The Future of Online and Blended Learning

The vision for the future of online and blended learning looks bright, however, I’m an early adopter according to the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, which means it doesn’t take much for me to embrace technological advancements (2022). Before we can discuss the future, I would like to dive into the past and the present. I have the unique opportunity of presenting a few perspectives of someone who obtained continuing education online, teaches K12 online, a career changer from the competitive financial industry, and a parent of learners who are online during high school and college. Through my lenses, I am going to be sharing the opportunities and challenges that I see while integrating my studies from the Learning Design Master's Program at ASU. These perspectives and experiences will help me in leading the development of online and blended learning as I am empathetic to most of the target audiences and cognizant of the current technology climate.

As a recipient of both my bachelor's and master's degrees in an online learning environment I know that it has changed and become what we desired from ten years ago. I started my online learning journey in 2007 with my bachelor's degree, some may say I am emerging technology as it took me a while. The poor experiences I had and thinking about ways to solve those issues have been addressed like empathy and the feeling of isolation. I feel more motivated today as I did then because the online environment has pivoted adopting learning models, strategies, and relevant technology.  The Community of Inquiry gives a sense of presence and belonging in an online community. The Multimedia Principles make learning materials more engaging, and emerging technologies create solutions for the future. With those foundations in play, it will cover the basis for motivation, retention, and self-regulated learning among learners.

As an online middle school math teacher, I can see the rapid growth of online and blended learning in K12. There are schools who struggle with filling teacher positions and started recruiting online teachers as teacher of record for onsite classrooms. I can remember being an in-classroom teacher not even imagining how one teaches K12 students online with all the issues we deal with in-person. In my organization an increase in enrollment shows that more and more families are willing to embrace online learning versus how they felt about it during the emergency teaching during the pandemic. Introducing online and blended learning as early as K-12 prepares students for the same opportunities into their adulthood. The models that are being used for online learning promote the feelings of how a traditional classroom used to make us feel and make us think and reflect on the best strategies to implement. Even when I worked in the classroom, I used blended learning strategies. The school districts did not pressure teachers on the amount of technology used in their classroom only that it was present. There is a huge difference in using technology tools and actually making sure that it becomes an instructional tool. I prefer online teaching as it allows me to have access to immediate feedback, differentiation and accessibility tools and students are very engaged in that technology is very familiar to them.

As a career changer, the perspective that I brought into a classroom was knowing the importance of digital literacy in order to succeed in the workforce and in our society. Fortunately, students were already embracing technology tools due to cell phone usage, social media, and online gaming. I was known as the “cool teacher” because I taught based on some of the main ideas of Community of Inquiry highlighting relevancy and building relationships, which is the same way I currently teach online. The master’s program has also helped me in understanding how to teach adults.

My own college students at home take advantage of the online learning environment so that they are able to balance working and finishing their education. The main struggle with them is time management so integrating time management as one of the assignments in a program will prove helpful as it did for me. Two of them actually started the traditional college path of staying on campus and found it didn’t work for them. Instead of dropping out, they realized that online schooling was going to be the best option in order to balance their stress load.

I see that society is opening up towards online and blended learning as we evolve into the digital world, however, we also have to create risk management plans. As on online teacher, I am very familiar to internet and power outages and technology tool fails. In cases like natural resources, will it meet the demands of the energy and products it takes to be able to power up online and blended learning at such a large scale. Also, the security and privacy breaches, that continue to increase and could leave companies in shambles. These are issues that need to be addressed and find balance. We need to make sure that we set backup plans and do not forget the traditional ways of doing things offline.

In ten years, we will have already created online and blended learning as the norm, K12 is preparing students for the online environment. In continuing education, it will open up case studies to provide solutions for the list of ethical issues emerging and skills needed in order to thrive in the digital world. Assignments will be problem-based learning and the United States, specifically ASU, will be the model for online and blended learning worldwide to support remote areas with less resources. As we teach learners to collaborate among themselves, we can increase perspectives and worldviews, finding solutions for what is ahead. I am excited to be a part of this transformation and lead future leaders into the responsible use of technology and living in the digital age while not forgetting how we got there.

Reference

Diffusion of Innovation Theory. (2022). Retrieved from https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/sb/behavioralchangetheories/behavioralchangetheories4.html

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