Teaching strategies has significantly changed with the advancement of technology, the recent pandemic isn’t solely the cause of the different possibility of blended learning but rather act as a fuse that alerted the education institutions to emphasis on taking advantage of the online environment.
I agree with the concept that blended learning isn’t simply the fusion of face to face learning and online learning, it is a “thoughtfully “structured system with conceptual order of significant methods to engage the student while delivering quality educational experience for higher education. I think blended learning environments will only be beneficial to constructivism learning in higher education as the students are likely metacognitive and willing to take some responsibility in their learning. However, I believe face to face teaching should be primarily emphasized and technology should only be supplemental to the traditional face to face learning environment as technology will always have limitations on community interaction.
Furthermore, as the critical concern of privacy being widely expressed towards using big data in education, I am curious about the contradiction between privacy and student’s honesty. Respecting individual privacy is important however, student’s academic integrity should also be as important because the fairness of the education system should be equal to everyone.
With this contradiction, I would like to emphasize on the idea of technology should only be used as a supplemental tool to assist teaching but should be considered before used as assessment tools. Integrating technology into the education system could be a double-edged sword as having activities online will always be inferior to interactive activities face to face because of the absence of presence of student’s interaction in reality.
Also, another concern I would like to discuss is distractions on the internet. In a student perspective, traditional learning is already creative enough and some traditional teaching activities already diverges the attention of the students, will adding more layers to the education structure be beneficial or diverges the attention of students even more? Although the internet opens up the accessibility of education to learners, I still believe face to face teaching will be most effective in engaging the students.
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