Jacqueline LaBerge Leiker doesn't just like blended learning; she's a blended learning evangelist.
"I just really love it," says Leiker, a technology and business teacher at Norway-Vulcan Area Schools in the western Upper Peninsula. "I just think it's such an amazing way to teach--for students and for teachers. It makes everybody's process better."
And where LaBerge Leiker lives, it helps to be so outspoken about her preference for blended learning, which combines online curriculum with face-to-face instruction. While traditional online learning is fairly common in the U.P., blended learning, she says, isn't nearly as widespread.
That's too bad, says Norway-Vulcan Area Schools junior Sydney Smaniotti, who is taking two blended learning courses this year. "I wish all my classes were set up this way," she says. "This is the 21st century and this is where we're going with technology."
Even so, LaBerge Leiker herself has been engaged in some form of blended learning for several years, and she's hoping other U.P. teachers will soon be able to say the same. In fact, she's traveled to other districts to train teachers on the ins and outs of blended learning and hopes to see the trend spread throughout the state.
Inside the blended classroom
All the content LaBerge Leiker's classes use lives online. There are no books to lug to class, and for LaBerge Leiker, no papers to haul home. Instead, students access the curriculum digitally, and have options for how they learn, as well as at what pace. LaBerge Leiker gives them information in multiple formats, such as text articles and video, so they can choose their preferred method. When they've mastered a concept, they move on.
That's a big benefit for students, says Smaniotti. She often does an entire week's worth of work in one day, leaving her schedule open for completing other homework and extracurricular activities.
"I'm in a lot of clubs and I'm the junior class president, so sometimes I have a lot to do," she says. "It's really convenient."
And for students who work through the material more slowly, having access to a teacher is a big help.
"They're getting the teacher support, which is super important," LaBerge Leiker says. She sees her role as a coach--there to add her expertise and guidance, but not to hold their hands. In addition to learning the subject matter at hand, she says, the students are learning perseverance, independence and responsibility.
"Those are all things they learn from blended learning that will get them by in any job or in any school, as long as they have the desire to work," she says.