Hybrid Learning and Play: A better way to Learn
What is Hybrid Learning
What is Hybrid Learning? It’s the idea that not all learning has to happen sitting in a single spot in a class trying to absorb the one-way flow of instruction and knowledge from a teacher standing in front of you. That learning can have the theory and practice aspects blended together with each other, instead of being imparted separately and tested separately, as the practical classes and practical exams do in schools today.
Hybrid Learning is just a new name for the same old thing, which we’re rediscovering now because we went too far toward digitizing and textualizing on the swinging pendulum. It’s always the same cycle, ask anybody from the Fashion industry. The oldest form of learning was Hybrid Learning, whether that’s gurukuls in ancient India, or Plato’s Academy in Greece.
Why is Hybrid Learning good?
For the longest time, since the beginning of instruction and learning, humanity had this bright idea of learning about something and applying it right away or even learning inside the same physical space where the application was going to happen. Like learning about flowers from a teacher while sitting in a garden. Or like learning how to fight in an arena (think Game of Thrones Night’s Watch). But the invention of books “disrupted” that model, because now you could all sit in the same space every single day, regardless of what you’re learning about, and just read up on it from a book, completely without touching, sensing, or doing the thing you’re learning about at all.
And when that happens, there are 3 things that get lost:
- The Sensory Experience. You can’t touch the flower while listening about that flower’s properties from the instructor.
- Curiosity-based Triggers. You can’t go explore the kinds of flowers you’re seeing and ask about them from the instructor.
- And due to the above, the Student’s Autonomy in Learning. You can’t drive your learning on the vehicle of your own exploration and free will.
So now, instead of absorbing in a multi-sensory, curiosity-powered, student-driven way, we learn in a centrally controlled (by the teacher), unidirectional (coming from the teacher), single-modal (voice of the teacher) way. Which just puts the student completely out of the to-and-fro of organically blended learning, and places them squarely into the audience chair of a matinee, disengaged from any non-textual understanding of the subject matter.
This, by the way, is also why some people thought Education is going to be a solved problem now that all the lectures are online.
Why has Hybrid Learning been hard to achieve?
It’s not all the teachers’ or the Education system’s fault either though. The subject matter that teachers teach, especially at higher levels of education, has consistently become more and more abstract in nature, as the knowledge we gain about the world, and the insights we derive about how the physical world actually works, becomes more and more theoretical instead of easily observable. This is a problem for teaching and learning.
One bad way to deal with this problem is to just bring everything down to the lowest common denominator of text-based imparting of learning. Simply forget all about the physical world, and start teaching forces motion by drawing lines and boxes on paper, instead of experiencing any of it. You know, that’s one bad way.
Another way, the more aspirational way, is to turn that on its head, and raise everything to the highest possible state of interactive and student-driven form of learning. This way aspires to turn even the most deeply theoretical and abstract knowledge into something that the student can touch and feel. That’s the promise of blended or hybrid learning,
How can we do Hybrid Learning well?
And how do you do that?
Tech? Games for education?
Technology is more prevalent in children’s lives today than ever before. On average, children under three spend 3–4 hours per day engaged with screen media , and by eight years of age, that number increases to 7.5 hours per day. Research on children’s use of technology and its effect on learning and development is currently in an early stage, but thus far it suggests that interactive technology, including video and computer games, can be a valuable tool in promoting playful learning.
Counting games in AR?
Limited rope-based puzzle game that teaches lines and angles?
Internet-based toys?
Game-of-thrones characters in a Ramsey Number class?
Chirpy, grumpy or simply brooding characters for variables and numbers who WANT to get isolated from each other in a math equation?
Alexa answering questions about everything under the sun?
Physical playgrounds where you can break the physical barrier with AR?
All of the above?
Does that mean all tech, and all the tech-based products in learning, are good, or at least in the greater good?
Hardly.
Are all Hybrid Learning techniques equal?
Tech in a classroom can be used for both a great learning experience, as well as a bad imitation of it.
Tracking students can invade privacy.
Gamification in markings and rankings can induce anxiety.
Easy access to video content literally makes students go to class less (unless the class offers value which the online video content just cannot)
By requiring resources outside of the class, it increases inequity instead of decreasing it.
These are all genuine things to acknowledge, worry about, and solve for, in any successful Hybrid Learning environment.
Popular opinion is not always in favor of the rise of media use; gaming has been accused of inhibiting the development of social skills, increasing rates of obesity, and promoting violent behavior). For the most part, however, research does not support such claims. In reality, video game players are reported to be more likely to participate in sports, less likely to be obese, more interested in civic involvement, more obedient of parents, more likely to have academically-minded friends, less likely to have risk-seeking friends, and no more violent than non-video game players.
We wrote some more about a future vision for Hybrid Learning with the use of AR here:
https://methodiva.medium.com/we-must-make-learning-interactive-immersive-intelligent-9a5717387fac
