Disruptive Technologies and the Future of Online Blended Learning

MS MARYA AKHTAR (DIRECTOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND GLOBAL INITIATIVES) EXPLORES THE INCREASING IMPACT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ONLINE BLENDED LEARNING WITHIN EDUCATION. 

The first signs of development or disruption in education can be traced back to about 500 years ago when the role of the lecturer was defined from its source ‘lectura’, meaning ‘reading.’ As books were scarce and literacy rare, the lecturer could educate students by reading from a book, imparting education to small groups. Later, the advent of the printing press transformed the mechanics of education, and the sector evolved from ‘reading to’ to ‘disseminating of’ a wider set of knowledge on a much larger scale, and in a more organised manner. Up until the last century, the role of the educator was very much given; teach lessons, set assignments, test the students’ understanding and prepare them for formal exams. Calculators, overhead projectors, blogs and online textbooks all helped in enhancing the learning experience, rather than transforming it. Even the mass deployment of digital whiteboards and computers in schools did not truly transform teaching and learning or attainment levels to a great extent.

Perhaps the status quo would have remained, had it not been for the rise of laptops, tablets, smartphones and Wi-Fi. Although the growth in mobile technology adversely affected the Personal Computers industry, it facilitated disruption in nearly every business sector; music, banking, law, cars, electronics, postal services, television, energy supply, food delivery and higher education all started coming up with better products, or a more positive experiences for their customers. This pattern was sector agnostic and very soon the world started coining and adapting to neologisms linked to use of disruptive technology; FinTech, MedTech, RegTech, PropTech, InsureTech, BioTech, FoodTech and EdTech to name a few. The transformation witnessed by these industries supported the term coined by Professor Clayton M. Christensen of Harvard Business School – ‘Disruptive Innovation’.

Disruptive innovations fundamentally transform a sector by replacing expensive, complicated, and inaccessible products or services with much less expensive, simpler, and more convenient alternatives (Staker 2011).

Over the last decade, digitisation of teaching and learning to suit the needs of Gen Z students, and exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a similar disruption in the education sector, especially at the K-12 level. Online learning and blended learning not only stepped in but also started to take root, and it is with keen interest that analysts watch this space.

Blended learning or blended synchronous learning or hybrid learning is a formal education program in which students learn:

• partly through online platforms, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.
• At least in part, in a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home.
• and, the student’s learning path, within a course, is connected to provide an integrated learning experience.

Recent definitions of blended learning stress that 30% to 50% of the course material should be delivered through online activities, while 50% to 70% of the teaching should happen face to face (Terry, Zafonte, Elliott 2018). The four popular models of blended learning are (Horn & Staker 2017):

The Rotation Model – students rotate between different ways of learning – online learning, group work, individual tutoring, and whole class instruction. They rotate on a fixed schedule between learning online in a one-to-one, self-paced environment and sitting in a classroom with a traditional face-to-face teacher.

The Flex Model – students follow curricula online at their own pace. Teachers and assistants support and conduct small group work, projects, and individual exercises; they offer support on a flexible and adaptive basis through in-person tutoring sessions and small group sessions.

The Self-Blend Model – a student chooses to take one or several courses online, in addition to other traditional courses they attend. Schools offer a la carte online courses to individual students facilitating self-blending. The Enriched-Virtual Model – a combination of remote online learning and attending lessons on campus.

BLENDED LEARNING AT HIGHER EDUCATION LEVEL

Blended Learning, in its most recent manifestations, is gradually changing the way universities think about education. EdTech was already providing solutions that had the potential to revolutionise tertiary education in the form of VLEs, MOOCs, LMS etc. These very much changed the role of the lecturer yet again. ‘Lecture capture,’ saw recorded lectures streamed, allowing universities to re-evaluate the effectiveness of live lectures and lecturers. ‘Flipped learning’ was used where instead of a lecturer teaching and then setting students some work, saw the student watching a pre-recorded video of the lecture through the VLE or LMS. The lecturer then assessed, in class, how well the students have understood the subject. Overall, analysis showed the positive impact of using prerecorded video lectures depended on good planning, and balanced integration of asynchronous and synchronous components. Universities like Columbia, Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard and Stanford, have taken this flipped learning one stage further. Smaller colleges, who were struggling to recruit the best teaching staff, could buy small private online courses (SPOCs) from such leading universities, delivered on LMS (Learning Management systems) provided and maintained by EdTech start-ups. The London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) went on to putting its full MBA course online, so that potential students could see the quality of the course and learn at their own pace.

