Will a Hybrid Remote Learning/Classroom Approach Become the Norm?
The approach to school and education saw a dramatic change over the last 12 months, as a result of the pandemic, with remote learning and home-schooling very much becoming the norm during the coronavirus crisis and lockdown.
While this has no doubt been incredibly difficult and challenging for many families, the suggestion is now being made that the pandemic could, in fact, lead to a potentially irreversible acceleration of the digitalisation of education.
Writing for Open Access Government, Dr Paul Armstrong from the University of Manchester’s Manchester Institute for Education, put forward the idea that remote learning could be a beneficial teaching approach, especially when combined with a traditional classroom education.
This hybrid approach, he claims, would help take advantage of the fact that teachers have now had a “crash course” in teaching remotely, whilst also creating a “sense of the rhythm and form of keeping students engaged”.
Other benefits potentially include allowing students to work at their own pace where required and allowing teachers to engage with student home environments more directly, “including more open communication with parents and better analysis of the resources and supports that some children, particularly those from less affluent households, may need”, he went on to say.
Different learning environments could include the likes of supervised online learning, lectures, in-person teaching, discussion groups etc. For teachers too, benefits could include being able to tweak different lessons for various classes, the ability to conduct easier data analysis of learning success, better student engagement and the potential for automated marking and grading.
Nevertheless, there is one barrier to the success of this learning model, and that’s access to the necessary technological infrastructure. There are currently thousands of disadvantaged children who still lack access to the internet, which could make this model less feasible or too expensive to implement fully.
Dr Armstrong observed, that it would only be possible to put a greater emphasis on blended learning if both the state and schools were to address Britain’s existing digital divide.
Therefore, it still very much remains to be seen, if hybrid remote learning/classroom approaches will in fact become the norm. However, it definitely seems to be a distinct possibility at this moment in time.
Tag:home-schooling