Students’ accountability
One of the things that the “blended-learning” approaches promote is students’ accountability, in some way.
I mean, students are given much more responsibility on what they learn, the pace they want to learn, and how to deal with the materials that the teacher provides to be prepared for the in-class lessons.
Students’ response
A few of my students recently “complained” about the fact that they wanted “more paper”. They need to feel attached to the method they are used to. And of course I can (and I did, and I will) provide more paper if needed.
However, for some reason, after analyzing their complain, giving more paper, and seeing the reaction and the way they complete the paper and pencil assignments, I realized that having more responsibility is sometimes frightening. The problem is not having less or more paper.
My analysis of this problem
The problem is that now, with this method, I, as a student, feel that learning is MY responsibility. And we, as students, sometimes, do not want to assume that this is the only way real learning happens.
What other students are showing
Most of the students, however, seem to appreciate this approach. It allows them to work at their own pace, choose the activities they want to use or, at least, choose when they want to use them, and gives more time to work on “interesting things” when there are some concepts you already know and do not need to listen to once again.
I will make them take a short survey to find out more about their feelings and how they think we can improve this method together. After all, it all is about students’ voice and choice whenever possible.
