Blended online courses: students’ learning experiences and engaging instructional strategies

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital shift in higher education and forced university faculty to transform their courses into a blended or online modality to comply with current public health measures. Many instructors have implemented blended online courses, which combine synchronous and asynchronous online teaching and learning activities. The purpose of this study is to document university students’ learning experiences in blended online courses during the pandemic, and to identify instructional strategies to support student engagement in these courses. It adopts a mixed-methods research strategy in which data were collected through questionnaires from students who took a blended online course in the summer semester of 2020, in a variety of disciplines and academic cycles at four Quebec universities (n = 482). Following the analysis of student responses to open-ended questions, five recurring themes were identified: the enhancement of student-student interactions, the dynamism of synchronous and asynchronous sessions, the structured presentation of the course, the explanations and feedback from instructors, and the accessibility and involvement of instructors. For each theme, suggestions from student feedback are provided to facilitate student engagement in blended online courses.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• blended learning
• online learning
• student engagement
• instructional strategies
• synchronous/asynchronous

Acknowledgments

We thank the Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire sur la Formation et la Profession Enseignante – Université Laval (CRIFPE-UL) for providing the funds to translate this study from French to English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to the study conceptualization and methodology. Data collection and analysis were performed by GH. The manuscript was written by GH; SL provided substantial comments to improve all manuscript versions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Compliance with ethical standards

Ethical approval was granted by the ethics board committees at Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada (ref. 2019–2367) and at other universities included in the study (refs. UL-2019-391, CÉR-1920-42, 4246-2-2020).

All participants (students) gave their informed consent to participate in the online questionnaire.

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

1. Reminder on the interpretation of box plots: - About 25% of the data fall below the bottom side of the box (first quartile Q1), while about 25% of the data fall above the top side of the box (third quartile Q3). - The mean is represented by the cross in the rectangle, while the median (or second quartile Q2) is the line inside the box; about 50% of the data are below the median while about 50% of the data are above it. - The lines outside the box go to the minimum/maximum of the data (except if there are outliers, which are then represented by the outer points).

Additional information

Funding

This study was partially funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship

Notes on contributors

Géraldine Heilporn

Géraldine Heilporn is an assistant professor in educational technologies at the Faculty of Education of Université Laval. She conducts research and teaching activities on the use of digital technology in teaching and learning in various educational settings, from secondary school to university. She is particularly interested in student engagement in blended course modalities or in digitally mediated activities. Her research aims to support the learning, engagement and inclusion of all students with increasingly diverse needs. For more information, see www.fse.ulaval.ca/cv/Geraldine.Heilporn

Sawsen Lakhal

Sawsen Lakhal is a full professor at the department of pedagogy of Université de Sherbrooke. She is currently Director of the Doctor of Education (D.Éd.) program, which is a is a blended (face-to-face and online) program and the Chair of the research center CRIFPE, UdeS. Her research interests include applications of technology to higher education, online and blended learning, and persistence in distance courses and programs, quantitative methods, and statistical model validation. For more information, see https://www.usherbrooke.ca/recherche/specialistes/details/sawsen.lakhal

Marilou Bélisle

Marilou Bélisle is a full professor in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Sherbrooke. Her research focuses on the professional learning of students and academics in formal and informal settings. As the scientific director of the Incubator for Pedagogical Innovations, a living lab supporting a creative and collaborative approach to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, she studies processes and outcomes of pedagogical development and change at the individual and organizational levels.