Blended Classroom Design

According to the Christensen Institute, "Blended learning is defined as a formal education program in which a student learns: 

• at least in part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace; 
• at least in part in a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home; 
• and the modalities along each student's learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.

The majority of blended-learning programs resemble one of four models: Rotation, Flex, A La Carte, and Enriched Virtual. The Rotation model includes four sub-models: Station Rotation, Lab Rotation, Flipped Classroom, and Individual Rotation."

Contrary to the misconception about blended learning being a strategy for computers to replace teachers, BetterLesson believes that blended learning helps to sustain and retain them by shifting teaching paradigms and making teaching and learning more personalized. Positive experiences attributed to blended learning are largely attributable to four main features of teaching in a blended environment: 

• The availability of high quality digital content, online tools, and adaptive softwares makes it possible for teachers using a blended model to be more responsive in real-time to individual students' needs while using sustainable teaching and learning practices. 
• The availability of digital assessment tools can significantly reduce the time teachers need to spend sifting through hundreds of small pieces of data and can increase the time they spend on identifying trends and designing customized supports and growth opportunities for their students.
• Teachers using a blended model are able to play the role of a coach/facilitator, which ultimately is more gratifying and effective than being expected to be a "sage on the stage" all the time. 
• The ongoing and intentional problem solving required by a blended learning model draws on teachers' creativity while encouraging experimentation and fostering deeper ownership of their practice and their students' growth and achievement. 

Why it's important

Today, most classrooms, workplaces, and even homes are truly blended environments, in which participants are expected to interact seamlessly with digital, human, and analog tools and resources. The proliferation of educational software, apps, and hardware has made it more important than ever for educators to be supported in making critical instructional decisions around how to best leverage these options in order to personalize instruction and help students develop the digital literacy skills they need to be successful in the 21st century. At the same time, almost none of the 3.5 million teachers in the United States were educated in a personalized learning environment, and a very small percentage of teachers had the opportunity to be trained in blended and personalized learning strategies in their pre-service preparation. Therefore, there is significant urgency for teachers to  learn how to integrate high quality human-to-human teaching strategies with technology-enabled learning. Effective blended classrooms hold the potential to revolutionize the way that teachers teach and students learn. 

What success looks like

In classrooms in which a blended classroom design is fully implemented: 

• Teachers meet students where they are in their learning by providing individually tailored resources, supports, and content 
• Teachers create a flexible and personalized learning environment dependent on real-time data, direct observation, and interaction with and feedback from students.
• Students use technology creatively and purposefully to learn effectively and efficiently and to demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways
• Students and teachers utilize technology and digital tools in safe, legal, and ethical ways 
• Students develop vital critical thinking skills that allow them to be innovative, independent thinkers in the classroom and beyond

BetterLesson Blog Posts: 

• Heyman, Hadas. Five Lesson I Learned in Becoming a Blended Learning Coach. May 30, 2019.
• Bertrand, Romain. Students in Charge and in Control: Exploring and Designing Student Self-Paced Online Learning. February 5, 2019.
• Tennessee DOE Blended Learning Pilot Yields Promising Results. June 20, 2018.
• Saunders, Melissa. Manassas Partners with BetterLesson for District-wide Blended Learning Implementation. October 8, 2017.
• BetterLesson Partners with Avi Chai for Blended Learning. April 13, 2016.
• BetterLesson Announces Blended Master Teacher Project. May 13, 2016.

External Resources:

• Liberty, Jeff, et. al. Blended and Personalized Learning: 10 Key Findings from BetterLesson's Master Teacher Project. Whitepaper published in 2016. 
• Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker, Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014).
• Maxwell, Clifford. What Blended Learning is and Isn't. Blended Learning Universe. March 24, 2016.