CIA of BlendED

What is CIA of BlendED?

In any classroom, blended or not, there are three elements teachers address every day:

Curriculum
Instruction
Assessment

The acronym "CIA" is an easy way to remember these three elements. The BlendED initiative focuses on CIA of blended learning which is an overlay of three elements:

Digital Curriculum
Guided Instruction
Authentic Assessment

Digital Curriculum

Digital Curriculum is a foundation to the BlendED classroom. Students access standards-based digital lessons which allows them to become owners of their learning.

Digital curriculum should include components of an effective lesson with elements that include content, assignments, and assessments. Digital lessons should be engaging and interactive. Many software products and CCSD District-developed digital content attempt to meet the needs of student learning and provide a good baseline knowledge on concepts. Much of the content will be delivered at low level Depth of Knowledge (DoK 1-2).

Guided Instruction

Digital curriculum captures a variety of data depending on the program. It’s this data, provided on each and every individual student, which teachers can use to Guide Instruction. Think of digital curriculum as the teacher’s aide with data to help drive decision making.

The BlendED classroom needs a human touch and caring heart to connect students to the curriculum. A teacher’s role changes from constantly delivering content to one who monitors data and coaches student learning, tutoring and intervening as needed. Teachers know where students typically have difficulty and the “power” standards that are essential to student learning. Using their expertise, teachers can create scaffolds for students to anchor essential knowledge.

Unlike the software, teachers can create stimulating learning environments with real-world applications, pair collaborations, and motivating project learning opportunities. Like a good coach, teachers should push students to deeper thinking. This may include hands-on activities, Socratic seminars, and group work, where students are asked to demonstrate understanding in authentic manners and take students to deeper Depths of Knowledge (DoK 1-3).

Authentic Assessment

The digital curriculum will have various assessments. However, within the balanced BlendED approach, Authentic Assessments should ask students to use technology to question, probe, investigate, then analyze and synthesize findings.

Authentic assessments should stretch students and have them engage in the “Four Cs”:

Critical Thnking
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity

Authentic assessments are given by the teacher and may include peer work and project learning to course instruction that is thought provoking and extends student thinking to increase rigor and complexity into levels three and four Depth of Knowledge (DoK 3-4).

How do the individual components fit together in the classroom?

A successful blended learning classroom has a balanced approach where each of the three components of CIA are addressed in the classroom.

Think of three overlapping circles as shown below. There are seven different regions, some in a single circle, and others in two. The sweet spot in the middle is where a blended learning classroom has a balanced approach and a solid foundation in all three CIA components of BlendED.

Also, the video on the right is an additional resource that explains how "CIA" addresses the needs of a blended classroom. This video can also be viewed at https://youtu.be/nZBbmIwubkc

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