Customized Blended Learning: Where Technology and Pedagogy Meet the Students Halfway Teguh Trianung Djoko Susanto
Universitas Negeri Jakarta
Abstract
The global context of education is undergoing a massive change brought by the advance of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) along with the constructivism of pedagogical methods in teaching, and today, the Pandemic of COVID-19. The current lockdown has forced teachers to adopt mainly online, blended learning teaching practices. The Blended Learning approach combines the online learning and traditional method. The classes are conducted in traditional educational facilities and supplemented with virtual lessons and digital materials. So far, it is the most efficient educational process which involves traditional teaching and is perfect for students who find it problematic to deal with a particular part of lesson material. When used by a skilled teacher, blended learning approach can add valuable innovative dimensions to the learning process, especially in key subjects like physical science and mathematics where prior knowledge, conceptual understanding and self-motivation are very important to succeed. Blended learning can allow learners to work at their own pace and allow teachers to fill the content gaps. However, its effectiveness still has not been verified especially in the countries of unequal teaching environments such as Indonesia. The transition from a traditional pedagogical model to a blended one needs to be tailored to suit the context. Yet, this customized version of blended learning requires a set of measures and institutional conditions which can sometimes be burdensome from a technological and pedagogical point of view. This paper tries to investigate on how to custom an adaptive blended learning by combining online instructions and digital materials in order to better meet the needs of today^s learners.
