Share Paper: Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry

  1. Norman Vaughan, Mount Royal Univ., Canada

Abstract: According to a survey conducted over ten years ago, more than 80% of higher education institutions in the United States offer courses in a blended format (Arabasz, Boggs & Baker, 2003). In the words of Gladwell (2000), we have gone over the "tipping point"; blended learning has become an educational epidemic. The three societal forces that have converged (the perfect wave) to drive this epidemic are technology, financial constraints, and quality concerns. The blended approaches to learning that have arisen to address these forces have lead to three major non-contradictory affordances – effectiveness, efficiency, and convenience. The result is an ...