Now, this learning method has already established itself as one of the most important trends for 21st century education.

Blended Learning: what it is and what its importance for education

Blended learning, also known as b-Learning, is a combination of offline and online instruction where students interact with the instructor, the material, and other students through both a physical classroom and an online platform.

Also known as semi-presential education, this is understood as a type of fusion between traditional education and modern methodology that uses technology.

Defining exactly what Blended Learning is can be quite complicated, as it is a comprehensive term. Currently, one of the most accepted definitions by scholars is the following:

“A teaching method to which you integrate technological as well as virtual activities in conjunction with traditional teaching, using planned activities that have a pedagogical value.” 

It is important to highlight its hybrid concept, that is, a methodology that adequately aggregates teaching by technological means, without replacing, but integrating with the traditional format.  

Blended Learning uses technology not only to supplement, but to transform and improve the learning process.

Since Internet access increased and Distance Education emerged and began to consolidate, educators and school administrators realized the importance of seeking more innovative teaching models.

The goal is to meet the needs of new generations of students for a more efficient, interesting, personalized education and connected with this reality in which technology is part of everyday life.

The great advantage of blended learning is that it offers “the best of both worlds” – that is, the advantages of online education combined with all the benefits of the traditional classroom.

– 8 things you need to know about online education 

A specialist who has helped in the dissemination of these practices, Michael Horn says he considers that blended learning is the only way to promote the transformation in education networks.

“Blended Learning opens up space for teamwork and the development of critical thinking like never before,” he said.

He further stresses that this approach is able to offer students both knowledge and opportunity to develop the skills you will need to be successful in life.

Online Courses and Blended Learning

Blended learning presents itself as a solution that mixes two possibilities of education and allows the teacher to experiment and increase his results.

At Coursify.me we have courses in this format that have been quite successful.

We observe professionals who mix online modules with face-to-face classes, or create an online course as support material for the classroom teaching, such as the example below:

https://farazs-web-development-school.coursify.me/

This combination of methodologies also contributes to another change in education that has been debated in recent years: the flipped learning.

Flipped learning: evolution in education

Flipped learning is a teaching methodology that makes the student protagonist in his own learning, promoting an active, investigative and collaborative learning.

In this model, the student studies a certain topic at home, with the help of technology, and goes to the classroom prepared to debate, discuss his doubts, contribute with ideas and thus exercise an active role in the classroom, being a transmitter of knowledge, not just a receiver.

Scholars have long advocated the positioning of the student as the protagonist of the class, learning more autonomously, with the support of technology, to optimize the effectiveness of education.

Disseminated in recent years by professors Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams, the flipped class methodology has achieved positive results, having been tested and approved by universities like Duke, Stanford and Harvard.

Despite the concept being considered an innovation, big names in education already talked about the importance of this form of active learning before.

We must remember, for example, that Paulo Freire was adept at having the teacher transform the class into an interactive environment, using resources such as videos and television. 

“We don’t have to end school,”he said in a dialogue with Papert in 1996, “but rather to change it completely until a new being as current as technology is born.”

Unfortunately, the change is slow, but some schools and universities are already doing this and, soon, we may see surprising results.

Meanwhile, blended learning and distance education continue to escalate, proving their benefits for a future reality that, we all hope, will bring concrete and positive changes to education.

Advantages of Blended Learning for schools and students 

Many debates have been made around the advantages and disadvantages of this method, and whether it is better or not than classroom teaching. 

As with e-Learning, the best conclusion reached was that it is not necessary to define whether one is superior to the other, both have their positive points and can be used together.

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It should always be remembered that not all students learn in the same way, some are more visual and auditory, while others are more practical, needing to interact and perform activities to be able to assimilate the content.

Mixing online and offline teaching, it is possible to take advantage of both methodologies, among which the following stand out:

• Greater time flexibility;
• Decreases the need for mobility;
• Decreases costs;
• It promotes integration among participants, with a consequent exchange of experiences;
• Enables the development of collective dynamics;
• Facilitates student assessment;
• Enables field work and visits to places of interest;
• Better learning results through the use of more diverse means of information.

Teachers who want to start exploring the potential of online teaching can choose as a starting point mixed course, using online classes to reinforce the content taught in the classroom.

Blended Learning in Brazil

In Brazil, blended learning is widely used in higher education with subjects taught through distance learning.

In 2016, Positivo University (UP) launched its first three undergraduate courses in the hybrid mode: Physical Education, Pedagogy and Gastronomy.

“We need to meet the needs of society, the work market and these students, who learn in a very different way than we learned ten years ago. Today, we already have a group of professors at the university who work with active methodologies and who increasingly integrate the technologies with the classroom. The objective of the hybrid courses is to train professionals capable of developing leadership skills, problem solving and technologically connected with a changing world ”, says the academic dean of UP and director of the Brazilian Association for Distance Learning (Abed), Carlos Longo.

According to Longo, the acquisition of information can happen through a dynamic Learning Management System (LMS), with e-book, games and video lessons.

