ABSTRACT
The number of students enrolling in blended courses was and continues to be unknown, but the sense was that more than half—roughly 35 million students, in both higher and K–12 education—were enrolling in some form of blended learning. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents research by John Fritz, Thomas Penniston, Mike Sharkey, and John Whitmer, examining LMS course design as a learning analytics variable by sharing the results of three different studies on the evolution of their research in the area. It focuses on blended teacher preparation and professional development, examining an extensive collection of blended teaching artifacts with interviews to connect blended teaching practices to competencies. The chapter offers a rich discussion considering new perspectives of blended learning, addressing teaching construct, and discussing blending as integration and time as a blended course design construct and use activity theory to better understand empirical course data.
