Blended Learning: An effective approach for Online Teaching and Learning

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic brought about a major shift in the educational training of surgical trainees. As the Lockdown was implemented and the daily workforce reduced, an alternate method was employed to provide uninterrupted learning. Blended learning that includes virtual learning with face-to-face learning/teaching was utilized for the surgical trainees. MOODLE (Modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment), an open-source learning management system, was integrated as an Online Component of our Blended Learning Program. We aimed to evaluate the perception of postgraduate trainees of General Surgery regarding the benefits and limitations of Blended Learning, particularly its online component, i.e., Moodle LMS, for the betterment of surgical -education during the COVID-19 pandemic.Material and MethodsThirty-three postgraduate general surgery trainees were enrolled in a blended learning program, in which its online component, Moodle LMS, comprised four major topics on General Surgery. A questionnaire was provided to the trainees to obtain feedback on blended learning in general, and Moodle LMS was mainly themed on the Likert scale.ResultsThe approach of blended learning was positively received by the participants, the majority of whom were females (75%) and comprising of Year 1 residents (33.3%). Nearly half of the participants found Moodle LMS user-friendly, practical and a good platform for learning. However, nearly two thirds (60.6%) were uncertain if it ever helped in applying knowledge to interpret laboratory and radiological results for patient management. Even then, most of them found that the face-to-face component of blended learning helped them develop specific clinical and surgical skills (42.4%). Emphatically, 78.7% would recommend it for surgical training.ConclusionBlended learning was found to be beneficial in the training process of surgical postgraduates in the current COVID-19 pandemic situation. We recommend it for the training of doctors for optimized learning.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the implementation of technology in educational assessments, specifically using the Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle at SMK Brantas Karangkates. Traditional paper-based tests limit multimedia integration and efficient scoring, whereas online exams offer a more effective and streamlined alternative for learning evaluations. Method: The research focuses on Moodle’s implementation process, detailing steps like preparing questions, setting up quiz features, conducting exams, and managing automated scoring. Observational data and school records were used to analyze Moodle's application. Practical Applications: Using LMS Moodle, with its multimedia and automated grading capabilities, enhances exam efficiency, accessibility, and result management. This practical approach supports schools in modernizing their assessment processes. Conclusion: SMK Brantas Karangkates has effectively used Moodle for online exams over the past five years, showing significant improvements in assessment efficiency. This study illustrates how e-learning platforms like Moodle can support schools in adapting to technological changes in education.

In this paper, our aim is to explore the predictors of adoption by students of a Learning Management System (LMS) based on a Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment as well as the influence of active student participation and the interactive usage of an LMS on the achievements of students in a blended learning environment. Our study was conducted on 169 students, who are using an LMS for the first time in their studies, from the largest university from Serbia. Our findings indicate that students' active participation in class has a stronger positive effect on students' achievement than does students' interactive usage of the LMS. A stepwise linear regression analysis revealed that a student's interactive usage of the LMS and his/her active participation in class accounted for 47% of the variation in a student's achievement. A student's interactive usage of the LMS is only affected by his/her perceived easy usage of the LMS.

The study focused on the assessment of the technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) of graduate students enrolled in the Master of Arts in Science Education (MASE) program and tested the effectiveness of a blended learning approach using online collaborative tools, a learning management system, and interactive resources in Biology. The specific objectives of the study included describing the profile of MASE students in terms of computer and internet resources and skills, measuring their confidence levels in the four TPACK constructs, finding significant differences in pretest and posttest scores, and obtaining student feedback on the use of Edmodo as a Learning Management System. The study employed a one-shot pretest-posttest experimental design using a combination of online resources and face-to-face interactions. Based on the results, there was an increase in the median values before and after the intervention, as shown by the difference between the pre-median and post-median. Pre-implementation, the TPACK confidence level of the students was rated fairly confident (FC), but it increased after to completely confident (CC). This suggests that the students' TPACK confidence level improved positively using the BL approach. Likewise, the t-stat value of 10.68 indicates a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores after implementing the blended learning approach. This suggests that the blended learning approach had a positive and noteworthy impact on the student's performance, as seen in the improved test scores. The study's results highlighted the benefits of Edmodo as well as the use of interactive online activities in their performance and TPACK as reported by the students.

