Blended Learning Is The Future: Educative & Co-curricular

The entire world is facing a completely untypical plight because of the existing pandemic. The education sector as a prominent social institution has also been drastically affected. More than 1.5 billion students and youth all around the globe have been affected by school and university closures.

Digital education now has become a need of the hour as it provides both teachers and students new opportunities to teach and learn thereby ensuring greater participation in the overall learning process. This unseen situation has brought up various questions to the minds of many. Once COVID-19 passes, will institutes across the globe reinstate and reopen to resume classes as before, or will the model of education be changed forever? Will e-learning or digital education take over traditional face to face learning? These questions are yet to be answered. 

This is where the theory of blended learning comes into the picture. Blended learning could be stated as an amalgamation of in-person lessons and distance learning, and is one of the many proposed models for the future of the technology-assisted classroom. Blended learning has several benefits: 

A) Increased Academic Learning Time – No travel time required to a Video Room, all classes today are equipped with smart boards and audio systems connected to the internet. It opens up a world for the student without having to move from their seat. The order of content delivery is timed and formative assessments can also be immediately done to measure the learning outcome. The learning time is therefore maximized. 

B) A Zealous and Energetic Teacher and Audio Visual Led Content Available to Revisit – Teaching being a busy profession where one deals with several questions from different students at the same time, it can become difficult for the teacher to look into the query right away. Students have all sorts of doubts from the class they may have attended and would need an explanation again and so a pre-recorded video saved online is always resplendent as it will help the student to replay and understand better. 

C) Flipped Classroom Means Easy Access – One doesn't even need to be in a classroom anymore to learn. They could learn with online content even without having to move out of the home. Even while in a classroom, one can do what was once considered as HW, as a quick online assessment. 

The above is not just true for academics but also for the right brain-stimulating activities too. Let’s take the creative arts, the performing arts for example. With the increased access to a digital and online portal, there is less “re-inventing of the wheel,” and more of “pushing the bar” to scale to newer levels of excellence. 

Some ways the activities can be made fun and also supportive:  

Repertoires – A vast and exciting repertoire with embedded theory to learn ably aided with interesting and interactive videos.  

Advantages: 

1. Getting maximum Engagement from students 

2. Consistency of Positive Energy maintained across the day, week, month and year 

1. Formative Assessment of Students 

2. Monthly Reports from the institute – Reporting and Analytics of students 

Also giving performance opportunities online through Video Collaboration which showcase our students across our online platforms and social media, bringing glamour and celebrity quotient to the students.  

Dharini Upadhyaya

Guest Author Co- CEO and Co- Founder, Furtados School of Music