Is Blended Learning Making Us Stupid, Too?

Ray Archee

School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

DOI: 10.4236/jss.2015.39010                

Abstract

The title of this paper echoes Nicholas Carr’s (2008) article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, which evoked heated debate around the issue of whether the Internet was having negative effects upon human concentration and learning. While this paper agrees that blended learning has the same issues as the Internet, blended learning is under the control of organizations, institutions, instructors and students. Whether our brains are being changed for better or worse is not the critical question, but how much confidence we ascribe to blended learning. This paper argues that blended learning should be regarded as blended teaching because the phrase comprises a contested assumption. Educators, by their selection of traditional and online media, have complete control over this teaching, but students, in the end, are the ultimate arbiters of their own learning.

Keywords

Blended Learning, Online Learning, E-Learning, Traditional Learning, Teaching

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

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