Designs for Blended Language Learning

Abstract

The design of blended approaches to learning a second language involves three levels and contexts--macro, meso, and micro. Macro-level contexts start with global standards and then move down to meso-level contexts in institutions and micro-level contexts of classrooms and technologies. Pedagogical design involves making a series of decisions within an institution that result in the establishment of guidelines and products that are social, economic, and often political activity. The philosophy, or perspective of design proposed is a shift from modernist views, as typified by tool-centric paradigms of technology such as `normalization'. Instead, post-modernist views are proposed, as idealized by the blended learning paradigm of technology, or `bricolage'. The CALL paradigm sees improvement of learning through device integration. However, the blended paradigm is less simplistic, focusing on complex micro/meso/macro ecologies of technologies, curriculum, and goals.