LEARNERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ONLINE LEARNING COMPONENT IN BLENDED LEARNING ENGLISH CLASSES AT PHAN THIET UNIVERSITY M.A Tu Thi Tuyet Vy Faculty of Foreign Languages University of Phan Thiet Abstract This paper presents a case study of students’ perceptions and attitudes towards Blended Learning (BL) course in English at University of Phan Thiet. The statement of problem that blended learning of English course annoys students at University of Phan Thiet. This paper identifies the perceptions and attitudes that blended learning provides to students’ learning experiences as well as to investigate negative impressions in blended English courses from the learners’ perception. This paper also outlines the concept of blended learning courses and e-learning from students’ viewpoints.
In this paper, the author conducted a survey through a questionnaire at University of Phan Thiet, Faculty of Foreign Languages in both boys and girls colleges. There are 130 respondents enrolled in Faculty of Foreign Languages. The questionnaire was designed to measure the students’ perceptions and attitudes towards BL. This study concludes that in general the students ’perceptions and attitudes towards BL were positive in terms of the three domains in the questionnaire.
Moreover, students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning process. As well as learners can decide when and how to use the resources provided. This study also concludes that blended learning is as effective as face to face learning in developing and improving knowledge and skills. It reflects the students’ negative impressions in some points as waste of time, easy cheating and social isolation.
Keywords: attitudes blended learning course, learning, learners, and perceptions 1 INTRODUCTION Use of technology in education has become necessary and inevitable, not a luxury because of its positive effectson the teaching and learning process. Recently, there has been much attention paid to the growing blendedlearning course in University of Phan Thiet. Most of the current efforts have been focused onencouraging students touse blended courses. They got appropriate training sessions in how to use and apply all tools and activities inblackboard.
The blended learning course is one of the important applications of using information and communication technology in the educational process. Blended learning course is the way whichcombines face to face and online learning. In Saudi Arabia, decision-makers, educational researchers, educatorsand the generalpublic and particularly students are gaining awareness of the advantages of these technologies and are adoptingthem widely, though in some limited domains. University of BIsha is one of the universities in Saudi Arabiawhich promotes e- learning centers and e-learning communities.
Some limited courses arecompulsorily deliveredasynchronously online in the form of blended learning. In Phan Thiet University there are three-level strategies courses adopted and implemented in e-learning. These three levels are asfollow: 1. Supportive e-learning, which is a mandatory requirement for all faculty members.
In this level, studentstake classes in traditional classrooms but can simultaneously use LMS (Blackboard program) to obtaininformation regarding their courses such as announcements, course syllabi, and information regarding instructors. Students are also able to share in discussions forums and encouraged to use e- mails. Blended Learning, which is optional for faculty members. In this level, between 20% and 75% of thecourse content is delivered online through Blackboard (BB).
Full e-learning, in which the course is delivered completely online. University of Phan Thiet has adopted supportive e-learning and blended learning levels of strategy learning, but rightnow the full e- learning has not been adopted. The theme of this paper is blended learning in mainstream disciplinary communities. In par-ticular, the paper reports on findings from the last two decades which looked at origination, development and future of blended learning through articles and other research publications.
In the early 1990s, the conception of online learning formed the possibility of blended learning (Senge, 1990). Since then studies on online learning have been flourishing towards integration with classroom learning. Learners tended to combine the newly acquired knowl-edge with previous knowledge on a certain subject (Collins and Berge, 1996).The 21st century has witnessed vast amount of research into blended learning. The simplest form of blended learning was considered as a mixture of physical classroom activities and learning activities supported by online tech-nologies (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004) and was further developed into the integration of learning activities, students, and instructors.
