What IS Blended Learning And Is It So Effective

What IS Blended Learning And Is It So Effective

What kind of learning is better and what to choose of you are going to be a student or if you just want to attend some courses. Face-to-face learning, online learning and blended learning - the choice is not that big; but it’s obvious. Traditional learning or online learning are good but the first one is too old and the second one doesn’t provide the best environment that might be needed for most of students as they easily get disturbed by things and they can’t manage their time effectively.

Blended learning is a new phenomenon. It appeared not so long time ago but its effectiveness is already acknowledged. Generally, blended learning is an education program that uses traditional classroom which goes in tandem with online media. Students are required to be present on their lessons so there is no distance learning for blended education programs. Blended learning is also used for professional development and trainings.

Advantages of Blended Learning

Blended learning is more effective than other types of learning. Students learn with their digital instructions which they are provided with by their teacher. This allows students to work on their own while teachers circulate around to support every student who needs attention or just wants to ask a question.

One of the most important advantages is that blended learning helps to reduce costs required for education. For example, students don’t use expensive books but use electronic devices instead.

Learning Management Systems also may be involved. Such systems help to create a virtual learning environment and allow teachers to lead lessons without being present in the class as well as students can learn without attending courses physically.

Disadvantages of Blended Learning

The idea of blended learning is not a problem but what can be a problem, is that it requires special technical resources. Technical problems will collapse blended learning for some time. Also, these tools should be easy to use and up to date otherwise, it won’t make expected effect.

Also, we need to mention that providing a proper feedback from educators may be more expensive because of using online media than just a traditional face-to-face learning. Besides, it may take more time as well. So e-learning platforms are actually not that cheap and fast as it was expected.

Also, there is one more critical point. This is about the Internet. Even though the Internet is highly widespread in the USA and in other developed countries, there are still some students that don’t have access to the Internet even in their classroom. But except these problems blended learning seems to be one of the most progressive teaching/learning styles.