Ensure Blended Learning is a Key Part of Online Learning
As districts across the state planned and prepared for the 2020–21 school year, they considered a multitude of factors that made reopening in the fall significantly more difficult due to the spread of COVID-19. The most important decision districts faced — yet, perhaps the most challenging — was how to create consistent, quality, and equitable instructional opportunities for students, on top of making up missed instruction or academic losses from the 2019–20 school year.
Blended Learning is
Personalized
Teachers work one-on-one with students to address the individual needs, skills, and interests of each learner.
Blended Learning is
Data-Driven
Teachers use classroom technology and data to better understand each student’s individual learning level and help guide content and activities that challenge them at their appropriate pace.
Blended Learning is
Encourages Student Ownership
Students are empowered and responsible for doing the thinking in the classroom and owning the process of learning — acting on their understanding of where they are in the learning journey.
As many districts started to consider at-home remote learning, socially-distanced schools, or hybrid models for the fall, our schools had the opportunity to use the 2020–21 school year as a way to intentionally integrate technology into their regular instruction by utilizing principles of blended learning.
How is Blended Learning Transforming Teaching and Learning in Texas?
The Raise Your Hand Texas Raising Blended Learners program impacts tens of thousands of students and hundreds of teachers in diverse districts across the state. Raising Blended Learners supports student academic growth by integrating instructional strategies that center students in their learning. Technology alone cannot personalize learning for students. The key to the success of these programs has been high-quality professional development around how to strategically use technology and data to improve classroom instruction. Feedback from educators who participated in the first few years of the program suggests that blended learning strategies could positively influence the way schools educate our students this school year. Teacher surveys from the past three years of Raising Blended Learners indicate that blended learning has positive impacts on student engagement, individualized instruction, relationships, and teachers’ own knowledge and teaching ability — all of which are essential elements of the hybrid learning environments created by COVID-19.
Raising Blended Learners teachers say their students have the skills needed to learn effectively in a blended learning context.
Raising Blended Learners teachers feel better prepared to meet the learning needs of their students in a blended learning context.
Source: Raising Blended Learners Teacher Survey
Policy Recommendations
- Focus state policies on addressing professional development for online, hybrid, and in-person teaching necessary as a result of COVID-19.
- Consider additional investments in blended learning programs.
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