Professor Michael Barbour on effective blended learning

Blended learning describes the mix of online and face-to-face instruction.

Like many countries around the world, blended learning has played an essential role in the New Zealand education system in recent years.

Blended learning describes the mix of online and face-to-face instruction. It allows flexibility in how, where, and when students learn. It’s an approach that can be applied in any context and is especially useful in smaller communities with limited course offerings.

Professor Michael K. Barbour is familiar with such communities. Hailing from Newfoundland, a subpolar island on Canada’s Atlantic coast, he says the vast, remote region was an ideal place to learn how to teach in settings where traditional teaching methods can’t always be applied.

One of the world’s leading academics in K-12 blended learning (kindergarten to grade 12 or primary to secondary to us in New Zealand), Michael has a long association with Aotearoa New Zealand. Working with education kaimahi in New Zealand since 2005, he visited the Ministry of Education earlier this year to discuss his latest research.

Entry ticket to learning

Michael’s background, as well as over two decades researching online and blended learning, has led him to develop a series of best practices in the field. These include empathy, training, and commitment to equitable and flexible delivery.

In New Zealand, where rural internet connectivity is still a major issue undermining blended learning, Michael says schools first need to take steps to ensure all ākonga have uninterrupted access to schoolwork.

“Connectivity and bandwidth are just the entry ticket into the actual learning opportunity,” he says. “It’s kind of like watching a television programme on mute; you’re missing some of the elements. So no matter how well dialogue is written, if you can’t hear what they’re saying, you don’t get the full experience.”

Beyond connectivity, Michael says blended learning is most effective when teachers have a clear idea of the opportunities and drawbacks of each blended learning tool and have a road map for using such tools to achieve clear, consistent objectives.

To illustrate this Michael, previously a social studies teacher, imagines asking his class to discuss a topic from today’s newspaper. He plays out how this discussion might work in class or in an online forum involving written, more delayed responses. Both approaches, though involving the same topic, will likely produce totally different discussions.

“Depending on what my goal is, each of those two strategies have different affordances and limitations,” says Michael. “That’s the question we want to always be asking ourselves: ‘What does this particular tool allow me to do?’ And then, ‘What does it hinder me from doing?’”

Recognising different needs

Blended learning, though proven to enhance learning progress among some students, isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It requires careful thought about how online lessons, traditional in-class teaching, and other elements are mixed.

Michael says teachers must recognise their students’ needs and to what degree a blended approach will enhance their learning.

“Some students are going to do better in a flexible environment than others, and some are going to need more or less of that flexibility than others,” he says.

It’s important that educators recognise student needs and adapt their approach to blended learning accordingly, he adds, noting that many teachers struggle to do this because of a lack of training.

“We don’t teach teachers how to use technology effectively in their classroom. That’s one of the things that really does need to be addressed,” explains Michael.

Professor Michael Barbour

“It doesn’t matter how many tools we provide and how much technology we stuff into the classrooms. Teachers are probably going to use them in pedagogically unsound ways because they just don’t know any better.”

Getting results with effective training

Michael recalls visiting Masterton’s Chanel College in 2011 where he saw firsthand the results of effective training. A teacher he observed had taken just one course with Welcom, an e-learning community in the Wairarapa region.

“It made that teacher rethink how he provided all of his education,” says Michael.

The teacher arranged his class so that students from multiple year levels and subjects were in the same room together, learning separately from an array of teaching materials provided online through the school intranet.

Michael observed that when students had questions, the teacher was there to help, and that when whole groups were struggling with the same question, the teacher could deliver small group lessons.

“Instead of everybody having to take, for example, Year 8 social studies at the same time, the teacher was teaching students in Year 8 social studies in all five periods of the day.”

The flexible timetable enabled students to organise their day to achieve the tasks assigned to them in a way that best worked for them, and the teacher was available to support their learning throughout the day as and when needed.

By uploading learning tasks and resources to an online platform, students could also access learning materials outside of class time on school computers or their computers at home.

“That kind of flexibility really provides opportunities for students when they wouldn’t have had it otherwise.”

Michael’s tips for using AI

When discussing online teaching tools, it’s hard to avoid the topic of AI.

Blended learning requires careful thought about how online lessons, traditional in-class teaching, and other elements are mixed.

During Michael’s most recent visit to Aotearoa, he spoke to the Ministry of Education about AI. While not specifically researching AI in education, he acknowledges that the technology’s leaps in recent years will reshape online and blended schooling.

Michael says a key thing to keep in mind is that AI today is the worst it’s ever going to be.

“We’re in the 8-track days of music listening right now when it comes to AI,” he says. “So, the next question becomes, if that’s where we are in terms of the development of this tool, what should I be thinking about in terms of how I want to use it?”

Ministry of Education’s guidelines on AI acknowledge that as a learning tool AI technology presents a series of opportunities and risks. As the technology advances, teachers will need to become more AI literate.

For example, generative AI models such as ChatGPT can work as personal assistants and speed up various tasks, but they can also be inaccurate and threaten the privacy of students.

Michael is mostly interested in how teachers can use AI to enhance learning and save time.

“How can we use AI to do a lot of those administrative tasks, many of which take more time than what is necessary, so that then they can use that time to be better teachers?” asks Michael, explaining that an example of a time-saving administrative task AI can help with is writing letters home to parents.

“That’s something that would have taken a teacher a half hour to an hour to write and now, using AI and with revisions, it’s going to take them five minutes,” says Michael, who observed this in action while working with a virtual school in Australia.

“That’s 25-55 minutes now that they’ve got to provide more feedback on students’ assignments.”

Still, he urges caution around providing AI with student data. Data provided to applications such as ChatGPT is automatically added to a database and used to inform future answers from the AI.

Privacy concerns also arise when teachers use AI to mark assignments, essentially helping to train the AI on work that isn’t theirs to give away.

“You’re essentially giving away somebody else’s material,” says Michael, highlighting the importance of good research and communication in overcoming these ethical grey areas.

On top of understanding how their chosen AI tools operate, teachers should inform parents that they’re using these tools and provide them the option of opting out. This not only protects students’ privacy, but it also encourages parents themselves to understand the technology that’s rapidly shaping the world ākonga are growing up in.

See Ministry of Education guidance on generative AI(external link).