This paper aims to explore the benefits of Blended Learning towards students’ learning experiences at an offshore campus of an Australian university located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. At the university campus, the Blended Learning practice in use is the displacement of content. Content displacement refers to a portion of the learning content and activities for a course being delivered online via the Learning Management System. Learning not only happens in face-to-face sessions at a given time but is extended to online spaces as well, happening anywhere at any time at students’ preference. The focus of this research is its usefulness and effectiveness in promoting interactions between students and their peers, their teachers, and course materials. An online survey, which was designed based on a set of validated questions, was used to collect data from sixty-six students enrolled in eight Blended Learning courses. The analysis of the survey results provides empirical evidence to the claim that students’ perception of their learning experiences at the university was beneficially impacted as a result of the Blended Learning environment in each of their classes. Specifically, factor analysis using oblique rotation method identifies a clear factor structure across survey questions, representing four dimensions of benefits: Engagement, Flexibility of learning, Online learning experience, and Self-confidence. In addition, significant differences between the clusters on these factors indicate that students vary in their responses towards the benefits of Blended Learning and their experience with a Blended Learning approach.

This article discussed Blended Learning after the flourished utilization of Learning Management System (LMS) in English classrooms. LMS is found to be one of the efficient digital tools in delivering the content learning, especially English subject. Almost all language skills can be exploited by LMS. It provides English learning both synchronous and asynchronous modes; which meet the purpose of personalized learning. However, there still could be found that LMS has been mistakenly used and created blended learning becomes inefficient learning strategy in the classroom, mostly in face to face meetings. To tackle the problems, this paper attempts to propose the concept of face to face interactions in blended learning classroom. It will be seen from LMS’s ability in the classroom, characteristics of Generation Z students, and the demand of 21st century skills for future workforce.

It is generally noticed that all the teaching learning practices have changed over a period of time, with changing needs and demands of the society as well as the Nation. Teacher education is one such area that is experiencing phenomenal changes as a result of the advancement and use of technology. Latest innovations and technological revolution has drastically affected the affordability, accessibility and adaptability to these modern ICT and ICT related tools and gadgets. With these technological changes, the way and means of imparting education has also been revolutionized. The wide use of online technologies and available Internet in the field of education and the opportunity of blending face-to-face instruction with online teaching environments have caused a paradigm shift in the way of delivering instruction to the learners. An important implication of this shift is the need for a recommitment to create an ideal learning environment for students and employing new pedagogies and technologies, where appropriate. One such technology is ‘Blended Learning’. Blended learning is a strategy that creates a more integrated approach to teaching learning process where different learning environments like Face-to-Face, online, social networking etc are mixed with a goal to provide most efficient and effective instruction experience. Blended learning is a potential outcome of advanced technology-based learning systems. Blender learning approaches makes use of advance technology to provide training and development in higher education and within industry. Its rapid growth has been facilitated by the Internet and other emerging technologies like cloud computing, cybernetics, artificial intelligence etc. Over the past few decades, a lot of research work has been done on blended learning and its utility in institutions of higher learning. In the present research study, the author has tried to explore the role of blended learning technology in developing and enhancing pedagogical skills among the teacher educators and prospective teachers. The author through this paper have provided directions for creating a blended learning environment, which can be used by institutions of higher learning to take decisions about the learning and teaching initiatives. The present paper also discusses about how blended learning can improve the teaching, working environment, quality of teacher education and help in managing and improving the costly and expensive education of today that the student community have to bear. The author has tried to highlight the various challenges and implications which are there in implementing and integrating such a technology in teacher educational initiations. The general conclusion which is drawn from this research study is that blended learning approach offers the most efficient and effective way of teaching learning process in today's fast changing, competitive global arena of higher education in general and teacher education in particular. Further research work can be done, where we can compare the students’ academic achievement using this blended learning approach in comparison to traditional or conventional approach of learning.

