Giving Compass' Take:

• The author cites research from two different reports in which he examines the role of teachers in both blended and personalized learning environments. He concludes that the roles teachers would eventually involve more mentorship and more time for teachers to spend one on one with students in order to tailor their process to student needs.

• How can personalized and blended learning styles help fill gaps for students?

• Read about the secret element of blended learning that will make it successful. 

With the rise of online learning in schools—what educators call blended learning—what teachers do daily is changing in big and small ways.

A central question is what will teaching look like in the future, as online learning can increasingly help students learn knowledge personalized to their specific learning need. Recent research even suggests that learning from an online video—a modality that is not terribly active—may be superior for engagement and retention than learning from a live lecture.

In our most recent book, Blended: The Workbook, Heather Staker and I concluded that teachers will remain critical to the success of learning environments in the future, but that their jobs will shift in profound ways. In the good blended-learning programs we have observed, although the teacher role shifts in profound ways— teachers may no longer be doing lesson planning for, and leading an entire class on, the same activity—they are still engaged and working with students even more actively.

Teachers might also specialize in a variety of novel ways. For example, some teachers might work as content experts who focus on developing and posting curriculum. Others might serve as small-group leaders who provide direct instruction as part of a Station or Lab 
Rotation.

Many, if not most, would act as mentors providing wisdom, social capital, and guidance. Despite this speculation, there has been a paucity of research chronicling these shifts to innovative staffing models to personalize learning.

Read the full article about the role of teachers by Michael B. Horn at Christensen Institute