I’ve been assisting or promoting blended learning since the 90’s! In one of my German lit classes (when I was a student), I recommended that we move part of the discussion online. My school had just implemented a new online discussion tool combined with a picture-based class roster. I learned about it and thought it would be cool if we used it in class. I recommended it to the teacher, who was happy to try something like that out. As we didn’t have wifi in the building and I didn’t have a laptop, I created a powerpoint that would mimic logging in to the system and posting to the discussion board.
The presentation went well and the system worked well enough, but the assignment due date was always “before class” which didn’t leave enough time for discussion online. Had it been due 24 hours before class started, it would have worked better. As I wasn’t the teacher and I was just a young college student at the time, that didn’t occur to me and the assignment remained less effective than it could have been.
Nonetheless, in 1998, I was thinking about blended learning!
