Here, as examples, are summaries of four of the forty programs profiled at the Innosight web site.

ACCESS Distance Learning (Alabama State Department of Education)
41,161 students, grades 8-12

Model Description: Students supplement their traditional school's course offerings by taking one or more online or videoconferencing courses from ACCESS, either on campus in a "21st Century Classroom" or away from school, on their own. In many cases ACCESS uses interactive videoconferencing to provide synchronous communication experiences between the teacher and up to three classrooms of remote students. For the independent, asynchronous classes, students learn via text, graphics, audio, video, drills, an online teacher, games, and assessments. Students submit work to online teachers via a virtual dropbox, and the teacher responds with feedback and guidance.

Notable Results: By the end of 2010, ACCESS was the third-largest state virtual school in the country. Between 2002 and 2008, Alabama's high school graduation rate climbed from 62.1 to 69.0%, a gain that was 4.32 percentage points above the national average for that time period. The number of AP test takers in Alabama public schools almost doubled from 2004 to 2010. Although other factors may have contributed to these improvements, ACCESS was a driving force in bringing advanced coursework and alternative education options to Alabama.

AdvancePath Academics
4,000 students, grades 9-12

Model Description: AdvancePath Academics is a for-profit service provider that partners with districts to educate and graduate their dropout and at-risk high school population. Students attend the brick-and-mortar AdvancePath Academy five days per week and choose whether to attend the morning, afternoon, or evening session. Each session lasts four hours and provides a combination of online and small-group, face-to-face instruction.

Notable Results: AdvancePath has had 1,350 graduates since inception and is on track to graduate 1,250 students in the 2010-11 school year. Most students enter an AdvancePath Academy one-and-a-half to two years behind academically. The company's head says that AdvancePath is successful with nine out of 10 students, many of whom have failed consistently over many years, and that AdvancePath students often achieve a 200 to 300 percent gain versus their pre-enrollment index in 10 months. About 50 percent of graduates have gone on to post-secondary schooling.

eCademy (Albuquerque Public Schools)
1500 students, grades 8-12

Model Description: The eCademy program uses an online lab model. The goal is to provide dropout- and credit-recovery services through a variety of cost-effective, electronic delivery methods that promote independence and excellence in learning. The first course meeting is face-to-face. Students who maintain a "C" grade or better do not have to show up on the physical campus again during the course, although some choose to use the computer labs on campus. Teachers are available to meet with students during physical office hours if students want further face-to-face interaction. Until the new eCADEMY facility was completed in April 2011, eCADEMY students shared a facility with a traditional school.

Notable Results: District leaders report that eCademy is the least expensive high school the district has ever built. The new facility is less than 25 percent of the size of a typical comprehensive school in the area, but it will be able to accommodate the same number of students as a result of the school's long hours, which are from 8 am to 10 pm, allowing the district to spread occupancy over more hours. By paying teachers a set $190 per semester per student per class, the school can offer classes for only a few students, at a rate of only $190 per student. During the spring 2010 pilot testing period, eCADEMY had a 70 percent retention rate — as compared to the 50 percent retention rate before the school moved to a blended learning model.

Kentucky Virtual High School, Pilot and Hybrid Grants
Three different programs: a statewide virtual high school, an Algebra I pilot, and hybrid grants to teachers.

Model Description: The Kentucky Virtual High School (KVHS) was established in 2000 to provide students and teachers with access to an expanded curriculum including AP and foreign language courses, options for credit recovery, and support for specific needs, including gifted and at-risk education. Districts can contract with KVHS to deliver a course to an entire classroom and students can also opt to take courses remotely. In 2007, the state launched the Hybrid Algebra I Research pilot, a study to measure the effectiveness of four cohorts of high school students engaged in a blended curriculum for Algebra I. In 2009 the Hybrid-Learning Grant Program was announced, providing support to individual teachers who wanted to experiment with their own blended models, in exchange for sharing results with the state.

Notable Results: Enrollments at KVHS have remained steady at the 1,200 enrollments-per-semester range and the state says that the school has been instrumental in helping districts avoid paying for a traditional teacher in cases when class enrollments are small. KVHS has historically had a successful completion rate above 75 percent, with a high of 82 percent in 2009–10. Results for the pilot are not yet available. Teacher-reported data from the hybrid grants shows an increase in student and parent satisfaction. Teachers said the program provided a positive way of giving intervention and extra support to low performing students, allowed students to take responsibility for their own learning, prepared students for college experiences, and addressed the need for different learning styles.

