A teaching-learning strategy that should be used by instructors is blend ?ed learning (BL). Blended learning is a method where an instructor prepares a teaching-learning setting with a mix of offline and online learning activities.
The term “Offline” refers to all classroom, laboratory, and/or field activities where students and/or teachers are physically present. This includes, but is not limited to, experiences like teacher explanations, demonstrations, large group activities like brainstorming, discussions, small group activities like group work, problem-solving, experiments, and visits to shops/offices in the area.
All activities outside of classes or laboratories where students are not physically present are referred to as “online studying,” including but not limited to activities like viewing materials using or without digital devices (books, newspapers, diaries, pdf, videos, and audio).
The term “online learning” refers to all activities that take place outside of the classrooms or labs and involve students who are not physically present, including but not limited to activities like accessing resources with or without digital devices (books, newspapers, journals, pdf, videos, audio files, web pages, eBooks, eJournals, etc.) and engaging in online collaboration and web-based group projects with classmates.
If an instructor or institution decides to include online learning, no more than 40% of the session time should be allocated to this type of learner interaction. However, when using a blended approach, educators should allocate at least 60% of the overall session time for offline meetings.
Even though students will still be participating in online learning for these activities, instructors will still be responsible for planning, finding or creating materials, overseeing the activities, scaffolding, and giving comments, so their teaching duties won’t change. On the other hand, creating such BL settings requires more thought, effort, and time from an instructor.
