By Charles Jennings
The term ‘blended learning’ first appeared in the late-1990s when web-based learning solutions started to become more widely used and were integrated on one way or another with face-to-face methods.
Of course the ‘blending’ concept has been around for much longer than the past few years. Apprenticeship training has ‘blended’ for centuries and the correspondence schools in Europe in the 1840s used blending. There are many other examples of ‘blending’ learning stretching back into the past, too.
However, the incorporation of technology into learning or training delivery has given blended learning a boost.
Speed reading machines in the late 1950s and 1960s (I remember my own speed reading courses – sitting in front of a large scrolling text machine in the early-1960s), interactive video (where some of the best eLearning programmes were developed in the 1980s), CD-based support and, of course, the Web have all contributed to our relative comfort in accepting blended learning as the norm. Each of these, though, were used to design and deliver structured and directed learning based on some form of instructional design and, often, as part of a curriculum.
In terms of new delivery approaches, blending offers up new horizons. However, in terms of breaking the traditional ‘push’ learning model it offers up little.
Blended is invariably ‘push’ learning
There are many definitions of blended learning. In 2003 the UK Department of Education and Training defined it as “learning which combines online and face-to-face approaches”. Most people would recognise that definition in what we see as blended programmes today - the use of two or more channels to make learning more easily or widely available.
The diagram below also represents a common view of blended learning. It focuses on the ‘delivery channel’ - integrating technology with traditional face-to-face approaches and stretching the time available to spend learning.
Diagram from Heinze & Proctor ‘Reflections on the Use of Blended Learning’(2004).
University of Salford, UK.
The current Wikipedia definition of blended learning reflects its structured nature:
Blended learning is a formal education program in which a student learns at least in part through delivery of content and instruction via digital and online media with some element of student control over time, place, path, or pace.
The key point about blended learning as is generally understood is that it remains firmly based on a push model. The learning experience is designed by others and usually packaged into a coherent event or set of events by instructional experts and ‘delivered’.
Of course within the ‘push capsule’ of blended learning there may be increased flexibility for individual learning preferences and increased flexibility of access. Participants are not constrained in the same way that they might be if they need to show up to a class at a set time and location to complete their learning process.
Traditional ‘blending’ is based on dependent learning models
More recently blended learning solutions have been expanded to include combining simulations with structured curses, using instructional technology to link courses with on-the-job tasks, and integrating workplace coaching with formal programmes amongst other approaches.
In other words, ‘blending’ is starting to mean more than simply mixing delivery channels.
It is still, however, focused on learning outcomes (rather than performance outcomes) and is still firmly based around the concepts of structured learning processes to achieve its objectives. This is what my colleague Jane Hart calls dependent learning (see diagram below).
Blending is about increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of dependent learning.
Although it may sometimes focus on extending learning into the ‘informal’ part of this diagram (and thus making it somewhat formal) the fact that the ‘blend’ is part of an overall designed programme, course or initiative makes ‘blended’ primarily fall into the formal/dependent category.
As such, blended learning still essentially sits in t