Personalization via Blended Education: A Winning Strategy – Raccoon Gang

The Definition of Blended Education

First, let’s find out what blended learning is. Blended learning is an online learning strategy that combines interaction elements with standard classroom teaching methods (various webinars, lectures, and so on).

According to surveys, 82% of students prefer blended learning over standard classes. 59% of teachers said that students are more motivated, and their performance is higher when using blended learning.

At its core, standard blended learning consists of two parts:

• Standard online training in which the student himself determines the convenient pace of studying the educational material.
• Classes under the guidance of an educator that complement the training material from point number 1.

However, despite the strict content, the teaching itself cannot always follow a unified pedagogical approach. For example, the whole process can take place simultaneously with face-to-face training (synchronously) or separately (asynchronously). As we will see, there are several blended learning models in education.

Main Benefits of Blended Education System

Blended education is one of the most significant trends in the education industry. If you have doubts about the power of the blended learning approach, then we have collected six main benefits that you and your educational process will gain after implementing this learning strategy.

Benefit #1. Increased Engagement

According to research, blended education has a positive effect on student engagement in the learning process. All thanks to various eLearning authoring tools that are a comfortable way for students to interact with the course. In addition, there are multiple options for presenting educational material, thereby making even boring material much more enjoyable.

Benefit #2. “Flipped Classes” Impact

“Flipped Classes” is a fairly common term in teaching and characterizes the learning process when students independently study theory remotely and then practice the knowledge gained under the supervision of an educator. In such an atmosphere, the ease of understanding and the speed of mastering the material increases since instead of simply reading the material, students spend all the time allotted with the teacher to consolidate the material and acquire skills.

Benefit #3. Autonomous Learning Pace for Students

Blended education allows students to participate in online lessons regardless of their location. All you need to do is find a place with Internet access, and you are ready to study. In addition, do not forget about the freedom to choose the study time because each student can adjust the individual part of the educational program to the personal schedule, which makes the study comfortable and accessible for people with a busy schedule.

Benefit #4. Educator’s Time Used More Efficiently

In addition to lectures, standard classes require a lot of work from the educator outside of them. For example, they print out handouts, download attendance data, manually evaluate essays, and do other tasks. However, since we are talking about online learning, some of these tasks can be automated, thereby freeing up the educator’s time for more essential learning tasks, such as helping students master the educational material.

Benefit #5. Gathering Data for Precise Insights

Analytics and data collection are some of the main ways to help you understand whether the training system is working as intended or not. Blended education allows you to use various analytics gathering tools to understand trends and the overall future direction of the curriculum. For example, this can be data on the average grade in a particular subject, or collecting feedback on certain activities during training, and much more.

Benefit #6. Easier to Enroll More Students

Standard classroom teaching is always about traveling across the city to the university or another town, which is not always convenient. However, blended online learning comes to the rescue here, allowing students to study entirely remotely, and universities, in turn, enroll more students.

Ways How Blended Education Can Increase Personalization

So, it’s time to talk about the core part of our article, namely learning personalization. In simple terms, this approach seeks to customize the educational process to the needs and strengths of each student, making the entire learning process extremely flexible. And blended education significantly contributes to this approach. So, let’s delve into details.

Open Navigation for Students

Unfortunately, standard learning forms are highly linear and force students to view content they may already be familiar with, leading to a poor learning experience. In the meantime, blended learning gives the student the freedom to choose:

• Studying material units in a convenient order
• Skipping already learned units
• Learning at a comfortable pace

All that needs to be done to implement this approach is to correctly design the course itself and make its units independent from each other. This is necessary so that if the student starts the study, for example, from the third unit, there is no feeling that something is missing and should return to the previous units.

Variety of Learning Formats

Traditional teaching is extremely limited in presenting educational material, which runs counter to the personal preferences of each student. In the meantime, the enables educators to use the following presentation tools (or better to say styles):

• Virtual classrooms
• Seminars
• Self-paced learning
• Scenario-based eLearning
• Gamification
• Podcasts
• Video-based learning 
• Forums, discussions, and so on

Collaboration and With Peers And Colleagues

Blended learning opens up the boundaries of collaboration and collaborative learning, allowing students to join subject groups, completing projects together, and evaluating each other’s work. All this can be realized online, thanks to various LMS tools like chats, forums, etc.

Learning Related to Needs of Students

Combining instructor-led workshops and online learning in blended education is a great way to provide and reinforce learning that is most relevant to the future needs of the students.

In a seminar with a teacher, the teacher uses examples and practices from his own experience to explain how certain things work. This approach is of more interest to students since we are more willing to believe personal experience firsthand than fictional situations designed to present the material.

Meanwhile, during self-paced online learning, students can delve deeper into the lecture material using various techniques such as gamification and modeling based on what they have learned in the lecture.

Wrapping Up

Personalization of learning is a sure way to improve the entire learning process, which makes it flexible and adaptable to the personal skills of a particular student. And as you can imagine, blended education is one of the great tools to achieve personalization. However, the implementation of this training format requires a unique approach and the help of specialists.

Raccoon Gang has years of experience developing online courses and implementing various teaching methodologies and custom technical online curriculums for multiple industries. All you need to do is write to us, and our representative will contact you to discuss the best way to bring your learning needs to life.