Why blended learning is one of the 12 best ways to help those most in need

Key points:

This post on blended learning originally appeared on the Christensen Institute blog and is republished here with permission.

Educational technology (edtech) has long faced skepticism, and rightly so. For many people during COVID, online remote learning was an unmitigated disaster. Meanwhile, multiple studies confirm what parents and teachers already know: one-laptop-per-child policies have zero effects on academic performance, or even negative effects. And what the data doesn't say, our hearts say: in developed countries, our children need more sunlight and less screen time.

But it would be a mistake to give up now on the potential of online learning to improve children's living standards. disruptive class, co-authored by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis Johnson in 2008, predicted that online learning will be a powerful facilitator of advances in education. The follow-up book Mixed, which I co-authored with Horn in 2014, said that much of this benefit will arise from blended learning, that is, online learning as part of in-person education. A decade later, this view is truer than ever, despite the mess that the broader “edtech” category has created.

In fact, in his 2023 book The best firstEconomist Bjorn Lomborg mentions an application of blended learning among the 12 more efficient solutions to “dramatically improve the lives of people living in the poorest half of the world.” (He uses the term “tablet learning,” but the practice he describes fits within the Christensen Institute's definition of blended learning.) Lomborg's team at the Copenhagen Consensus Center selected the 12 solutions as those with the greatest benefit (both in lives saved and dollars) at the lowest cost. Other solutions on his list include tuberculosis treatment, agricultural research and development, mosquito nets to prevent malaria and eight others. Together, the 12 solutions save 4.2 million lives a year, they estimate.

When I discovered Lomborg's list, I voraciously turned to the chapter on education to see which version of blended learning he found so compelling. I wasn't surprised to see that your favorite solution is simply this:

Use blended learning to teach at the right level

Offer students a device with adaptive software in their native language that quickly assesses the student's level and then begins teaching at the correct level.

That's all. For about an hour a day.

The rest of the day can remain the same, with students seated for traditional instruction. But that one hour in which students learn at the appropriate level provides extraordinary benefits. On average, when students experience this treatment for a yearThey learn as much as they normally would have in almost three years.

Why it works

The world has made progress in enrolling students in school. Now the job is to ensure that, in fact, learn while I was at school. In too many cases, they don't. As a result, “nearly 80 percent of students (one-third of a billion) do not even achieve minimum skills” (Lomborg, 2023). Therefore, the solution that Lomborg describes is a fundamental advance.

The logic is simple. Most schools group students by age. Students of the same age are assumed to have achieved approximately the same level of learning.

But this assumption is extremely false. For example, among 619 students in a New Delhi sample, the average student was several grades behind grade-appropriate standards, and the gap worsened with age. The blue line in the graph below from the Study on disruptive education by Karthik Muralidharan, Abhijeet Singh, and Alejandro J. Ganimian shows where students would be if they were at grade level. The scatter plot shows the actual academic achievement of each student.

Although this solution can be achieved without devices, a computer-based approach allows for simple translation in multiple languages, easy updates, and delivery through an engaging user experience. (The low-tech alternative is to have students of different ages move into multiple classrooms to learn at the correct level for an hour. While still an effective option, the drawbacks are that this method can require more teachers and be embarrassing for students. students who have to join younger classes.)

Of course, using computers to teach at the appropriate level costs money. However, this solution does not require a computer for each student; instead, schools can have multiple students go through the same device each day. Lomborg's cost/benefit calculation also takes into account other costs, such as installing solar panels in classes without electricity to charge devices and training teachers how to manage the devices, and still comes up with a benefit-cost ratio of 65. :1, or $1,978 benefit per student per year for every $30.56 investment.

According to Lomborg, “education is possibly the most important factor in determining whether a nation is rich or poor.” Educational practice at the Christensen Institute has studied blended learning for years. Lomborg's research helps renew the case for intelligently implementing blended learning to complement the student experience.

But perhaps we have not made the case strongly enough. This solution is not only an idea supported by theory, but is probably one of the most important priorities our world can promote to alleviate poverty and give all children the opportunity to have a decent quality and length of life.