Granting Students Permission to Learn through Blended Courses

"If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are that it will already be too late."

This Clayton Christensen quote became my motto last spring. Heading into last summer, I knew that fully immersing myself in transforming instruction for my Career Development course would pay off in September. Luckily, the course was entering a revision stage in the curriculum process during which myself and another Career Development teacher were tasked with finding open educational resources and digitizing them. This deep dive into the course helped me to redesign the instructional delivery methods. 

Career Development is THE course that all adults wish they had in high school, whereas students often want nothing more than to be in another elective -- one that they have chosen. At my school, Career Development is a graduation requirement. Given this, it was a great decision to offer it to students in a new mode: blended. 

In past semesters, I spent the first weeks marketing the course's importance to the students. Its content is not about mastery of skills or memorization of facts, but rather discovery of self. There are no tests or quizzes. The class is built upon the Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Career Education and Work, and in alignment with the Chapter 339 Mandate. For many students, this class is the first time that they are asked to self-assess, self-reflect, and plan.

Over the summer, I needed to spend hours upon hours preparing for this new format. My goal was to get student buy-in from the first day of school in September. I planned to address the instructional design of the course and make a few strategic moves that would transform the course content and student experience. In order to achieve my goal, I recreated course structures that focused upon:
1. revamping the course syllabus
2. granting permission to students to learn
3. maintain accountability of student and teacher.

Revamping the Course Syllabus

I knew that the roll-out of this innovative learning method at the secondary level needed to be strategic. Over the summer, I took several two week courses through Global Online Academy, which my school district has used as a professional learning partner over the past 18 months.

During the Modern Learning Lab course, I collaborated with another colleague to revamp the course syllabus for our respective classes. She does not teach Career Development. We evaluated at our courses through the elements of modern learning: time/schedule, place/space, student-centered, assessment, relevancy, and collaboration.

After working together to brainstorm how our classes would transform through these lenses, I transferred that work into a new course syllabus. Later, I revised this syllabus to meet the needs of my face-to-face learners. Guess what? I didn't need to make many changes! Why? These elements demonstrate the idea that learning is not only relegated to the brick and mortar setting. Conversely, students should not have to enroll in an online or blended course to experience these positive disruptions in education.

Learning happens wherever and whenever the student wants it to happen.

Pause. Reread that last sentence. It is a humbling one. No matter the course format in which a student enrolls, the learning occurs whenever and wherever a students wants. This ideology even applies in a brick and mortar setting...

I'll touch more on that in a future blog post.

Granting Permission

In order to be prepared for whatever I was about to embark upon in September, I designed and front-loaded most of the course materials in July and August. Then, I created a day-by-day course calendar. Front-loading the course content served as a symbolic transfer of responsibility and accountability from me to the students. With this small gesture, I was hopeful that students who wanted to work ahead and in their own time and space had the official go-ahead. I didn't expect all 75 students to take this permission and run, but those who wanted to tread in unfamiliar waters were allowed to do so.

While I always dream of students demonstrating that same initiative in a face-to-face class, I find it equally as hard to grant that same level of permission to them. Students expect to have content delivered to them in a classroom setting sometime between 7:30 am and 3:00 pm. They expect to be assessed by the teacher. They expect to be told to be quiet during class. For many, that is the only mode of education and learning that they know.

Maintaining Accountability

At my school, 74% is a a key number in the gradebook. If a student has a 74% or lower, the teacher is to "block" the student into their study hall. When attempting to brainstorm natural consequences for students in blended courses, my colleague and I immediately went to this number.

Enjoying a flex day is a privilege for students, so if their grade is 74% or lower in the official gradebook, then it would appropriate to require their physical presence in the classroom during scheduled flex days. In order to best monitor student grades, I decided that I needed to maintain a regimented schedule of updating grades. I decided to require myself to update grades once a week (typically sometime between Monday and Wednesday) and notify the students, via our learning management system. In turn, they must check to their grades. If needed, I have sent personal emails as a notification of their current grade.


How are you revamping courses, granting permission, and maintaining accountability in your classrooms, whether they are online, blended, or face-to-face?

Introduction to Launching Blended Courses at the High School Level

Over the past year, I have had at least 365 moments that have made me stop, cold, in my tracks. As an educator, I have the unique opportunity to work with young people who are in the midst of navigating the world, so I have many of these life-changing moments.

This past year has been different. Very different. These moments have been filled with questions, "How did I get here? How did WE get here?" They have been the big mind-blowing moments that have stretched my thinking (not to mention my energy and focus). In my teaching career, I have not been challenged, pedagogically, as much as I have been during this past year. Suddenly, I feel like I have been tossed back into the ranks of the new teachers. There have been days that I felt like I was just simply trying to tread the water.

The early 21st century will be remembered as responsible for true disruption in the educational space. It is this moment that we, the educators, are forging into new waters. I am not overwhelmed by this thought, but rather empowered that each of us can make a true change.

About a year ago, I was informed that I would have the opportunity to launch blended sections for one of the electives that I teach. I immediately started my own research (I'll share some of that later!).

Actually, my research started years ago. I did not know why I was researching, but I knew that I needed to learn about how and why the digital age would change the classroom. Ever since computers and the internet became accessible to students, we feared that educators would be deemed unnecessary.

The formal shifts that teachers are now being asked to make, and the transformation of the student learning experience should not be unexpected by anyone. After spending years casually reading about technology integration into the classroom, I came to the conclusion that teachers will never be useless. In fact, I would now argue that blending learning empowers the teacher (and her adaptable abilities) and makes her more relevant than ever before.

During my fact gathering stage a few years back, I relied upon the work of Christensen Institute and The Learning Accelerator to create my formal schema. The Christensen Institute is a fascinating entity, because its focus is disruptive innovation, not just within the educational sphere. The Learning Accelerator works with districts to implement blended learning strategies. Both organizations, though, define blended learning in a similar manner:

Christensen Institute:
The definition of blended learning is a formal education program in which a student learns:

• at least in part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace;
• at least in part in a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home;
• and the modalities along each student's learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrate learning experience.

The Learning Accelerator:
Blended learning is the transformative educational innovation of our time and has the potential to significantly improve K-12 education throughout the country. Blended learning is the strategic integration of in-person learning with technology to enable real-time data use, personalized instruction, and mastery-based progression.


It is through those lenses that I most clearly see that implementing blended learning is how teachers can personalize education in an engaging manner for students. We are key to integrating these learning experiences for students.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to provide insight and information about how my experience of formally launching blended sections of the mandatory elective (more on that later!) that I teach.

The topics of the blog will include the following:

1. How did I prepare to get to Day One in September?
2. How did I present this opportunity to students?
3. How does the student experience look?
4. How did students respond?
5. What observations did I make?
6. How did I change the course for the new semester?
7. How is instruction different in these different formats: blended vs. face-to-face vs. online?


If there is a specific topic, idea, or question you have, please drop me a comment below! I want this blog to be useful to you as you grow as a practitioner, or help others to grow!