Blog Entry X: Blended Learning

Some people describe blended learning simply as both teacher and computer based instruction. I personally like Stacy Hawthorne's definition of it. She defines it as a setting where learning occurs at any space and any time, where students become accountable for their learning and time and create questions that they seek and evaluate the answers to. Two definitions that I think are important to blended learning is that it is an environment where collaboration is essential to success, and mastery is shown through projects and presentations. I like these two definitions because of my experiences as a student. I've always enjoyed collaborating with my classmates. I think that learning and understanding different viewpoints on topics from your peers is essential to learning. Group discussions have always helped me understand topics easier. I've never been a fan of tests. As one of the teachers mentions in this video about blended learning, not every student learns the same way or at the same pace. Because of this I think that it's important to assess our students in different ways; and projects and presentations are great alternative methods to measuring student learning and understanding.  
I liked how blended learning was implemented into the instructional technology course. First we have our online blog posts, which are similar to the online discussion boards. We also do not meet for class every week, This is good because I think that there are some things that are better learned face to face in lectures and then there are some things that are just learned better by plunging into the topic and reflecting upon it. What I appreciated most about this course is the amount of time we have to complete assignments. As graduate students, we have busy lives. The extensive amount of time we have been given to complete our assignments throughout the course gives us the opportunity to work at a pace that we are comfortable with.        
Even though I support blended learning, there may not be some people who are comfortable with the idea. I think what stood out to me the most was Hawthorne's response to this in her presentation. She mentions that not only should blended learning benefit students, but it should also benefit teachers as well. If you're not comfortable with it, if you're not ready to change your teaching model or try out a new tool then you can't do it because you won't be successful.