Benefits and challenges

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Me with a cheetah in Kenya
Vaughan (2007) suggests blended learning can combine the best features of both face-to-face education and online education which benefits three distinct groups: faculty, students and institutions.  For students, it offers increased flexibility and access to education, more interactivity, reduced time to degree completion, and increased persistence.   These perspectives are validated by the comments of the three leaders active in blended learning in practice. 

Faculty may have to spend more time re-designing their courses but ultimately blended learning can reduce workload by efficient use of the technology and thus they can participate in other aspect of academic life.  (Horizon, 2005)  At the institutional level, blended learning offers a way to enhance the organization's reputation, provide access to segments of students that would not otherwise have taken a degree program, increased student satisfaction and retention.  It may  also result in more efficient and effective use of space through better classroom management.


However, effective blended learning is not achieved by randomly combining course content and technology (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008).  Blended learning, like any major educational technology project, requires leadership, a robust technical infrastructure and support mechanisms for faculty and students.  So while blended learning can create classroom efficiencies, for example, there are costs to supporting the technology and the people using it.