Abstract:
This project aims to bring together colleagues of the FEHD to pilot blended learning (BL) as an innovation across the Institute. It introduces an inter-departmental platform coordinated by FEHD to support Faculty colleagues’ practice of BL.
The project will consist of about 15 sub-projects or cases involving at least 600 students, where each case refers to a course of study taught by a project team member. Participating faculty (n=10) will utilize existing e-learning platforms and professional development events to plan ways in which to apply BL in their instruction. Throughout the study’s duration, the project’s leadership team will organize dissemination sessions to exchange lessons learned at the individual project level and an overall session to synthesize the outcomes at the meta-project level.
Both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected and analyzed. Pre- and post-course surveys will determine students’ levels of enthusiasm about their experiences with BL; whereas, teachers will evaluate their BL trial lessons through guided reflection on key domains of planning and delivery. Exemplars of blended learning course materials, a blended learning pedagogy/strategy inventory, a blended learning interest group seminar series, a case album containing individual blended learning projects, a column in a learning and teaching website are expected as outputs to be widely disseminated. Participating faculty and teams will, in addition, publish academic journal papers in order to publicize individual project findings and the project’s overall results. The study may have great impact on student learning across programmes and disciplines in FEHD. The experience of promoting pedagogical innovation at the faculty level will be shared to make implication for institutional support to teachers at the time of change and reform of teaching in higher education.
Code:
T0132
Principal Project Supervisors:
Keywords provided by authors:
Subjects:
Start Date:
01 Nov 2014
End Date:
31 Oct 2016
Status:
Completed
Result:
The project developed the instruments to measure students' level of enthusiasm, motivation, and reflection involved in blended learning. The instrument contains 13 sub-scales including:
Extrinsic motivation
Introjected motivation
Identified motivation
Intrinsic motivation
Enthusiasm toward blended learning
Preference for learning method
Behavioral engagement
Cognitive engagement
Emotional engagement
Positive and negative affect
Before class emotion
During class emotion
After class emotion
A pilot survey result from two classes using blended learning instruction indicated that the survey is of acceptable internal consistency reliability, and that students who were involved in blended learning generally showed high motivation and enthusiasm toward the courses.
Impact:
The study intends to enhance student learning by providing empirical data of BL practice within the HKIEd community. The Professional Development Sessions are helping teachers enhance student learning by providing a platform to exchange ideas regarding their BL strategies. By obtaining data to create descriptive profiles of individual project-cases and findings from the meta project, the project is on the track to identify effective BL pedagogies, depict how these are enacted, and characterize how instruction is received by students. The professional development sessions helped identifying practice that facilitate BL pedagogies. In the long run, it enables teachers to build a repertoire of pedagogical practice that are beneficial to student motivation and engagement in BL. It changes the culture of learning and teaching by wide adoption of BL through the project. Towards the project completion, it will identify the institutional system, and how they can be tapped as a means of creating a culture of BL teaching.
Financial Year:
2013-14
Type:
TDG