Using Blended Learning to Explore Multifaceted Topics

Loyola Marymount University’s Shannon Tabaldo predicts that blended learning will naturally become “just everyday good teaching in K–12 classrooms.” Over the past seven years, I’ve had the opportunity to observe scores of K–12 blended learning classrooms and lead pre-service and in-service teacher training. This has given me a wealth of firsthand and practical instructional insight into the benefits of blended learning pedagogy. In this article, I share some of the major benefits of blended learning and explore how a blended learning model helps promote curricular alignment and instructional breadth. I define blended learning as the purposeful, coordinated, and synergistic employment of varied learning approaches (classroom, hybrid, and online), exercised through various learning modalities (small group, collaborative, independent, and online), to collectively expand, extend, and enrich the opportunities for learning. Read More