BLENDED LEARNING AT K-12 LEVEL

At the K-12 stage, it started small in the US first, in 2000, roughly 45,000 K–12 students took an online course (Christensen 2008). It had initially something to do with the rising culture of home schooling in America, which was an estimated 3.7 million during the 2020—21 school year. Moreover, the rise of EdTech start-ups in the last decade, followed by school closures brought about by COVID-19 speeded this process up. Pre-COVID 19, the more established online schools can be categorised under:

Premium providers – Stanford online High School that started in 2006 and operated by Stanford University with 800+ students enrolled in grades 7 – 12 across 30+ countries. Avenues, The World School, a highly selective school founded in 2010 with 400 annual students.

Affordable providers – Curro Online founded in 2019 offering IB Curriculum for grades 4-10 with 400 students in that year. Connexions Academy established in 2001 developed by Pearson Education offering summer camps and career education with 70k+ enrolled.

Special Educational Needs providers – Personalised 1:1 schooling for grades 6 – 12 established in 1989 with less than 100 students enrolled annually. Pamoja provided flexible online courses for different international curricula with 90+ subjects on offer, established in 2009 and 5000+ annual registrations.

Prior to COVID-19, there was already high growth and adoption in education technology, with global EdTech investments reaching $18.66 in billion in 2019 and the overall market for online education projected to reach $350 billion by 2025. There was a significant surge in the use of Language Apps, Virtual Tutoring and VideoConferencing tools, and online learning platforms. Post COVID-19, in response to the surge in demand, many online learning platforms like BYJU’s and Tencent started offering free access to their services. Since announcing free live classes on its Think and Learn app, BYJU’s has seen a 200% increase in the number of new students using its product. Tencent classroom, meanwhile, has been used extensively since mid February after the Chinese government instructed full-time students to resume their studies resulting in the largest “online movement” in the history of education with approximately 730,000 or 81% of K-12 students, attending classes via the Tencent K-12 Online School in Wuhan. In the UK, online schools like Harrow Online, King’s College Online, Minerva’s Virtual Academy, Cambridge Home School and Wolsey Hall Oxford all stated are leading the way in online education at K12 level.

LEADING EDTECH COUNTRIES AND COMPANIES

EdTech start-ups are on the rise all over the world, with the majority of companies located in the United States, which accounts for 1,385 or 43% of all EdTech company headquarters. The country’s population size, large economy, and tech and innovation hubs, such as Silicon Valley, are likely to contribute to its success. The remaining countries with the most EdTech start-ups include India (327), Brazil (275) and the United Kingdom (245), with China (101) wrapping up the top 5 list.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF ONLINE BLENDED LEARNING

With the mushrooming of EdTech tools like Quizlet, Flipgrid, Edpuzzle, Spiral and Miro, and LMS platforms like Canvas, TalentLMS and Schoology which are supported by communication platforms like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom, it will not be long when most schools will start offering some form of blended online education to their students. Whilst some believe that this unplanned rapid move since 2020, especially in the K-12 sector, with insufficient planning, training and bandwidth might result in a poor user experience, others remain more optimistic, believing that a new sustainable hybrid model is round the corner yielding significant benefits. Many top universities have already made a successful transition, for example, Imperial College’s new course on ‘Science of Coronavirus’ launched in 2020 is the most enrolled class, and Zhejiang University managed to get more than 5,000 courses online in just two weeks into the COVID-19 transition using “DingTalk ZJU”.

Studies have shown that children extensively use their senses to learn, making learning fun and effective through use of technology is crucial, according to BYJU’s Mrinal Mohit. “Over a period, we have observed that clever integration of games has demonstrated higher engagement and increased motivation towards learning especially among younger students, making them truly fall in love with learning”, he says. There are, however, many challenges to overcome – students without reliable internet would struggle to be a part of this digital revolution and gaps are being seen across countries and between household income brackets. Whilst there is evidence that learning online can be more effective mostly because e-learning requires 40 – 60% less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting (re-reading, accelerating, choosing, skipping), the effectiveness does vary between age groups, with a more structured environment required for the very young learners. Lastly, limited budgets at K-12 sector and lack of endowments, like large universities have, might slow down this process or stop organisations from taking off.

The Education industry is part of a complex service sector in which quality is not as easy to define, instead of measuring success in terms of massification and revenue generation, we will need reliable data on the effectiveness of niche products that provide specialised, career-enabling and life-enabling education. As online blended learning continues to grow in the coming years, adequate data analysis and research will provide more evidence to school leaders and educators, when it comes to planning programmes for younger learners. The use of AR/VR in teaching and learning is also an area needing further research. Will K-12 be the next sector to adopt blended learning on a larger scale like the universities have, especially in the UK, is something we will be following with keen interest.

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The Enquiry is an online staff journal dedicated to reflections on educational research, and teaching and learning at Downe House School.

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