Our Approach to Blended Learning

At this time, where students and teachers around the world continue to move between face to face learning and distance learning, the International Schools Partnership is committed to giving our students the best opportunities to learn in the most effective ways possible. Over the past few months, the ISP Learning & Innovation team have been collaborating closely with teachers and leaders in around our group, to support them as they plan and prepare for the coming months. For some, this has involved a gradual return to school, and for others this has meant an ongoing journey of getting better in models where students continue to learn from home.

Given the complexities of this school year, and having learned from our distance learning approach since March 2020 drawing on valuable feedback and data from students, parents and staff from our schools, one of the many exciting opportunities for our group is the chance to implement a more blended approach to learning and teaching. In doing so, we are able to further personalise our educational offerings to meet the specific needs and interests of our students and their families.

What is blended learning?

Blended learning means that our students will be engaging in a seamless learning process through a mix of delivery methods. By blending online and offline experiences, with self-paced and facilitator-led models, opportunities to learn together and independently, our students have the possibility to learn anytime, anywhere through different ways, that support their varying needs, abilities and preferences.

How does our blended learning approach benefit our students?

Blended learning may sound like something new, but actually our teachers and leaders have been implementing different versions of this approach for our students for some time now – by mixing different ways of learning and teaching through offline and online experiences and through facilitator-led or self-paced activities, for example. All to say – designing for blended learning is a skill many of our teachers already have, and it is one which we are actively improving through bespoke professional development, interactive courses and innovative webinars for teachers and leaders.

How are we facilitating blended learning so that our students can access this innovative and creative learning experience?

For ISP, offering students and colleagues innovative and responsive blended learning experiences based on their specific contexts and needs is another way we demonstrate our commitment to putting learners and their learning first. In this spirit, we have created a series of micro-learning experiences for teachers and school leaders across the group on our approach to blended learning, all housed within our unique digital collaborative community, The Learning Hub.

Colleagues around the group have access to this unique online course that has been carefully co-designed between teachers and leaders across our schools with our Learning & Innovation team. Using a combination of webinars, a dedicated online community, toolkits, examples of blended learning from teachers in our schools to name a few examples, this online microlearning experience gives our teachers the tools and creative ideas to help students benefit from this unique approach to blended learning.

At ISP we continue our own learning with both distance and blended learning. We continuously partner with top leaders to learn and share and to reflect how far we have come as a group of global schools across 12 countries all aiming to be schools of choice in their local areas. There have been some truly Amazing Learning experiences for our students on this journey so far and as an ambitious group of global schools with learning at the heart of everything we do, our commitment is to continuously improve the learning opportunities for our students. We continue to get better, together.