8. Effectiveness in a Blended Learning Environment - Part I: Wastes in the memorization phase

With the advent of modern technology and the resulting increase in the average person's standard of living, information has become ubiquitous. If I'm holding my smartphone in my hand, I can call its attention by simply uttering "OK, Google" (iPhone users will recognize "Hey, Siri"), then ask any question I want. Assuming there's a relatively good answer to the question somewhere on the internet, Google will respond in kind, voicing a brief explanation. Otherwise, she'll at least google it and give me a starting place for my own search (why Google's female, I don't know. She is).

The possibilities for learning go much deeper than this though.

Let us consider "education" as the product of two factors: memorization (the assimilation of information - numbers, rules, dates, names, whatever) and understanding (a deeper comprehension of a system or theory, signaled by the ability to make predictions about its implications and utilize the knowledge to solve problems and create solutions). That is, it's one thing to be able to say "adverbs modify verbs," but quite another to be able to label all of the adverbs in a paragraph of text, or craft a rich Italian sentence using them correctly. The first is quite useless; the second, theoretically better, but still not terribly helpful in real life; the last alone is education profitably put to good use.

The problem is that different people have different aptitudes for different subjects or learning phases, and certain individuals seem to learn faster than others across all subjects and learning phases.

Traditionally, this disparity led to huge wastes of potential. Let's consider the most extreme example.

Before the invention of the printing press, books were hard to come by. The average person didn't have access to learning materials. If they wanted to learn, they listened, memorized and understood through repetition of the same. Think of pupils sitting at the feet of Plato, absorbing his every word and seeking to memorize and understand. Some were pretty good at it; the average person obviously wasn't, because they stayed in their fields tending their crops.

Imagine a modern math class learning times tables through this method. A teacher stands in front of a dozen students, holding the only copy of the twelve times tables chart up for all to see, and they repeat them all, over and over again, in an effort to memorize and understand.

Assuming that they are all beginners, they all are learning in the beginning, and all are profiting at least in some part from the experience. At a certain point though, those students who are good at the memorization of numbers, sequences, or words will master the chart. The moment that that student has mastered the chart, his utility of being in class is greatly diminished, and the utility of the less to the class collectively is likewise lessened. So what are the options?

1. The class can continue to drill the same thing, because the rest of the students still need it. The student(s) who have it down are basically wasting their time. They could leave, they could stay. Either way, their educational experience is stagnating. These individuals are wasting time in their education as long as they are relearning what they already know, assuming the increase in understanding is negligible from the repeated drilling.
2. The class can move on to properties of multiplication. The student who was ready to move on continues to profit; the other students may or may not. They will struggle, because the more advanced principles build on the ones they don't have fully memorized nor understood. Some will manage to stay afloat; others will drown and stop learning. The potential of the drowned is wasted.

Sure, it's an imperfect picture with logical holes, but the basic logical model remains. Seems like a lose-lose situation for the education institution.

Fast forward from Plato's time to the present day. A quick Google search of "learn times tables" yields 6.2 million results. The first result is "http://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/7-11-years/times-tables," let's hit that. Wow, it's a site with 9 different gamified methods for learning times tables. 

Each student in our math classroom now has their own digital "teacher and book" (which is far more effective then the "teacher and book" method, but that's outside the scope of this topic). Now, each student works independently, and each is allowed to allocate just enough of their valuable time to learning the topic to not waste time in over learning, but no one runs out of time, either.

No time lost for the fast, no potential lost for the slow.

So, the question is, why do we continue to enroll thousands of students in an educational facility where we do group drilling activities where everyone is forced to spend the same amount of time on learning the same thing? Unless all of our students are exactly the same - and they're not - we're knowing accepting an educational institution which creates waste.

To be continued.