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This article covers information about the successful development of blended learning environments that have the capacity to support and improve traditional face-to-face- and online learning environments.   Blended learning strategies showcases instructional model's growth and potential to spark new conversations about how blended learning can address a range of instructional needs in new and highly productive ways.  The benefits of blended learning instructional models extend educational learning experiences beyond the classroom face-to -face environment and they have the capacity to improve and to personalize learning experiences without commensurate increases in budget or staff, and it explores efficacy and prevalence data, recaps innovative and builds upon the practical implementation models of existing institutions of learning.    

Rambe, P. (2012). Constructive disruptions for effective collaborative learning: Navigating the affordances of social media for meaningful engagement. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 10(1), 132-146. The essentialist view that new technological innovations (especially Social Media) disrupt higher education delivery ride on educators' risk averse attitudes toward full-scale adoption of unproven technologies. However, this unsubstantiated logic forecloses possibilities for embracing the constructive dimensions of disruptions, and grasping the tremendous academic potential of emerging technologies. Community of inquiry and virtual ethnography adopted as theoretical and methodological lenses for exploring the productive pedagogical impacts of appropriating Social Media in an Information Systems course at a South African University. Lecturer-student and peer-based postings on Facebook examined to understand the influence of Facebook adoption on student meaningful learning and pedagogical delivery. The findings suggest that Facebook constituted a collective "Third space" for student enactment of counter scripts, augmented traditional academic networking, fostered "safe" havens for student democratic expression, and afforded learning communities for student co-construction of knowledge. Shortfalls identified include challenges of developing quality academic discussions and fostering student engagement at epistemological and conceptual levels to ensure deep learning. The study recommends a multi-pronged strategy that foregrounds contingent relaxation of academic authority, on-task student behavior, strategic alignment of powerful collaborative technologies with pedagogical designs, and learning needs and styles of students.