– Whats is a Learning Management System

In addition, tuition fees are up to 30% lower, and may even serve residents of other cities and contribute to reducing the number of 15 million adults between 25 and 30 years of age who do not yet have a college degree in Brazil.

Distance Learning in the face of the COVID-19 crisis

Since the pandemic caused by COVID-19 spread around the world, dozens of schools have been using eLearning as a way to maintain classes, since all face-to-face activities have been banned.

In this scenario, institutions that were already familiar with some concepts of blended learning and mixed teaching in the classroom with technological activities, took the lead.

– Tips for using eLearning in school education

With no deadline to end, social isolation as a way of flattening the virus contagion curve continues, forcing schools to quickly adapt to online education.

The demand for eLearning learning platforms for hosting online classes has grown all over the world.

– What is an e-Learning platform

There are already several elementary and high schools offering access to classes within online platforms, in an attempt to continue education and prevent the school year from being lost.

However, aware that many students and their families still do not have access to computers and a stable internet, blended learning is the best solution to guarantee the right to education for all.

What many schools have tried to do is use online means to pass practical activities, which students can develop at home, within their routine.

Thus, long theoretical classes, which would be unfeasible for elementary school children, whose attention is very difficult to maintain for a longer period of time, are avoided, giving preference to activities based on experimentation.

While education officials debate what to do if isolation recommendations continue, each school looks for a solution and runs to adapt its classes to the digital format.

– Step by Step to Create Online Courses

Digital School at Coursify.me 

A complete and ready-to-use Learning Management System, Coursify.me has been hosting several elementary and high schools.

A good example is the Chapeuzinho Vermelho school, which created its digital school and managed to take its classes to each student’s home:

https://chapeuzinhovermelhodigital.coursify.me/

With all the necessary resources to enable and facilitate online learning, the platform has a friendly and fully customizable interface, allowing each school to maintain its visual identity, facilitating student recognition.

The Coursify.me features integration with other content platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, which is ideal for teachers who want to provide lessons in videos.

–  Learn how to record videos at home

In addition, users can upload videos, texts, images, audios and any other material that is hosted on Dropbox or on their own computer.

There is no limit on the number of students allowed, and the school has full control over who has access to the classes, being able to monitor each student, to find out who registered, attended the classes and fulfilled the activities sent.

Attending schools, businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic Learning Management System, ready to serve you.

Visit our website, test the platform and invest in blended and distance learning to continue educating your students in the best possible way. 

The post Blended Learning: How your school can combine online and offline teaching  appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

Understand what is and how Remarketing works

Remarketing is a tool that allows the display of content and ads to anyone who has had contact with your site.

As its name implies, remarketing means making marketing again to the same person.

Did not understand? Let’s take an example and soon you will realize that not only do you know what it is as you are a common “target” of this marketing strategy.

Example: You google search for some  sneakers. Soon, several shoes websites appear in search options. You visit some, purchase, or give up, and ten minutes later forget about it and enter a new search for dog food. The interesting part of this new search, is that in addition to dog food, another product is flashing on a side of the page. What? The sneakers! You leave the site and go to Instagram. What appears as a sponsored ad? Yeaph, the sneakers. Then you think that Skynet is in action, we are being watched by the machines and domination is near. It could be that, but it is actually only remarketing.

Native function of Google Adwords, Remarketing works by taggins. When a visitor accesses a website, he is “tagged” by a cookie that is saved on his computer.

– SEO X Google Adwords

This cookie works by increasing the number of advertisements that appear when the user visits other sites displaying Google ads.

Who advertise on Google Adwords can choose to display its publication in two different networks: Search and Display.

The search network are the results pages that appear when someone does a search. The display network are all the sites, blogs and social networks that provide space for the Adwords ads.

As you can see, it is almost impossible to escape the remarketing, which makes it a killer strategy.

How to use the Remarketing

Although it seems a simple strategy to implement, is necessary a planning for effective results.

Your remarketing ads can appear on any site that accepts Google advertising, but you can choose so that they appear only on specific sites.

Like other digital marketing strategies, your plan needs to be designed to reach consumers who are in different stages of the sales funnel.

– Digital marketing to promote online courses

For this, use the remarketing lists system, something similar to the segmentation of email marketing.

Remarketing lists

This lists aim to separate your site visitors based on the type of action that they performed.

For example, who bought something, who searched for a product category, who entered something into the cart and abandoned, etc.  

To guide your remarketing actions, see some examples of lists you can create:

• Who visited your site;
• Who visited more than three pages of your site;
• Who bought more than US $ 100;
• Who signed your newsletter;
• Who clicked the link in your profile on social networks;
• Who have downloaded an e-book or other material.

Lists and plan created, it’s time to start implementing your strategy, and that’s where cookies come in.

Functioning as a kind of “flag” cookies are stored on the visitor’s computer, linked to a tag inserted in your site code.

The remarketing tag tells AdWords to save visitors to your “known category list.” When people access this page, the cookie ID is added to the remarketing list.

