Media

20
Jan 2021

The Hybrid Learning Insanity

In the latest episode of Class Disrupted with Diane Tavenner, I couldn’t hold back on my view that there’s a version of hybrid learning in both K12 and higher education. That’s insane for students & teachers.

In this version of hybrid learning, schools are basically asking teachers to teach SIMULTANEOUSLY both the students in-person and the students who are at home.

3 big reasons why this is nuts.

1) Creates a lot more work for the teacher that’s very unnatural. Teachers already are balancing enough. We should be simplifying their lives, not complicating them.

2) For K12 students who are unable to enroll in-person, they’re fully virtual, learning in this way is insensitive. It basically says, “Here are your friends in-person, but you’re not here. See what you’re missing?” From a social and emotional perspective, that’s awful.

It creates a VERY passive learning experience, which we know from the research is awful for learning compared to active learning.

I’m shocked I’ve heard some in higher education say this might be the future of learning. The experiences I’ve seen go completely against the research.

In the same episode, Diane & I also talk about the thousands of experiments in education happening around the country (and world) right now and how we might approach those from a design-thinking mindset to learn about how to better students, not just now, but when things return.

Listen to the episode below…

 

1 comment

Leslie DeStefano

Thank you for the discussion. Once again, we are unwilling to put the resources behind doing “school” well. Probably because it involves shortchanging and exploiting the same populations we traditionally do.
Favorite takeaway–embrace nuance/avoid oversimplification

Leave a reply