The recent report, 2013-2014 Results—Personalized Learning Drives Student Achievement, summarizes some pretty extraordinary results highlighting the success of blended learning classrooms compared to non-blended classrooms. For those of you who do not know what blended learning is, here’s a brief overview.
What is Blended Learning?
Blended learning is a fairly new approach in education that ‘blends’ technology into the teaching and learning process. Combining personalized online learning with face-to-face classroom learning, blended learning allows students to learn at their own pace, at their own ability level and with focus towards what interests them most. We all know that our unique brains allow us to learn and excel at different rates—a fact that government mandated learning outcomes fail to account for. Thus, students and parents immediately fall in love with blended learning because students become more successful, confident and excited about learning when they are permitted to learn and achieve at their own pace—in areas that excite them most. Additional benefits of blended learning include instant feedback and grading, gamification and peer learning—see this article for more information on how they add to the blended learning experience.
To tangibly highlight the success of blended learning in K-12 education, Education Elements tracked their blended learning program with 30,000 students and 2,000 teachers from 13 grades across 100 different schools in the U.S. and found some pretty astonishing results.
Blended Learning Results
Compared to U.S. education achievement reports, the 30,000 students who used a blended learning model over the course of a year achieved 54% more in reading and 25% more in math. With blended learning, 25% more students hit their growth target and completed a surplus equal to 1.5 years of course content in a single year!
When comparing personal growth rates of students in blended learning programs to their previous year of studies in non-blended learning environments, improvement rates were equally impressive. Education Elements discovered that student reading comprehension growth surpassed the previous year’s non-blended learning approach: kindergartens’ gained 52% growth, 1st graders gained 69% growth and 2nd graders gained 23% growth! Math scores were equally impressive, see the image below for results.
Teachers were also unanimous on the positive impact of blended learning in the classroom. One teachers notes, "there is a visible level in excitement in my class". Here is what the majority of teachers agreed on:
- 76% agreed that blended learning accelerates learning for students,
- 77% agreed that students are more engaged, and
- 87% agreed that they are better able to differentiate learning experiences to meet student needs.
To incorporate blended learning into your classroom, a centralized learning management system (LMS) is first and foremost so that teacher efforts are not duplicated through the ability to easily access and share teaching resources. To learn more about the benefits of the world's leading LMS, Moodle, give us a call today.
For a more in-depth look at blended learning, watch our webinar, Top Moodle Plugins for Blended Learning Strategies!
