Blended learning refers to a combination of traditional instructor led teaching and resources for students to access via a network or the internet. The increased interest in further education and part-time learning can be facilitated through blended learning (Zeiller, 2009). There are several innovations that can be utilized in the classroom part of the instruction such as group work and flipped classroom teaching. The network resources can be even more diverse. The instructor may communicate with a student or a group of students through: web conferencing, blogs, social media sites, and email.
The ” Teach Thought Staff, 2018, identify twelve models of blended learning. As a function of the instructors teaching style, the material being taught, and the interests of the students any or a blend of these models can be utilized. These styles of teaching require some degree of digital literacy, both by the instructor and the students, and also availability of the appropriate technology. Both the instructor and the students would need multimedia skills and be able to work effectively with Web 2.0 applications.
I see a blog as core to social media and an excellent way to share information. Blogs can be used to share information between students and provide feedback to the author. The instructor may used blog posts for monitoring student progress and evaluation purposes. There are numerous content management systems of which WordPress is the most popular. WordPress allows relatively easy customization, is free, and has numerous free plug-ins. Themes can be personalized and themes from WordPress are very stable.
The ”Open Osmosis” YouTube video is a great movie describing blended learning and the flipped classroom discussing the needs of the leaner relative to the model: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=82&v=paQCE58334M)
References
Zeiller, M. (2009). Web 2.0 Enabled Blended Learning. In T. Bastiaens, J. Dron & C. Xin (Eds.), Proceedings of E-Learn 2009–World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 2070-2075). Vancouver, Canada: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved January 30, 2019 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/32769/.
Teach Thought Staff. 2018. https://www.teachthought.com/learning/12-types-of-blended-learning/