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Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 2012, pp. 59 – 61. 

 Book Review 
 

Blended Learning: Across the Disciplines, Across the Academy 
 

Norman Vaughan1 
 

Citation: Francine S. Glazer, Editor. (2012). Blended Learning: Across the 
Disciplines, Across the Academy.  Sterling, Virginia: Stylus. 138 pages. ISBN: 
978-1-57922-324-3 (pbk) 
 
Publisher Description: This is a practical introduction to blended learning, 
presenting examples of implementation across a broad spectrum of disciplines. 
For faculty unfamiliar with this mode of teaching, it illustrates how to address the 
core challenge of blended learning—to link the activities in each medium so that 
they reinforce each other to create a single, unified, course—and offers models 
they can adapt. 

Francine Glazer and the contributors to this book describe how they 
integrate a wide range of pedagogical approaches in their blended courses, use 
groups to build learning communities, and make the online environment attractive 
to students. They illustrate under what circumstances particular tasks and 
activities work best online or face-to-face, and when to incorporate synchronous 
and asynchronous interactions. They introduce the concept of layering the content 
of courses to appropriately sequence material for beginning and experienced 
learners, and to ensure that students see both the online and the face-to-face 
components as being equal in value and devote equal effort to both modalities. 
The underlying theme of this book is encouraging students to develop the skills to 
continue learning throughout their lives. 

By allowing students to take more time and reflect on the course content, 
blended learning can promote more student engagement and, consequently, 
deeper learning. It appeals to today’s digital natives who are accustomed to using 
technology to find and share information, communicate, and collaborate, and also 
enables non-traditional students to juggle their commitments more efficiently and 
successfully. 

 
Blended Learning: Across the Disciplines, Across the Academy is an edited book by Francine 
Glazer. The book describes five blended learning case studies.  The case studies are from a 
variety of disciplines and institutions in American higher education. The authors of each case 
study have taken a self-study approach to explore their blended learning courses (Bullough & 
Pinnegar, 2001). 

The introductory chapter of this book does an excellent job of setting the stage for the 
five case studies by clearly defining blended learning as “courses [that] employ active learning 
strategies through the use of a variety of pedagogical approaches (p.3) . . . When done well, 
blended learning combines the best attributes of face-to-face and online courses” (p.7).  Glazer 
also indicates that “one size does not fit all” when it comes to course redesign and that the 
                                                
1 Professor in the Department of Education and Schooling, Faculty of Teaching and Learning, Mount Royal University, Calgary, 
Alberta, Canada. 



Vaughan, N.  

Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 2012. 
jotlt.indiana.edu 

60 

“challenge of blended learning is to link, or blend, what happens in each medium so that face-to-
face and online activities reinforce each other to create a single, unified course” (p.1). Avoiding 
what Twigg (2003) refers to as the course and a half syndrome. 

Each case study describes the author’s personal course redesign journey for blended 
learning.  These chapters include rich personal narratives, course descriptions, lessons learned, 
and a description of the educational framework that was used to guide the course redesign 
process. Barkley (2006) stresses the importance of communicating these conceptual frameworks 
to our students so that they can become the “architects of their own learning” (p.1). 

Two of the authors have used the revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational 
objectives (Krathwohl, 2002) to determine how to sequence the online and face-to-face learning 
tasks.  For example, Carl Behnke in his Culinary Arts course indicates that “most of the online 
resources are geared toward basic remember and understanding dimensions, reserving the lecture 
for higher-order tasks of analyzing and evaluating” (p.17). This is similar to the approach that 
Tracey Gau uses in her World Literature course, “Lower-level objectives can be addressed and 
achieved online so that valuable class time is not spent merely summarizing” (p.91). Both 
authors emphasize “effective integration and leveraging the best of both techniques” (p.17).  This 
approach to course redesign has been referred to as the ‘flipped approach’ where students 
complete individual web-based learning activities, outside of class time, and then work on 
collaborative problem solving activities, in-class (Baker, 2000). 

