Blended learning

First of all, we need to make clear what we mean by the term “blended learning”: It is a mixture of online instruction and face-to-face learning.

Teachers could resort to different tools such as Edmodo, Moodle or even Facebook groups where they and their students can share a lot of useful information and resources.

Blended learning could have many advantages, as this video shows:

However, it is important to realise that face-to-face teaching should continue being an essential part of learning. As Sophie Partarrieu (2015) explains, the role of teachers nowadays is not just to pass on knowledge: Because students have the opportunity to obtain information almost immediately, teachers have to help them to “understand, interpret and apply” the material they get from the web. In addition, many times, teachers have “to act as guidance counsellors or provide emotional support”, using the author’s words, since they help to build self-confidence, to prevent exclusion and bullying providing a warm environment that could not be possible when working only with computers.

In our experience as students, we have worked with all the tools mentioned before and they have been really useful. For example, every time we need a file we know it is available there. Moreover, we can share our opinions about a text or a post and teachers can let us know about any news in connection with the lessons, exams, marks and we can ask if we have any doubt.

However, we strongly agree with Partarrieu since in our face-to-face lessons we learn a lot with the teachers as we can discuss the material they share with us online and we can give our opinions and make plain any concept that is not totally clear.

So, all in all, we could say that the best option is to find a balance between online and face-to-face teaching due to the fact that they are both beneficial to the learning process.

Source:

S., Partarrieu. (n.d.). Why we still need face-to-face teaching in the digital age. Retrieved October 29, 2016, from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/why-we-still-need-face-face-teaching-digital-age