With the rise of online learning in schools—what educators call “blended learning”—what teachers do daily is changing in big and small ways.

A central question is what will teaching look like in the future, as online learning can increasingly help students learn knowledge personalized to their specific learning need. Recent research even suggeststhat learning from an online video—a modality that is not terribly active—may be superior for engagement and retention than learning from a live lecture.

In our most recent book, Blended: The Workbook, Heather Staker and I concluded that teachers will remain critical to the success of learning environments in the future, but that their jobs will shift in profound ways.

Enter a new research paper titled “Innovative Staffing to Personalize Learning: How new teaching roles and blended learning help students succeed” from Public Impact and the Clayton Christensen Institute.