Then, when the visitor access other sites, Google will identify the cookie and display ads that you have determined when creating the campaign.

For your investment to be successful, it is important ensure that: a) the ad is highly relevant to your target audience; b) contains something attractive to encourage them to come back to your site, for example, a special offer.

Ways to do remarketing with Google AdWords

As already mentioned, the remarketing was created by Google Adwords and the options for using this tool are not few.

Here are some ways to apply its strategy according to Google:

• Standard remarketing: show ads to previous visitors as they browse other sites and apps in the Display Network.
• Dynamic Remarketing: improve your results with Dynamic Remarketing, which focuses on adverts for products or services that people have seen your site or application.
• Remarketing lists for ads on the Search Network: show ads to previous visitors as they continue their searches on Google.
• Video remarketing: Show ads to people who interacted with your videos or your YouTube channel.
• Customer remarketing list: with a customer segmentation list, you can upload data lists provided by your customers. When these people are connected to Google, your ads will appear.

Most remarketing ads are produced in text and / or image and are managed by AdWords. Currently, animated banners with videos and gifs are gaining popularity.

There are a number of standard sizes to create these ads, and it is recommended that companies produce at least four or five in the most common formats.

The size and design options are determined by the space allocated to sites that accept advertising on the display network.

These publications allow further elaboration, such as the use of images and effects and therefore are more striking and attractive to the user.  

On other hand, the remarketing on the search network is focused on the search that the visitor is doing, ie their willingness to click is higher.

What are the advantages of Remarketing?

Much more focused than a traditional campaign ads, remarketing drives and displays your ads only to those who came to your site.

It’s for this reason that the remarketing conversion rate tends to be higher than the rate of ads campaigns in general.

Another advantage is that the frequency of display is much higher, so the consumer does not forget so easy from your website and offer.

In the case of visitors who abandoned the cart, for example, remarketing can give the push that was missing for them to return and finalize the purchase.

Among all the benefits of this strategy, we can highlight:

• Access to people at the right time: you reach people who have interacted with your company when they are doing research and are likely to buy.
• High power targeting: create remarketing lists for specific cases. For example, a list for people who added something to their shopping cart but did not complete the transaction.
• Range widely: your ads are displayed on more than two million websites and mobile apps.
• Facility to create ads: create free image ads, text and video with Google Adwords Ad gallery.
• Campaign statistics: access to performance reports, information on where the ads are displayed and how much is being paid.

Now if you are wondering how Google promotes remarketing on such a large network of sites, know that this is because the search giant has ties to thousands of websites that participate in its affiliate program worldwide.

These sites give space to display ads, and in return, receive a value for each click (Display Network).

Of course that Google tries to optimize the most your results, so he seeks place ads on sites that have a theme related to your product / service.

In case if you are advertising a clothing item, it will display your advertisement in clothing stores, shoes and fashion in general.

Thus, in addition to promoting the advertiser, the seeker tries to give the user something he really has interest, which greatly increases the chances of conversion.

Facebook also has tools for remarketing and works much like Google.

The difference is that the Facebook lists are made from the user ID, phone numbers or emails.

Google Remarketing changes in 2018

There were two major changes in the remarketing this year, both of which give people more control over the ads they see.

First, Google is starting the implementation of a feature by which users can silence remarketing ads for 90 days, if they considered them very repetitive or irrelevant.

Second, a recent version of Apple’s operating system (MacOS 11) introduced a feature called Intelligent Tracking Prevention.

As the name suggests, people who use the Safari browser will have all the tracking cookies off after just 24 hours. The only way to be reactivated a cookie is if the user makes a new visit to the site.

This raised the following question by companies: “How will we be able to tell if someone sees our ad and makes a purchase after the first 24 hours?”

In response, Google has said it is updating cookies AdWords for everything (ie ‘conversion attribution’) function normally.

However, companies will notice a good drop of activity due to lack of tracking Safari users.

To get an idea, almost half of mobile users use Safari because of the iPhone, and over half of all traffic is now mobile.

How integrate remarketing with your inbound marketing strategy

You can combine remarketing with inbound marketing to create a very powerful disclosure strategy.

Basically, instead of creating ads promoting products, your campaign must promote content.

– How to use Inbound Marketing

So you convince your audience to come to you, making it one assiduous consumer and a potential lead.  

Remarketing can even be combined with the techniques of landing page to capture audience and generate leads.

Using this strategy you create more opportunities for the consumer enter and advance in your sales funnel, while building your relationship with him.

For those who create online courses, this is a great way of capturing and retaining students.

– 5 tips to attract students

While remarketing is ideal to present your course and attract new visitors to your page, inbound actions focus on keeping consumers interested in your product / service.

With a well planned strategy in a short time you will have your first students.

Complete elearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and promote courses on the Internet, without having to invest to start their own business.

Attending companies and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is a dynamic and customizable learning management system.

– Whats is a Learning Management System

Visit our website, test the platform and see how easy it’s to profit by doing what you love.

The post Remarketing: What is and how it can boost your sales appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.