Blended Learning in Action

 I joined a book study group at school about Caitlin R. Tucker, Tiffany Wycoff and Jason T. Green's book, Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide toward Sustainable Change. In me form, I read the book in its entity over break. The book was published in 2017 and it seems somewhat prescient when it says, "In just a few years, all the buzz about 'blended' learning will fade, and it will simply be learning" (p 192). With the pandemic we have been thrust into blended learning without the careful planning and ramp up that the book recommends. It has been a year of being thrown into the deep end to see if we can swim. Some are doing well and some are barely keeping their heads above water and some are drowning. Trying to implement some of the ideas from the book in this situation is far from ideal.

First the book has no target audience. This is a serious fault. Sometimes it is talking to administrators, others to teacher. While the advice to pick and choose which chapters to dive in to is given, rarely have I found it so glaringly how the book was written. Some sections are for one group over another, but they are not well delineated, so picking the most appropriate ones would be a challenge.

Second, the book refers to models that it does not include. If you are going to reference them and in your book study questions ask how you would implement their advice you have to include the models and their descriptions. Beg, borrow or rewrite the models so that you can explain what you mean to your readers.

The third major weakness of the book is the figures. Some are in font sizes far too small to read. I know I am old, but so is a large percentage of the teaching population. If it needs to go to two pages so that it is accessible, make it so. Other figures are not juxtapositioned appropriately. Too much space between the reference and the figure. We should not have to look far for a figure. 

The book does have some great nuggets. One of my favorites is, "Though information is more readily available to students today through technology, access to information is fundamentally different than learning" (p. 191). We sometimes get caught in the wheel of we presented it therefore it is their fault if they don't get it cycle. This is more of a concern today with the access to information students have. We need to be really make sure we are checking for understanding.

The authors suggest that several aspects of blended learning are important considerations: offers opportunities for personalization (time, place, pace, and path) and agency, authentic audiences, connectivity with people around the world, and creativity. While they do not say blended learning is a personalized instruction method, they imply it throughout the book, but then they comment on the essential provision of keeping students roughly together. 

For administration they offer suggestions for slowly adopting, testing and onboarding teachers to a blended learning path. This foundation building was thrown out the window in the face of the pandemic. We are moving forward in a crazy drunken stumble trying to make blended instruction work for our kids. Some schools are offering lots of support to teachers to help them adapt, others are not so much. 

For teachers there are some descriptions of different models of blended instruction. Unfortunately most is offered at a high level rather than including sample lesson plans, ideal platforms and apps. I know that technology is changing at a rate that we cannot hope to keep up with, but the lack of specifics will hamper some people's adoption of the ideas. Caitlin's chapter on the whole group rotation is the best in the book for practical, use-now ideas. 

Each chapter ends with book study questions that include examine the benefits and challenges of the topic and how do you address the potential challenges. They ask the reader to think about what they need to do to address the topic in the chapter, what support they might need and how they can get it. In this way they are really asking the reader to examine their personal situation and think about how to include blended learning in their space. 

It will be interesting to see how other book study members view this book and where we jump from here.