REVIEW: The Handbook Of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs

Abstract

Blended learning or blended e-learning sounds like a confusing term at first since it is relatively a new term for today’s instructors. However, Moore reports that it can be traced as far back as the 1920s which was called “supervised correspondence study”. For clarification of the term “blended learning” and informing the instructors about its common practices worldwide, the book provides readers a comprehensive resource about blended learning. It aims to raise awareness of adopting BL from institutional perspectives of many chapter authors from Australia, Korea, Malaysia, the UK, Canada and South Africa who are distinguished people mostly in instructional technology era. With this book, I guess the editors aim at both showing the big picture at macro level and present micro level examples which provide details of blended learning applications among their strengths and weaknesses. As introduced in the book, one of the editors Curtis J. Bonk, a former corporate controller and CPA, is now professor of educational psychology as well as instructional systems technology at Indiana University; the other editor Charles R. Graham is an assistant professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University with a focus on technology-mediated teaching and learning.