Is Hybrid Learning the Future of Education? Top Insights From Leaders
The education system has undergone significant transformation, focusing on making education accessible, high-quality, and future-ready. The COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this transformation. According to Valuates, the global Edtech market is expected to reach over $230 billion by 2028. This market expansion has also given rise to new models of learning. Hybrid learning is one such model that combines the benefits of online and offline learning. Hybrid learning offers flexibility, personalization, and a more student-centric learning experience. What’s more, it also has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach education. GSV Emeritus India Summit’s ‘Back to the Future Hybrid Learning is the Standard’—held in New Delhi, India, examined how education leaders are approaching hybrid learning. Let’s read more about it in this blog.
What is Hybrid Learning?
Hybrid learning is a blended learning approach that combines both traditional in-person and online methods. It allows learners to learn depending on their preferences or circumstances. This type of learning approach offers a student-centric learning experience with flexibility and personalization. It further provides the structure and social interaction of a traditional classroom. The goal of the hybrid learning system is to integrate both online and offline modes of learning seamlessly. This ensures a consistent and optimized learning experience across both mediums. Thus, an educational institution can digitally equip all its classrooms with tools such as smart boards and train all teachers to be able to teach with digital infrastructure. From the students’ perspective, they have the choice to attend any lecture with their same batch and peer group either online or offline. Hybrid learning is essentially a seamless optimization across both online and offline mediums.
How Can Hybrid Learning Benefit Learners and Educators
Hybrid learning provides a more student-centric and effective learning experience while also enhancing the efficiency of the educational system. For learners, it provides flexibility and personalization by allowing students to choose the format that works best for them. Furthermore, it offers access to a wider range of resources and opportunities for collaboration with peers beyond their physical location. Hybrid learning allows educators to have greater flexibility in designing and delivering lessons. It provides them with opportunities to track and assess student performance through digital tools. Additionally, hybrid learning can lead to cost savings and improved efficiency for educational institutions. For example, it reduces the need for physical space and resources.
Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder of Vedantu Innovations, said at the GSV Emeritus India Summit that their hybrid learning model has shown a “huge spike in in-class attendance and engagement rate.” He explains that in their long-term online courses with one to two-year durations, the attendance rate starts at around 85% but would gradually decrease over the year, resulting in only 60-65% attendance by the year-end. However, in their hybrid courses, attendance starts at 88%, and the cohort reduction only goes up to 82%.
What are the Main Components of a Hybrid Learning Model?
Hybrid learning models typically include traditional in-person instruction and online or virtual learning. Learning Management System (LMS) is one way of delivering online content. It includes live classes, tests, and discussions that can be accessed remotely. In-person instruction includes lectures, discussions, group activities, and hands-on experiences in a classroom, lab, or field setting. The balance between in-person and online instruction can vary by course or program. Nevertheless, the goal is to provide a flexible and personalized learning experience.
Hybrid learning models can go beyond classrooms: As Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-Founder of Scaler, said at the summit, “The real osmosis of knowledge is outside the classroom.” To facilitate this knowledge transfer, Scaler created hostels in the offline world where their online students could live together. While attending their classes online, students could also interact and collaborate with their peers in person. Scaler further made a ‘performance and course adherence’ comparison between students who were not co-located and those who lived together in the same cohort. What it found was that the latter group experienced a nearly 70% increase in both adherence and career outcomes.
Why is Hybrid Learning the Future?
Hybrid learning is a promising model that can revolutionize how we approach education. It not only offers a unique opportunity to combine the best aspects of both in-person and online learning. It also allows educators to innovate and address the limitations of traditional classroom models. Vamsi Krishna explains that hybrid learning can be used to provide high-quality online learning to students in remote Tier 3 and 4 areas. However, while online classes offer access to excellent teachers, discipline management remains a concern for the students. To address this, study centers can be built in these remote areas.
These classrooms provide a second teacher for discipline intervention of students while the primary teachers teach their classes online. This blend of online and in-person learning would allow students to benefit from high-quality teaching. To summarize, hybrid learning is shaping the future of education: It is addressing the limitations of traditional classroom models while also combining the benefits of online and offline learning. Moreover, it has presented a flexible and innovative solution to the challenges of delivering effective education to students in various locations and contexts.
What are Some Tips for Creating Effective Hybrid Learning Experiences?
The leaders shared some tips during the conference for creating a successful hybrid learning experience:
- Equip classrooms with smart boards and other necessary infrastructure to facilitate seamless online and offline delivery of content
- Teachers should be provided with training to ensure they are skilled and comfortable with the new infrastructure and technology
- Give students the flexibility to attend classes in-person or online, and allow them to choose which format they prefer
- The delivery of content must be optimized on both online and offline mediums
- Use assessment and feedback to monitor student progress, identify areas where students may be struggling and provide support as needed
- Conduct doubt sessions and other forms of student support online: This ensures that all students have access to the resources they need, regardless of their location or format of attendance
- Provide seamless delivery across online and offline mediums so students can easily transition between the two
ALSO READ: How is Adaptive Learning Improving Education in the Digital World?
Start Your Learning Journey Today with Emeritus
In conclusion, hybrid learning is a game-changer for education as it blends the benefits of both in-person and online learning. With the ability to address traditional learning limitations and the flexibility to innovate, hybrid learning is quickly becoming the future of education. If you’re looking to upskill, explore this wide range of online courses Emeritus offers.
Write to us at content@emeritus.org