Francine Glazer has combined a team-based learning and case-study approach to begin 
the implementation of a blended design for her Principles of Genetics course. Team-based 
learning is a highly structured form of cooperative learning where students are grouped into 
permanent teams for the semester and work on sophisticated problems and applications 
(Michaelson, Knight, & Fink, 2004). Whereas, the case-study approach helps students deal with 
abstract material by providing a story line to make the material more accessible (Styer, 2009). 
A rapid formative assessment approach based on the Angelo and Cross’ (1993) classroom 
assessment techniques (CATs) framework has been used by Alan Aycock to guide the blended 
learning redesign of his Survey of World Cultures (SWC) course. Aycock describes CATs as 
“very short – typically one-page – assignments in which students respond to a question that 
reveals the extent of their learning or the tenor of their response to a particular module or course 
content . . . they are always formative or progressive assessments that occur during the learning 
process and therefore evoke a quality of immediacy that promotes rapid feedback (the hallmark 
of blended learning) and multiple voices in the classroom” (p.72). 

Finally, Robert Hartwell and Elizabeth Barkley have used the concept of differentiation 
as the framework to anchor the blended redesign of their Music of Multicultural America 
(MMA) course. This is a “systematic approach to planning curriculum and instruction” 
(Tomlinson & Strickland, 2005, p. 6) where “teachers individualize course elements such as 
content (the stuff we teach), process (the ways learners make meaning of content), and product 
(how learners demonstrate what they have come to know, understand, or do)” (p.115). For the 
MMA course, students choose from a menu of online and face-to-face activities that best meets 
their personal, scheduling, and learning needs. Some students do the entire course online or face-
to-face, whereas about 60% combine both delivery methods. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book Blended Learning: Across the 
Disciplines, Across the Academy as I discovered that each chapter had a ‘key take away’ or 
‘lesson learned’ that I could directly apply to my own blended learning courses.  This book also 



Vaughan, N.  

Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 2012. 
jotlt.indiana.edu 

61 

provides some very valuable advice about how to manage the workload of a blended course and 
how to sustain the blend through the use of a community approach. 

Personally, I found there were several limitations to this book.  First, all of the blended 
learning cases were written from the perspective of the teacher.  With the exception of the 
Hartwell and Barkley case, the voice of the students was noticeably absent.  For me this is 
somewhat problematic as the goal of blended approach to learning is to promote student 
engagement and success.  Second, how do we know if any of these course redesigns made a 
difference for the students? Gau describes the evaluation approach that she used for her World 
Literature course (e.g., pre and post course surveys, increase in course success rates - percentage 
of students receiving an A, B or C in the course) but again, I found this lacking in the other 
cases.   

Despite these shortcomings, I would recommend Blended Learning: Across the 
Disciplines, Across the Academy to faculty members in higher education who are contemplating 
redesigning their courses for blended learning.  The insights and lessons learned from each of the 
cases are very useful and can immediately be put into practice.  
 

References 
 
Angelo, T., & Cross, P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques (2nd ed.). San Francisco: 
Jossey-Bass.  
 
Barkley, E. (2006). Honoring student voices, offering students choices: Empowering students as  
architects of their own learning. National Teaching and Learning Forum, 153(3), 1-6. 
 
Baker, W.J. (2000). The 'classroom flip': Using web course management tools to become the  
guide by the side.  Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on College Teaching 
and Learning (11th, Jacksonville, Florida, April 12-15, 2000). 
 
Bullough, R.V., & Pinnegar, S. (2001). Guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of self- 
study research. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 13-21. 
 
Krathwohl, D.R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice, 
41(4), 212-218. 
 
Michaelson, L.K., Knight, A., & Fink, D. (Eds.). (2004). Team-Based Learning: A 
Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching. Sterling, VA: Stylus. 
 
Tomlinson, C., & Strickland, C. (2005). Differentiation in Practice: A Resource Book for 
Differentiating Curriculum, Grades 9-12. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and 
Curriculum Development. 
 
Twigg, C. (2003). Improving learning and reducing costs: New models for online learning.  
Educause Review, 38(5), 28-38. 
 
Styer, S.C. (2009). Constructing and using case studies in genetics to engage students in active  
learning. American Biology Teacher, 71(3), 142-143. 


