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Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6, in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Skinner 5, who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education.
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In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4). (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3.) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities.
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