I integrated used blended learning in teaching in higher education institutions, and I found that it helps students keep in touch with their teacher outside the classroom and allows students to share information and knowledge with each other. In addition, virtual classes enable shy students to participate and ask without hesitation, and recorded lectures fit individual differences. The key lessons to recommend for teachers are to prepare well for blended learning and choose eye-catching and interesting visual aids, that fit students' needs and allow for integration and participation for all students. Moreover, the teacher should keep his eyes all the time on what the students are doing to keep things under control. Be encouraging, and motivate students to form groups and do assignments together to develop their performance.

I integrated used blended learning in teaching in higher education institutions, and I found that it helps students keep in touch with their teacher outside the classroom and allows students to share information and knowledge with each other. In addition, virtual classes enable shy students to participate and ask without hesitation, and recorded lectures fit individual differences. The key lessons to recommend for teachers are to prepare well for blended learning and choose eye-catching and interesting visual aids, that fit students' needs and allow for integration and participation for all students. Moreover, the teacher should keep his eyes all the time on what the students are doing to keep things under control. Be encouraging, and motivate students to form groups and do assignments together to develop their performance.

Dear Samy

In addition to what Aida has rightly said about the advantages and the way of using blended learning, I would like to add two more things: (1) unless the blended learning input is part of the assessment system; that is, it is counted as part of the final score, students may not get interested in it! and (2) it is preferable to use a platform, like Moodle, which has a tracking system so that the tutor will be able to document and monitor the students' participations. As Aida explains above, keeping an eye on the students' participation will encourage them and make the tutor aware of each student's progress.

As for my own experience, in addition to sharing documents, links and pages, I assign tasks such as reading articles and reacting to them, watching videos and using their ideas in forums of discussion, uploading assignments, constructing a collective glossary of terms related to the area being taught, and giving the students the opportunity of sharing documents and productions. I also use the wiki application for collaborative learning and blogs for constructing a learning journal. I collect all these productions in the form of a portfolio to give a score that wieghs 25% of the final score to each student. I find the experience fruitful and I can confirm that those who use the platform more generally outperform their peers who use it less (though I did not use any inferential statistics to provide hard evidence!).

In my case, these are some factors which influenced the blending process in teacher education.

Forms of courses/programs depend on academic unit, instructional design, and perhaps some personal preferences. Online programs with f2f aspects would be blended/hybrid by definition, but that is not always reflected in terminology, which varies from scholar to administrator to others!

I use various degrees of "blendedness" in my courses. There are some that are 30% on line / 70% in class, others are 50/50, depending largely on each program and even the number of students. I learned that it is best to start by conducting a brief analysis of the context (including institutional constraints, school policies, availability of online resources, etc) before deciding on the extent of online activities.

I set up and ran two blended-learning courses of MA in ICT. One at King's College, London and the other at the University of Leeds. They have the same modular struture:

-10 hours face-to-face split into two 5 hour session on a two different Saturdays.

-10 hours on-line consisting of focussed discussion and chat room "break outs" .

The students, who were both part-time and full time, liked the flexibility but saw that the trade off was not as much personal contact.

We found that the chat room seminars were most effective with no more than 3 participants. After each session, a member of the chat group summarised their discussion and posted it to the main discussion board. Other students could look at the chat room logs if they found something interesting.

A further development was to give credit for on-line participation.

Sometimes. Most of my f2f courses have assignments and study materials on-line. My on-line courses are strictly on-line due to the fact that many of my students in these course are not near the campus and reside in other states or countries.

Yes, Samy I used an educational method that combines e-learning with traditional education, which is called blended learning.

Best Regards @ Samy Azer

Hi!

Some provocations into this discussion, just for thought:

Is not a curriculum about the "what" to learn? The "how" is another question. However, the medium easily becomes the message, which is not optimal.

By the way - since late medieval times oral instruction has been blended with ICTs - if we do not go further back and define also language and writing as ICTs. There is no sustainable reason to talk about blended only when we think of digital ICTs - especially when these for the most are still digitalizations of analogue ICTs. Next step, with use of true digital iCTs may be applications as learning analytics and adaptive learning. If interested in these perspectives, see attached

Research A back-to-basics thought experiment about blended learning

Article A time based blended learning model

Article Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies

blended learning combines online learning with traditional instruction to guide students along a set learning path to create a more engaging, effective, and customizable experience .

incorporating the tools into classes as well as managing online assignments is a logistical challenge applicable in some classes and some socio-cultural contexts not all the time. mixing ICT with traditional ways can scaffold learning of different people of different personality traits.

Blended learning is a combination of offline (face-to-face, traditional learning) and online learning in a way that the one compliments the other. It provides individuals with the opportunity to enjoy the best of both worlds. For example, a student might attend classes in a real-world classroom setting, and then supplement the lesson plan by completing online multimedia coursework. As such, the student would only have to physically attend class once a week and would be free to go at their own pace (and without worrying about scheduling issues).

I would like to thank everyone for contribution and sharing their experiences. It will be of interest to know if you have examined the impact of such change on the students' learning and what type of research did you use.

Respected Professor,

I have read your papers with great interest related to medical education. Yes we are using blended learning for some of our courses for Undergraduate dentistry students. for me its interesting and challenging specially institutions when you have less institutional support for teaching BL courses.

Yes our students group learning via BL are high achievers as compared to F2F. and student perception is also better in BL group

There is quite a bit of research out there on the use and effectiveness of blended learning:

Aronson, A. (2018). Using a Blended Learning Approach in the Secondary Mathematics Classroom. Learning To Teach, 7(1).

https://www.utdl.edu/ojs/index.php/learningtoteach/article/view/255

Cuesta Medina, L. (2018). Blended learning: Deficits and prospects in higher education. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 34(1).

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=14493098&AN=129014457&h=AS70kMAMuN0sLmGh1SI9%2BgLq2ZtrbIjZtkreApRDIabDbQMd1%2BWKaKEFepBxX8%2FjR1Ywcmgd%2FfJmEAs61uNCMw%3D%3D&crl=c

Taylor, M., Vaughan, N., Ghani, S. K., Atas, S., & Fairbrother, M. (2018). Looking Back and Looking Forward: A Glimpse of Blended Learning in Higher Education From 2007-2017. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology (IJAVET), 9(1), 1-14.

https://www.igi-global.com/article/looking-back-and-looking-forward/198364

I would probably flip your question and ask why would you not use Blended learning?

yes..