Distance learning and blended education: The future course

The planet is a more objective oriented environment these days. With the concepts of institutional learning and the definition of the term ‘traditional student’ changing all the time, so is the approach towards how educational instruction and training can be delivered in such a way as to make the learning process as individualized and effective, with a deeper emphasis on direct-party attention and the accommodation of more students with specific responsibilities and needs which would render them powerless to pursue classroom based learning.

Today’s new age group of students is no longer restricted to fresh high-teach graduates. Indeed, most of the students entering higher education are much more mature (the average age is 24) and come from more diverse backgrounds than ever before. Many students (80%) are proficient in the use of notebook programs and the internet by the time they reach senior high, with many reporting that they had used some form of social media or other information sharing website, while nearly all report the use of internet search engines to help research (and sometimes copy) homework assignments. The presence of MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have changed the way the younger age group (of teach, university or professional learners) interacts with each other and with static or dynamic information - using the web. Today, online customization allows you to mould yourself an environment of your own in cyberspace, connecting with those people and that information (news, sports, opera… anything) which you wish to connect to only; so why not try to apply the same principles to learning? The concept of distance and online learning is becoming a new way of life, and probably the future, for modern education.

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Blended education is a type of education in which a large percentage of traditional classroom learning is replaced with web-based learning models (like online classrooms or automated teaching and testing systems), while face-to-face interaction is restricted to those cases where such interaction is necessary.

Blended education thus involves the replacement of 25-75 percent of classroom time with web based teaching. The mix really depends upon the nature and type of the course, preferred teaching techniques, the instructor’s experience level and the nature and type of students caught up in the course or program. The most vital component in any blended course is the feature and availability of online knowledge assets made accessible to students; such assets include a digital online store (many are already in use all over the planet even for traditional campus-based courses), storage area of address slides and online information associations available for free use - there are already several commercial and open-source (free) e-learning management systems in use throughout the planet which allow institutions to often house an entire curriculum online for students to access as they wish. Already, at least half of the courses offered at traditional institutions involve the use of some online assets as well as web-based communication.

A further major factor in today’s blended environment is the use of online forums, restricted access e-mail and online discussion groups - various systems (blogs, chat rooms and e-mail) - which help students engage in interactive study without the need to be present in the same classroom; the comfort level of modern students with this type of online interaction environment allows students to potentially learn much more (mainly with the internet and Google at their mandate) than they would in a traditional setting.

Wikipedia
Higher Education, Blended Learning and the Generations: tlc[dot]ucalgary[dot]ca/documents/chuck.doc

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