Self-Paced Blended Learning: A Resource Roundup

Blended learning allows teachers to combine the best of face-to-face and online instruction, but when it’s also self-paced, it opens up new possibilities for differentiation, mastery-based progression, and student independence. In a self-paced blended learning environment, students move through material at their own speed, allowing teachers to shift their role from lecturer to facilitator and coach. 

Whether you’re just beginning to explore this instructional approach or looking to refine your practice, the resources below—gathered from Edutopia’s collection of resources—highlight what it takes to make self-paced blended learning work across grade levels.

Getting Started With Self-Paced Blended Learning

A Student-Centered Model of Blended Learning: When educators at a Washington, DC, high school ditched their lectures and devised a self-paced blended learning model, their students thrived.

Blended Learning Built on Teacher Expertise: An inside look at a teacher-designed instructional model that combines blended learning, student self-pacing, and mastery-based grading.

Answers to Your Blended Learning Questions: Teachers had a lot of questions about an Edutopia video featuring a blended learning model developed in a public high school, and the team behind that model has answers.

Getting Rid of the Lecture Bottleneck: Doing away with lectures in math class means that students can work at their own pace while teachers differentiate instruction.
How Edtech Can Expand What Teachers Do: Education technology has the capacity to increase what a teacher can accomplish in the course of a day’s work.

Core Strategies for the Classroom

Co-teaching With Myself: Creating his own instructional videos allowed one teacher to be in two places at once in his classroom.

6 Research-Backed Reasons to Record Important Lessons: Replacing or supplementing your lessons with instructional videos has a large impact on student learning, the research shows.

A 5-Step Guide to Making Your Own Instructional Videos: By delivering content to students working at home, teachers can save live classes for what’s most important—the personal interactions that solidify learning.
60-Second Strategy: Do Now Sheets: A quick pen-and-paper warm-up activity helps teachers see that students are on track in a self-paced blended learning classroom.

Building Independence and Mastery

Making the Transition From Dependent to Independent Learning: Teachers can guide students to becoming independent learners with scaffolding that provides strategies for mastering material.

How to Help Middle School Students Learn to Work Independently: These students can navigate a self-paced class with lots of teacher support at the beginning and clear expectations about assignments.

Teaching Revision in a Blended Learning Environment : Two teachers explain how they assign short writing tasks, give feedback quickly, and require revision before students can move on.

Using Mastery Checks to Assess Student Learning: Unlike simultaneous, class-wide tests or exit tickets, Mastery Checks allow students to demonstrate learning at their own pace.
How to Support Chronically Absent Students When They Return to Class: It is possible to create effective lessons that allow students to absorb content at their own pace while also requiring mastery.

Extending the Model to Younger Learners

Making Self-Paced Learning Work for Younger Kids: This differentiation approach frees teachers up to meet students’ needs. The result? Students only tackle material they’re ready for, and all students achieve mastery.
Self-Paced Learning in the Early Elementary Grades: Blended, self-paced learning might seem out of reach in kindergarten, but it can work—and it doesn’t require an inappropriate amount of screen time.

Outside Resources

Modern Classroom Project: This is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to train teachers in this self-based, blended learning model. Their website includes a free online course and many other resources.

How to Create a Self-Paced Classroom: Published by our friends at Cult of Pedagogy, this article provides a comprehensive review of the approach, bringing many of the details together in one place.