The Blended Workbook

Learning to Design the Schools of our Future

Michael B. Horn, Heather Staker

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119403548
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Successfully implement a blended learning program with this step-by-step guide!

The Blended Workbook: Learning to Design the Schools of Our Future is the practical companion to Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools. Through real-world implementation exercises it will help you get the most out of the text. From understanding the basics of blended learning to fine-tuning your current program, this workbook gives you hands-on practice that will expand your knowledge base and help you develop a plan for your own classroom or school to create a student-centered education design that personalizes for all students.

Key points drawn from over 50 case studies illustrate what works, what doesn't, and how to build a successful blended-learning program. This workbook's organizational structure allows you to jump in at any point to access field-tested exercises that will deepen your understanding of the design process.

Blended learning is inspiring K–12 educators with an improved student experience that includes the best of face-to-face and online learning formats to personalize learning and deepen engagement. This workbook provides hands-on training exercises that help you design and implement an effective program with practical guidance from the experts.

You will:

• Examine case studies that illustrate blended learning
• Solidify your understanding of effective blended-learning design
• Complete illustrative exercises to further your implementation expertise
• Evaluate the many paths blended learning can take, and implement what works best for your students

Blended learning is a proven, highly rewarding learning strategy. However, the success of your program relies on proper design and implementation. As a companion to Blende d this hands-on workbook helps you reap the benefits and strengthen your expertise.

Part 1


Understanding the Basics and Getting Ready

MODULE 1.1
The Basics of Blended Learning

Key objectives

• Identify what is and is not blended learning
• Recognize and distinguish the models of blended learning
• Predict the types of circumstances where each model works best

Content summary

Overview of blended learning

The future of education

Today’s students are entering a world in which they need a student-centered schooling system. Student-centered learning—the opposite of what we call today’s predominant factory-model school system in which students learn in lockstep—is essentially the combination of two related ideas: personalizing learning and competency-based learning (also called mastery-based learning, mastery learning, proficiency-based learning, or sometimes standards-based learning).

Personalizing learning

There are several notions of what personalized learning is, but when we say it, we think of it as a verb: personalizing learning. That means tailoring learning to an individual student’s particular needs—in other words, customizing or individualizing to help each individual succeed, given that students learn at different paces, possess different background knowledge, and harbor different interests that ignite their learning. The power of personalizing learning, understood in this way, is intuitive. Research shows that when students receive one-on-one help from a tutor instead of mass-group instruction, they typically do significantly better. This makes sense, given that tutors can do everything from adjusting their pace if they are going too fast or too slow to rephrasing an explanation or providing a new example or approach to make a topic come to life for a student. A personalized approach also implies that students can receive a one-on-one learning experience when they need it, but can also partake in group projects and activities when that would be best for their learning.

Competency-based learning

The second critical element of student-centered learning is competency-based learning; that is, the idea that students must demonstrate mastery of a given subject—including the possession, application, or creation of knowledge, a skill, or a disposition—before moving on to the next one. Students don’t move on from a concept based on the average pace of the class or within a preset, fixed amount of time, as they do in the traditional factory-model school system. Competency-based learning embeds aspects of perseverance and grit because in order to progress, students have to work at problems until they succeed; they can’t just wait it out until the unit is over. If students move on to a concept without fully understanding a previous one, it creates holes in their learning. No wonder Sal Khan and many other luminaries have latched on to the many studies that show competency-based learning producing better results than time-based learning.

Blended learning as the enabler

When implemented well and jointly, personalizing learning with competency-based learning form the basis of a student-centered learning system. An important part of student-centered learning is that students build agency so that they can ultimately be effective lifelong learners, which is necessary in today’s rapidly changing world, in which knowledge and skills become outdated quickly.

The challenge lies in how to implement student-centered learning at scale. Paying for a private tutor for every student would of course be wonderful, but it’s prohibitively expensive. Differentiating instruction for each child—a step toward personalizing learning that teachers across America try valiantly to do—is difficult in today’s factory-model education system. Similarly, allo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Blended Workbook
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Understanding the Basics and Getting Ready
• Part 2 Developing Your Plan
• Part 3 Polishing Your Plan
• Index
• EULA