your students is a challenge. To create activities that are relevant, authentic, and aligned with goals and outcomes, they should be interactive, collaborative, and differentiated to meet the diverse needs and preferences of your students. Examples of such activities include online quizzes or games to test prior knowledge, online discussions or forums to share opinions, perspectives, or experiences, online projects or assignments to research or present something, face-to-face debates or presentations to demonstrate understanding and skills, and face-to-face group work or peer feedback to foster cooperation and communication.

5 Monitor and adjust your blended learning approach

The last step is to monitor and adjust your blended learning approach based on your observations, feedback, and data. You want to keep track of how your students are progressing, performing, and participating in your blended learning activities. You also want to solicit feedback from your students and colleagues on what is working and what is not working in your blended learning design. You may use surveys, interviews, focus groups, or other methods to collect feedback. Based on your findings, you may need to make some changes or improvements to your blended learning approach, such as modifying your goals, outcomes, tools, platforms, components, or activities.

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?