Re-imagining Blended Learning 3.0 in Education – Defining a New Technology-Enabled Experience Led Approach to Accelerate Student Future Skills Development

Abstract

This paper argues that digital living and working has changed irrevocably as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic and therefore, digital developments in education brought about mainly by the use of blended learning during the Pandemic needs to be converged to support lifelong digital learning. Adopting the European Unions definition of blended learning, the paper shows that a tripartite understanding of blended learning between schools, Industry and policymakers is needed to secure sustainability and transferability of digital skills from school to the workplace. The Digital Schools Awards programme is offered as a potential contributor to a digital culture of lifelong learning to consolidate the development of digital literacy across Europe so that the experiences of blended learning and teaching during the Pandemic can be harnessed and advanced. To be sustainable, blended learning must appeal to students and their teachers' pedagogical and curricular needs. The paper, therefore, promotes a continuum approach to blended learning where a range of developmental and progressive strategies are proposed as 'accelerators' for digital skills. A rationale for future work and draws on this continuum to support blended learning and the workplace as a lifelong practice. A multistakeholder, peer to peer approach to the future of learning and skills development will, we argue, positively impact the way 21 st -century citizens can educate, learn and work at cross-cultural, multi-societal and institution levels.