The difference between blended education and distance education

 The difference between blended education and distance education

Blended learning differs from Distance Learning in several points, which we will include in the following in detail:

The difference in terms of concept

The difference between blended education and distance education is evident in the following:

distance education concept

    It is an educational method in which the student is in a different place from the teacher, so that the responsibility for learning falls mainly on the student himself, and the learning environment includes a computer connected to the Internet, while the role of the teaching is to guide the student and provide functions that complement the learning objectives that are required.  

blended learning concept

    A form of learning that integrates e-learning and face-to-face education within the scope of a comprehensive educational system, in order to take advantage of the advantages and characteristics of both forms of education.

The difference in terms of features

  Distance education and blended education are characterized by a number of characteristics that explain the importance and areas of benefit from each, and the following are mentioned:

Advantages of distance education.

The following is an explanation of the most prominent advantages of distance education:

•  Save time, effort and money.

• It allows you to learn anywhere in the world.

• It facilitates student access to a greater number of educational courses.

•  Help students with mobility issues, such as students with special needs, overcome barriers to learning.

•  it is flexible

Advantages of blended learning

The main advantages of blended learning are explained below:

• provides face-to-face communication; This increases the interaction between the student and the teacher.

• It provides the opportunity to take advantage of electronic advances in use, design, and implementation.

•  It improves social relations and human aspects between students, as well as between teachers.

•  It has enough flexibility taken from different learning styles to adapt to the individual needs of learners of different levels, ages and times.

• It enriches the experience and knowledge of the student.

• Enhance formal and informal learning opportunities.

•  Help students to make them more interactive and active by changing the learning style from distance education to face-to-face education.

•  Increases the quality of the educational product and the efficiency of teachers.

• It increases civilized communication with different cultures, and helps to benefit from everything new in the field of science.

The difference in terms of negatives

  There are a number of obstacles that negatively affect both distance education and integrated education, including the following:

The following is an explanation of the most important disadvantages of distance learning:

Disadvantages of distance education

   Difficulty identifying high achievers due to the ease of cheating.

Poor discipline of students to achieve the skills required of them due to the large number of distractions around them, such as the presence of televisions and video games.   

Disadvantages of blended learning

   The following is an explanation of the main disadvantages of blended learning:

   Technologically weak infrastructure.

   Students fall into the trap of hoarding learning materials late.

The difficulty of providing easy-to-use technology for all students of all abilities and abilities.

Increase the burden on teachers.