By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor
Phil McRae is among the very few in education who see a problem in hyping blended learning, “where students’ face-to-face education is blended with Internet resources or online courses,” as innovative. He says, “As this broad definition illustrates, it would be difficult to find any use of technology in education that does not easily fit into this boundary.”1 This is not to say that all uses of technology in schools aren’t innovative. Some are. But simply adding web content or activities to classes that are primarily F2F isn’t necessarily new or effective.
Still, the biggest problem with blended approaches, innovative or not, isn’t so much its effectiveness but its impact on completely online courses. For many educators, blended is synonymous with online when it reaches a tipping point, measured in a ratio between F2F and online requirements. When a certain percentage — roughly 80% — of the course work is online, then the class is placed in the same category as fully online courses.
This seemingly innocuous perception is arguably the greatest impediment to the development of completely online courses and programs. The F2F imperative, whether 20 percent or 1 percent, instantly eliminates the possibility of disruption that defines online learning. In other words, the door for nontraditional students who cannot, for whatever reason, attend classes on campus remains closed.
The promise of online learning is in disruption, in either accommodating nontraditional students or creating the new traditional student (newt) who is equally at home in blended and completely online courses.
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Here’s a glimpse at a future of education that shortens the distance between learner and knowledge. Ankur Nagpal, founder of Fedora, says, “We are moving from a credential-based economy to a skills-based economy. It doesn’t matter if you are certified. What matters is that you can do the job…. Who is to say someone with a Ph.D. is better at teaching you how to code? We are trying to democratize teaching.”2
This is a presage of changes to come in the realm of teaching and teachers. Ultimately, the vast majority of today’s teachers are general practitioners, intermediary guides and facilitators to the world of information and knowledge. However, as students gradually transform into independent learners, they will increasingly bypass teachers to explore and learn directly from experts and sources. This is as it ought to be — education as empowerment rather than lifelong dependency.
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The power of mobile communication devices to encourage and expand independent and informal learning among K-12 students is gaining traction at the national level. U.S. Senators Angus King and Shelley Moore Capito “have introduced the Digital Learning Equity Act of 2015” which “aims to … extend access to digital learning opportunities when [students] leave the classroom.” This bill “was influenced by a portable Wi-Fi initiative at the Cherryfield Public Library in Cherryfield, Maine. Through the library’s ‘Check-out the Internet’ initiative, students can check-out a mobile Wi-Fi device to provide them with Internet access outside of school. The initiative is a public-private partnership with the New York Public Library, Maine State Library, U.S. Cellular and Axiom Technologies.”3 Once again, we’re reminded that libraries are on the leading edge in exploring and discovering ways to use technology as a resource for learning.
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1 “Myth: Blended Learning Is the Next Ed-Tech Revolution” (ATA, 1 June 2015), in Valerie Strauss’s “Blended Learning: The Great New Thing or the Great New Hype?” (Washington Post, 21 June 2015).
2 In Bob Sullivan’s “Boot Camp Classes May Offer a Peek at the Future of Higher Ed” (CNBC, 22 June 2015).
3 Sean Buckley, “Senators Look to Close Broadband Gap for Schools with Digital Learning Equity Act” (FierceTelecom, 22 June 2015).
Filed under: Blended Learning, Digital Equity, Library, Mobile Technology, Online Learning |
John Mark Walker: "If educational communities can continue to push platform integration and content portability, in the future, students may be able to design their own personalized degrees from smaller, modular chunks that cross institutional barriers" (
Richard Koubek
Judith McDaniel
Tim Fraser-Bumatay: "Although the format leaves us far-removed physically, the online forum has its own sense of intimacy" (Judith McDaniel, "
Ryan Kelly: "For me to be able to work with people clear across the country for an extended period of time opened me up to new things" (Judith McDaniel, "
Daniel Herrera: "As a Mexican American, I know that words of identity are powerful; so to discuss white privilege with my professor and classmates in a face-to-face class would have been terrifying and impossible" (Judith McDaniel, "
Cathy Gunn: "Traditional methods for effecting change at my institution aren’t getting us even to a trickle yet, let alone to thinking about or planning for a wave!" (
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
Your first commentary reminds that we’re not there yet. How can this even be a topic of conversation at this late date? The F2F imperative must be defeated and soundly.
While your second commentary is well founded conceptually, it misses that people still go to Microsoft to get certified in this or that MS technology so that they can get jobs.
The world out there is not satisfied with “I can do it.” They demand actual work experience in whatever it is that you are to do — or a certificate promising a similar knowledge/skill level.
The problem with saying that you must have skills instead of certificates is figuring out whether you have those skills. I also have to stand in favor of at least some of those certificates as having value in showing that you have learned more than a narrow skill but rather have a broad knowledge and understanding upon which to make important decisions and also to communicate at a higher level. The good, old-fashioned liberal arts education is a good thing. Too bad that it’s been debased so much lately that some students graduating from college show no benefits derived from that experience.
On the third commentary, I find it astounding to see the resilience of librairies. They were written off as unnecessary not so long ago and some still do so. Who says you can’t reinvent yourself?
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