Education advances every day, and one such advancement is the Learning Management System (LMS) which has been used in various countries worldwide. It gained greater impetus when online education came into the picture in 2020 globally to the entry of COVID-19. However, LMS is still an unexplored topic in some regions of the world. This paper aims to spell out how the inclusion of LMS can provide an easy imparting of education and a very convenient way of transferring knowledge so that the institutes not exposed to such experience could know about this. LMS helps instructors manage all academic activities from anywhere, anytime, as it is online-integrated software designed to support education online or offline. This paper intends to enlist the usefulness of one such LMS called Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle), an e-learning platform that facilitates impactful teaching and learning. Instructors and students who have used Moodle are interviewed in a semi-formal way. The descriptive methodology was used to identify the highlights of the responses. The results of this study bring the effectiveness of Moodle into the limelight so that institutions adopt it to enhance the teaching process in effective learning. Hence, it lists the limitations of Moodle where the scope for development exists and intends to recommend to educationists to invest in LMS to contribute toward the holistic development of 21st-century education.

This study adopted an empirical study to examine the application of the blended learning approach to Web-based College English Teaching Platform (WCETP) in a medical university in eastern China.The study was conducted on 40 students majoring in Clinical Medicine from two classes and raised two questions:(1) Is there a significant difference between the blended learning approach and the traditional classroom learning approach in terms of students' attitudes and satisfaction?(2) Is there a significant difference between the blended learning approach and the traditional classroom learning approach in terms of students' academic achievement?By analyzing and discussing the resultant statistics, the author drew the conclusion that compared with the traditional teaching approach, participants held more positive attitudes towards the blended learning model.Besides, participants preferred to this new blended learning model, which could better stimulate their interest, foster their autonomous learning and collaborative learning and prompt their confidence.What is more, the quantitative research with the comparisons of language learning achievement between the experimental group and the control group revealed that there was a significant difference in terms of students' academic achievement between the traditional classroom learning approach and the blended learning approach.Furthermore, students performed better in language learning under the blended learning model than those under the traditional model.The findings of the study indicate that as the brand-new learning approach, the blended learning approach which integrates the advantages of online learning and face-to-face classroom teaching could enhance students' comprehensive language skills, improve students' self-confidence in learning English, and cultivate the learners' ability of self-learning.Therefore, study on the application of blended learning for college English learning has an important reference value and practical significance for the reform of College English Education.

Blended learning has been growing in demand and popularity and has become a common phenomenon in modern higher education systems, especially with the implementation of learning management system (LMS). This paper examined the effects of critical success factors on students' experience and satisfaction with the LMS in a blended learning setting. Certain characteristics of students, instructors, system, classmates, course design, and organization were identified from the literature as the main indicators of the LMS success. A total of 174 university students (94 males and 80 females) responded to an online questionnaire. A partial least square (PLS) approach was used for data analysis. The result showed that certain factors were found to influence students' perceived ease of use and usefulness of LMS and consequently their satisfaction. Findings from this paper provide the necessary insights as to how universities can enhance students' experiences and satisfaction of LMS in order to support the blended learning approach.

Background: During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, many academics and researchers in English Language Teaching (ELT) have studied a variety of issues faced in various types of online teaching and learning, including examining the efficacy of the Blended Learning (BL) approach as a result of the emergency remote and fully online learning or e-learning in response to the learning-from-home policy. Nevertheless, the researchers discovered that only a few studies employed a narrative inquiry method to explore students' perspectives, stories, and voices relating to their ways of learning during and after the pandemic. Objective: This study helped the researchers better understand the challenges students faced and the adjustments they made, providing unique insights that other methods might miss. Methods: This study addresses that gap by examining the stories and views of nine EFL students from three Indonesian universities who experienced various learning modes during and after the pandemic, including face-to-face, fully online, and blended classes. The students were requested to share their experiences and viewpoints about the BL approach through open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The methods and tools from the narrative analysis were then employed to analyze the gathered stories and responses. Findings: The findings indicate that while most students supported BL using appropriate online tools, their understanding of the approach varied, emphasizing the need for specific conditions for its successful implementation. Conclusion: This study contributes to the understanding of the approach variations of BL.

