Benefits of a blended learning environment

Computer-supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) provides students with the freedom to explore and learn at their own pace and level. This is more flexible than lecture where students must learn at the same level and pace.
When students are left to focus on their own with their own mechanisms they may find it easier to concentrate than following a teachers thought process during a lecture. Following a teacher during lecture students may not understand concepts early in a lecture which may impact their ability to understand concepts later in the lecture.
With CSCL students can review and explore concepts they did not understand before proceeding onto new concepts and learning.
CSCL may provide a more expansive world to explore than lecture. Students can explore the Internet and extra tutorials when they have completed regular assignments. Given this freedom, they can tailor their time to find new interests in learning and new information about their world.

A wider choice over content and direction of learning: on-line, interactive, multimedia knowledge bases have much broader information than any expert of the subject can ever achieve. Those knowledge can be updated more quickly than books and instructor's syllabus.
Break the distance barrier, teachers and students can be partners in projects and tutorials instead of students being more passive participants
Immediate feedback, students do not need to wait for test scores and critiques. With on-line tutorials and projects, students may obtain results immediately.
Participants have more control over their learning pace, cooperate more effectively with others
Organizational flexibility: the size of a CSCL can be as small as two students sitting next to each other to peers across networked machines anywhere they might be.
Anonymity effect: some CSCL environments are anonymous, encouraging free-discussion with no fear of embarrassment.
Ownership of class time: in traditional presentational classes, students tend to feel they are working and learning for the teachers, while in CSCL, they exercise far more control over the class time and discussion, which makes them more self consciousness and more motivated to learning.

Drawbacks to a blended learning environment

CSCL is rather new to most academic settings. Therefore, there is a great deal of learning that teachers themselves must first incorporate before using CSCL. As well, there is a great deal of new planning to be done, to fit CSCL exercises into class room time. Where can we use CSCL? What will we do with CSCL?
Do we have the equipment? This is a difficult task, because often this equates to: do we have the money and time? CSCL is more expensive than the typical lecture style classroom. Academic institutions need to weigh the benefits of CSCL with the cost and time of implementing CSCL.

CSCL is relatively new, more research and experiments are needed to determine the comparative advantages and effectiveness of CSCL vs. traditional teaching methods. Not all kinds of knowledge and student pools are choices for the CSCL environment.
Technology barriers: high speed data communication channels, better data compression schemes, compatibility of multimedia platforms.
Cost barriers: computer, networking and communication equipment, network and education software development, and maintenance expenses.
Some pros may become cons: for example, a). brainstorm effect, availability of too many materials may scare away some students from learning. b). Anonymity may invite inappropriate actions.