A Critical Review of the Blended Learning Models - Chew, Jones, Turner 2008

What shall we have for dinner?
This is the most complex question to answer when there are so many choices available, with so many fresh ingredients, ready made meals, options to eat out etc, etc.  Also, because there are so many choices, we often waste food and end up wishing we had made a different decision.  Trying to make decisions about how to design and deliver blended learning is as complex as deciding what to have for dinner.

There are many frameworks available from the current literature and my next few blog posts will illustrate those that I will be putting in my "kitchen" for use later on.  I also feel at this stage that the framework I need does not yet exist.  So I will be "collecting ideas" and then inventing my own "blender for blended learning".  Although, that is not necessarily a good idea as I gave my own Blender to the charity shop when we moved two years ago, after it sat in the cupboard for 20 years unused!!  I feel that a new metaphor will be needed...

Anyway here is one useful review:

Critical Review of the Blended Learning Models based on Maslow’s and Vygotsky’s Educational Theory,
Esyin Chew, Norah Jones, David Turner
http://www.cs.cityu.edu.hk/~ichl2008/LNCS-Proceedings/ICHL2008_EsyinChew_14pages.pdf

Also:

An Ecology Framework
Wenger and Ferguson MS Wenger, C Ferguson - The Handbook of Blended Learning, 2005 - Pfeiffer & Co, describe how Sun Microsystem corporate adopted an ecology framework as a guide to their blended learning model.
They suggest five important backgrounds as
(1) Quality of Learning experience;
(2) Control over Learning Experience;
(3) Formal versus informal learning;
(4) Social nature of learning;
(5) Cost effectiveness.