Blended or flipped? Speaking the language of online learning
This is one of a series of posts aimed at teachers, and any others, who are interested in learning design.
When I transitioned from high school teaching to University learning design, there were a few pieces of terminology that were new to me. They were not words used when I did my first degree in the early 2000s, nor when I taught at the University ten years ago. The new terminology was used to accomodate online learning, something that COVID had brought to the forefront.
By online learning I don’t mean purely online courses, rather any type of learning activity conducted online. Ten years ago in a standard University course this might have meant downloadable readings and a discussion forum. Now a tremendous amount of activities are conducted online: lectures, tutorials, quizzes, assessments, group work, and so on. So how does this new terminology fit in? Firstly, we can think of synchronous vs asynchronous learning, then move onto the concept of blended learning and importantly, how it differs from flipped learning, a concept that is somewhat popular in high schools. Based on my own experiences and observations, blended learning is a more powerful and useful model than flipped.
First up, synchronous learning is any learning that is done where the teacher and students are interacting at the same time (i.e., in sync). Physically this means all in the same room together, online this means being in a Zoom/Teams call together and interacting in real time.
In a school setting, you’d refer to this as ‘face to face’ teaching time. As a side note, teachers' workloads in both secondary and tertiary are often defined by their ‘face to face’ time with students (i.e. minutes spent on synchronous delivery).
Of course, this leads to asynchronous learning being the opposite: learning that is done out of sync. Traditionally this might include completing readings and working on assignments. In online education this might include posting on discussion forums, completing quizzes and using digital interactives.
In a school setting this is, essentially, what you’d call homework. Note that teachers are still involved in asynchronous learning. For example, teachers may need to respond to forum posts, write the quizzes and interactive activities, and check that students have completed them. So, there is significant teacher skill and effort required for asynchronous learning too.
Finally, we come to our definition for blended learning: a mixture of digital and face to face learning (possibly both synchronous and asynchronous!). Blended learning can include completing a variety of online activities before, during and after a face-to-face session.
A week of blended learning could look like this: students watch a thought-provoking YouTube video to prime them for attending an interactive lecture where they are introduced to new material. Then they complete an online quiz to check their knowledge of the lecture, and read an article in preparation for a tutorial. The tutorial includes in-depth discussion of the content, and afterwards they post a reflection on a discussion board and work on an assignment. The online and face-to-face parts blend together - they are not separate entities.
Importantly, blended learning is not the same thing as ‘flipped’ learning. Flipped learning is a structured approach where students pre-learn new material before a lesson (usually via online videos), then practice applying their knowledge in the lesson itself.
From my own experience, blended learning is a better approach than flipped. For two reasons.
In a typical flipped learning model, students learn new concepts out of class by watching videos or by completing other activities. I don’t think this is ideal. When learning a new concept, cognitive load is high, and teachers can manage this by monitoring student understanding (via questioning) and responding accordingly. For these reasons, I’m of the view that brand new material is best learnt synchronously.
Yes, there is an argument to be made that students can rewatch a video if they haven’t understood it. But does this really compare to two-way interaction with a teacher who knows their stuff and can explain things in various ways?When I’ve tried to run a pure flipped learning approach (in at least two classes), simply not enough students complete the asynchronous pre-learning before class. This means you can’t spend class time delving into more complex applications, because a significant portion of the class are still catching up. This can be an issue in a blended context as well, but if new concepts are introduced in class you can still ensure that most of the students are on the same page.
So, there we have it. Three (possibly) new terms for understanding online learning: synchronous, asynchronous, and blended. While these are more commonly used in tertiary education, the ideas behind these are just as applicable for teachers of all year levels.