Effective blended learning – a taxonomy of key factors impacting design decisions

Abstract

One of the keys to effective 21st century teaching is to integrate traditional pedagogical methods with the effective use of technology to foster student-centred learning. These increasingly sophisticated technologies are deployed in learning solutions, blending teaching techniques, learning styles, and delivery methods while creating a need for educators to gain new skills to meaningfully engage with these tools. The requirement is to scale blended learning and to design learning experiences that take full advantage of the digital platforms. This study presents a taxonomy with its dimensions and characteristics of the key factors impacting blended learning design. Such a taxonomy is useful not only for describing key factors impacting blended learning design, but also as a professional development tool for educators to increase efficacy of teaching and learning design. We constructed the taxonomy through a classification process following the taxonomy development approach of Nickerson et al.