The paper discusses how the use of blended learning approach was adopted to deliver a 3rd year Mechanics of Machines course for Mechanical Engineering students at the University of Botswana. The course delivery involved a mix of both face-to-face and Blackboard technology to create an efficient and effective learning environment. A survey of 101 students was conducted over a period of 3 years for the respondents to evaluate their teaching and learning preferences. The results show that students accepted the blended learning approach because of its benefits. More lecturers are encouraged to use blended learning and teaching approaches to promote active, independent and lifelong learning.

Social media is currently being used to effectively engage and communicate with students in universities across the globe. As Beidelman (2015, p.1) acknowledges, “Social media is a tool that teachers can use to make their classroom more engaging, relevant and culturally diverse”. This action research project is entitled “Increasing student engagement and community via the integration of social media technologies to enhance/inform blended learning at University”, and was funded by a University Exploratory and Enhancement Learning and Teaching Grant. This paper focuses on the first phase of a two-phase project. The overall purpose of the project was to explore whether a blended learning approach, that combines the University’s existing Learning Management System (LMS) with social media applications, strengthens the quality of teaching, and therefore enhances the level of student learning, engagement and community. The first research phase constituted an online survey, distribut ed to 647 students within six University disciplines and investigates university students’ perspectives and attitudes in relation to the use of social media as a pedagogical tool. Respondents reported varying views on the issue. The overarching positive themes were: communication, connection and engagement. Neutral themes included: the win/lose situation and social media being a supplement to teaching. Negative themes comprised: distraction, poor use of time and face-to-face being a more appropriate form of learning. A small proportion of respondents reported having no opinion on the matter and one student raised the need for students to increase their social media usage in the higher education setting.

Irrespective of the high popularity of blended learning (BL) applications in higher education centers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students perceive certain challenges as depriving them of its effective usage for educational purposes. Using a qualitative study approach, this study aimed to find out the challenges students face using the BL approach during and after the era of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures institutions put in place to help students' BL best practices. Ten participants from the Ghana Communication Technology University took part in a semi-structured interview session to ascertain the students' BL practices in higher education centers. Although the study's outcome revealed some potential benefits derived from the BL approach, poor internet connectivity, poor student-lecturer engagement, the high cost of internet data charges, poor power supply, and a dearth of proper orientation programs amongst students were the challenges identified.The study has emphasized that implementing effective BL in teaching and learning leads to increased student satisfaction, student-instructor interaction, student-centered learning and collaboration, and student engagement. Hence, recommendations are made to ensure students achieve effective BL in schools.

With the advent of artificial intelligence, institutions are now adopting the Blended learning approach, which infuses face-to-face strategies and online teaching methodologies. A blended learning approach is a way to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in higher education institutions, but how feasible is that in TVET Colleges? This study thus investigated the global perceptions of lecturers and students in Technical Vocational Education (TVET) colleges regarding Blended learning for teaching practical subjects online. It examined the challenges and opportunities of moving practical learning online, considering the unique requirements of first-hand subjects like Electrical Engineering, Tourism, Hospitality, Art, and Design. The study utilised articles from Google Scholar and Science Direct databases to comprehensively understand the effectiveness of Blended learning in the TVET context. Using Blended learning as a theoretical framework, a new methodological approach, and a promising blueprint for transforming higher education, the study adopted an integrative literature review methodology to synthesise identified cases and draw themes from the survey. The study brings new knowledge regarding the significant shift in online learning usage during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in vocational education, providing valuable insights for designing effective online learning strategies. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Blended Learning, Integrative Literature Review, Technical Vocational Education (TVET) Colleges