Case Study about Blended Learning

In secondary education, I run a small case study about Blended Learning. The aim of that study was to find out, what students think before their eBlended Learning experience and how their expectations have been fulfilled.

About the Preconditions

I chose two similar classes where I was teaching physics. The students were approximately 16 years old, the majority were female students.
The students had a preliminary and a closing questionnaire with similar questions to answer.

The Execution of the Learning Experience

I selected one topic split into several activities and prepared a well-performed Blended Learning Unit. The content was split into two parts: The starting lesson with the explanations and teaching the basic issues was done at school. The learning phase with multimedia based experiments and some reading activities were in the distance learning part.
A well-known teacher did the tutorial support. As a final assessment, the students posted a summary to several questions. These postings were evaluated. In a final presence session, the students had the opportunity to ask questions to the teacher, additional the postings of the students were discussed.

The Questionnaires

The used questionnaires defined closed questions with four predefined answers. Some answers of the preliminary questionnaire were created similar to the final questions. So it is possible to follow the student’s development or to compare the expectations with the experiences.

The Result – a Study

The questionnaires were analyzed and finally interpreted. Both questionnaires were part of the used VLE (System: Moodle Ver. 2.6) and collected by the questionnaire module. The data was extracted in an Excel file. Finally, a graphic visualization was creating from the available data.

The Graphics

The complete material was visualized using Excel charts. I post an interesting analyzes as an example. Here is the question about the use of the system: At the beginning the students answered that they will use the system intensively – the final question shows that it wasn’t true.

Graphic 1: Use of Blended Learning

The learning results are directly connected with that behavior (or attitude): The expectations were high at the beginning, the success was low (as they didn’t use the system).

Graphic 2: Success of the Blended learning

Conclusion

• Students expect a lot from eLearning and Blended Learning 
• They hope to be better or more successful using these teaching methods 
• Student’s success depends on the attitude of students and the well-prepared and performed course.
  
  The complete study is available from the European Foundation for Quality in Blended Learning.