Blended learning and the new norm...

This struck me this week.  "Students are coming more and more to their on-line content in more frequent and shorter bursts and usually with their phone or other mobile device, think notebook." 

I have been in a couple "blended learning" conversations recently too.  Blended learning = a blend of classroom and on-line instruction.  Somewhere between old school brick and mortar and new school exclusively on - line.  Get it?  Got it? Good.

Let me say this again.  More and more, people are rendering the content of their on-line learning in shorter, quicker bites, and typically from a mobile device.

Old school model

student logs into on-line course for a 60 minute session, using a laptop, two or three times a week.

New school model

student logs into on-line course about 10 times a week for about 15 minutes at a time using their phone.

You get the picture.  This matters because people putting the content together need to be aware and make their content compatible with the new school model.  I just accessed one of my moodle sites that is set up with the my moodle mobile theme.  I accessed the site and a course from my phone app and was able to read course content and go to links pretty easy, I was a little surprised.

More and more blended learning from our 25 school districts in NYS.  No exact numbers, but I can simply see by looking in my little corner of the on-line esphere, over the past 5 years, more courses, more students, more visits is simply true.   In a number of my moodle sites.

I have not had a lot of discussion about mobile devices with people/customers, but definatly more content/courses being put on-line in a blended environment.

Some schools/teachers start slow.  They treat moodle as a repository for content in their traditional course.  Fine, its a start.  The longer they use the moodle, the more comfort the teachers/school admins. gain, the more traditional courses start to have an on-line component.  Becoming a "blended model".  A couple of our moodle instances offer an exclusively on line course.  Or, at least, mostly.  I really do not know if some of the courses have a traditional classroom where they meet weekly.

A couple of our moodle sites offer on-line courses that are much more than repositories for a traditional course.  They utilize the many interactive activities that moodle offers.  Of course the big three are

1. Quizzes
2. Forums
3. Assignments

Some of the courses also use wikis and a few other Constructivist type activities.

Those are the phases then that i see districts go through
traditional
traditional - with on-line suppliment (blended)
traditional - with on-line suppliment and Constructivist activities
On-line using Constructivist activities and traditional meeting, but less classroom time
Exclusively on-line with Constructivist activity