To read all of the profiles or post one of your own, visit: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/media-room/publications/blended-learning/

A recent report, The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning – Profiles of Emerging Models, looks at the nature and variety of blended learning programs (in which “students learn online in an adult-supervised environment at least part of the time”) and considers how blended learning is likely to change American schools. This report was sponsored and produced by Innosight Institute, a think tank whose mission is to expand upon the theories outlined in the book Disrupting Class, and the Charter School Growth Fund, which invests philanthropic venture capital funds into the nation’s top performing charter schools.

The report’s authors point out that in 2000, roughly 45,000 K-12 students took an online course. In 2009, more than 3 million K-12 students did. “This pattern of growth,” they explain, “is characteristic of a disruptive innovation—an innovation that transforms a sector characterized by products or services that are complicated, expensive, inaccessible, and centralized into one with products or services that are simple, affordable, accessible, convenient, and often customizable.” By2019, they predict that 50 percent of all high school courses will be delivered online.

In the early years, online learning was frequently delivered in more of a “distance learning” model, outside of a traditional school environment and removed from an in-person teacher, in order to serve a rapidly growing home schooling community as well as students with medical or other needs that kept them out of the conventional classroom setting. “There is a limit, however, to the number of students in America who have the ability to be home-schooled or attend a full-time virtual school,” write the authors of the report. Instead, they say, the biggest area of growth for online learning in recent years has been in the form of blended-learning environments – ones in which “a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.”

This trend has been driven by several factors including: the increasing availability of the hardware, connectivity and content that makes online instruction a viable option; decreasing budgets and an anticipated teacher shortage that requires schools to consider ways of doing more with less; and the demand by students for more relevant and interactive ways of learning.

Blended-Learning Models
The report explores several different models of blended learning. They include:

• Face-to-Face Driver: The face-to-face experience typically takes place within a classroom and involves a physical teacher who connects students with online learning experiences on a case-by-case basis to supplement or remediate.

• Rotation:  In this model students rotate between one-to-one, self-paced learning and time spent in the classroom with a face-to-face teacher.

• Flex: In the flex model, used frequently for credit-recovery, the online learning is the main delivery of curricula and the teacher is available on an as-needed basis.

• Online Lab: This approach consists of an online program delivered by online instructors but taking place in a brick-and-mortar lab environment. Often students who take some of their classes in this mode also have traditional, classroom-based classes.

• Self-Blend: Students in regular school settings who wish to supplement their curriculum with courses not otherwise available often choose to participate in a self-blend model, with one or more of their classes taken independently, online.

• Online Driver: In this model students take all or most of their classes online with online instructors. Supplementary check-ins with face-to-face teachers are sometimes optional and sometimes required.

Learning from Experience
The report profiles numerous examples of blended learning environments. These profiles are not evaluative although they do include some results reported by program administrators. Educators and program leaders are encouraged to submit their own examples in order to create an ever-more-comprehensive overview of what is available in the blended-learning arena.

The authors also offer guidelines and recommendations. “There are several important components of this policy that states must get right to maximize blended learning’s transformational potential,” they write. These include:

• Eliminating the cap on the enrollment of students in online or blended-learning programs or courses;

• Eradicating rules that restrict class-size and student-teacher ratios;

• Abolishing geographic barriers to what online courses students may take;

• Removing ‘school site’ definitions that limit blended-learning models where a portion of student learning occurs in traditional school building and the rest occurs offsite;

• Moving to a system where students progress based on their mastery of academic standards or competencies as opposed to seat time or the traditional school calendar;

• Lifting the rules around certification and licensure to let schools slot paraprofessionals or capable but non-state-certified teachers into appropriate assistive or instructional roles and enable schools to extend the reach of great teachers across multiple, geographically disparate locations;

• Allowing schools to adopt staffing arrangements and redefine teacher roles according to teacher effectiveness and student needs;

• Enabling operators to design staffing, pay, curriculum, scheduling, budgets, student discipline, and school culture to meet the needs of their students;

• Facilitating assessments that can be taken at any time;

• Creating funding models that allow fractional per-pupil funds to follow students down to the individual course, not just the full-time program;

• Tying a portion of the per-pupil funds to individual student mastery, whereby states pay bonuses when students realize the biggest gains between pre- and post- assessment (so as to incentivize programs to serve students who have historically struggled the most) or achieve mastery at an advanced academic level;

• Holding operators to strict accountability measures that allow state and district officials to identify and intervene rapidly in struggling schools and chose those that fail repeatedly to meet achievement targets.

Source: The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning – Profiles of emerging models