Blended learning and teaching provides various benefits to stakeholders of postsecondary institutions. However, there exist some unsolved challenges that serve as justification for concerns by some critics. Some of the challenges are the time consumption nature of blended learning, technical difficulties, and the struggle to decide on what is the right blend format.
Time Consumption
Several studies found that the inability of faculty and instructional designers to find the best format of collaboration possible may transform the development of a blended program or course into a time consuming endeavor (Graham, Allen, & Ure, 2005, Hartman, 2002; Rossett, Douglis, & Frazee, 2003). Part of the challenge includes the fact that some faculty members may not be willing or have time to participate in the various training workshops on redesigning for blended teaching, acquiring new technical skills, and shifting pedagogical philosophy, which are necessary to maintain quality assurance (Dziuban, Hartman, Juge, Moskal, & Sorg, 2005; Robison, 2004). The increase in time to teach a blended course involves both the planning and designing, but also the delivery (Graham, Allen, & Ure, 2005). This time consumption challenge related to blended learning results from the opportunity offered by such delivery model to have more interactions between the student and the faculty, and among students. Once students feel that a safe place exists for meaningful interactions, there tends to be more engagement in the teaching and learning process (Dabbagh, 2002; Sands, 2002; Willett, 2002).