The Effect of Blended Learning Environment on Teachers’ Course Design and Instructional Practices

Abstract

In India, Technology-Enabled Learning (TEL) provides sustainable solutions to address the country’s education needs and chronic shortage of qualified teachers. Though a number of government-led digital learning initiatives are underway, TEL is still at a nascent stage in India due to the lack of: infrastructure, digital literacy, institutional readiness (policies and strategies) and technologically and pedagogically qualified teachers. To address these issues at the institutional level, Commonwealth of Learning (COL) partnered with Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT), Andhra Pradesh to strengthen RGUKT’s vison and mission and to deliver quality education through TEL.

COL’s TEL partnership helped the RGUKT in developing a TEL policy in consultation with the stakeholders; identifying and integrating appropriate open source technologies with teaching-learning; building technological and pedagogical capacity among the teachers to design, develop and deliver blended learning courses through Moodle; and measuring the impact of TEL.

The evaluative study “Impact of Technology-Enabled Learning Implementation at Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies” examined students’ blended learning experiences and analysed the experiences of teachers in the design, development and delivery of blended courses. The sample included the 2472 blended course students and 21 blended learning teachers. Since this paper presents the effect of Blended Learning Environment on Teachers’ Course Design and Instructional Practices, it shares the experiences and perceptions of the 21 blended learning teachers collected through interview and self-reflection journals. The 21 blended learning teachers perceived that designing and delivering the blended course helped them in: (i) planning and integrating offline and online assessments and activities, (ii) enriching students’ learning experience with multimedia resources, including open educational resources (OER); (iii) adopting flexible and innovative instructional practices; (iv) improving communication and interaction with students; (v) improving digital literacy etc. //Paper ID 188