Advantages of blended learning were extolled by many studies, among which were learning process facilitation via online or classroom technolo-gies (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004; Vaughan, 2007), gap bridging between learning and working (Bohle Carbonell, Bohle-Carbonell, Dailey-Hebert, Gerken, and Grohnert et al., 2013), online collaborative learning promotion (Carr-Chellman, Dyer, and Breman et al., 2000; Gabriel, 2004), higher education benefit (Gar-rison and Kanuka, 2004), effectiveness among large and diverse student cohorts (Dziuban, Hartman, and Moskal, 2004; Sharpe, Benfield, Roberts, and Francis, 2006; Vaughan, 2007), adoptability in many institutions such as higher education (Kaur and Ahmed, 2005), industry (Executive Conversation, 2010), K-12 schools (Keller, Ehman, and Bonk, 2004), the military (Bonk, Olson, Wisher, and Orvis, 2002) and many other sectors.However, problems of blended learning were demonstrated as well. It was argued that professional development would generally benefit from the extensive literature on teacher expertise that focused on how well teachers understood the content they taught and how well they understood how students learnt that content, but 3 blended learning was not proved useful in teachers’ professional development (Bausmith and Barry, 2011). Some institu-tions were not ready to accept blended learn-ing (Vaughan, 2007). It was even seemed as a dangerous conception (Seife, 2000) in that it threatened the integrity of the traditional pedagogy.As a result, studies on blended learning reached various kinds of conclusions, among which both advantages and problems were revealed, and even the definition of blended learning did not arrive at a general agreement.
The review of literature on blended learning, therefore, seemed necessary to summarize previous studies and to reveal a clear scenario for future research into blended learning Objectives of the Study The objectives of the present study are: 1. To identify perceptions and attitudes of the students towards blended learning of English courses. To investigate negative impressions about blended learning of English courses. To outline concepts of Blended Learning of English courses and e-learning as students perceive them Significance of the Study The significance of the study comes from the perceptions and attitudes of students about blended learning which helps teachers to evaluate the teaching-learning process.
27) said that “The degree of learners’ expectations, satisfaction, opinions or views on courses has played an important role in evaluating the effectiveness of learning processes”. Moreover, when students perceive their experience as enjoyable, satisfying, and personally fulfilling, they tend to interact more, which results in enhanced learning”. In addition, that Esani (2010) determined another important benefit of blended learning is that it saves time. And McCarthy & Murphy (2010, p.
670) said that "Students would be able to complete programs in less time”. In the other side, both face-to-face and online 4 teaching environments have their advantages; “A mixture of teaching and learning methods will always be the most efficient manner in which to support student learning because only then it is possible to embrace all the activities of discussion, interaction, adaptation and reflection, which are essential for academic learning” (Towndrow & Cheers, 2003, p. Al-Saleem et al. (2010) in his study investigated the effect of using blended learning on teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) on students’ oral skills.
The result of the study proved that blended learning enhanced significantly the EFL oral skills of the students of the experimental group due to the teaching procedures. This result is explained that blended learning exposed students to unlimited interaction with a language user, using sense of hearing, seeing and interacting. Also, the experimental groups were more interested in learning oral skills and that had a positive improvement in their achievements. LITERATURE REVIEW In the previous studies investigated the effectiveness of the blended learning approach.
They mostly reported that blended learning meets the educational needs of students such as satisfaction of learning, enhancing convenience and flexibility, achieving and improve language learning skills as well as to developing critical thinking skills. Some writers say there is students’ satisfaction towards blended learning and enjoyable with this new method of teaching in general. Bendania (2011) is one of those who clarify positive attitudes and the factors related to attitudes; mainly experience, confidence, enjoyment, usefulness, intention to use, motivation and whether students had ICT skills were all correlated. Al Zumor (2013) cited by Aliweh (2011) also take a similar position, investigated Egyptian EFL students’ learning styles and satisfaction with web-based materials.
Findings of the study showed highly positive perceptions because of an array of benefits (e., usefulness, enjoyment, accessibility, convenience, and richness of resources). Moreover, students’ gender had a significant effect on students’ learning style preferences; it had no bearing on their satisfaction with web-based materials. (2011), similarity in his study 5 approved that the students’ attitudes toward Blended Learning were positive in terms of the process, ease of use and content. Moreover, this study reflected the students’ internet and IT skills and interests due to Internet availability and accessibility.
Alshwaih (2009) as well as reported that the students’ attitudes and investigated the effects of a proposed blended learning towards the English language when teaching medical vocabulary to pre- med students in Arabian Gulf University. The findings did not show statistically significant differences regarding achievement or demonstrated a high degree of satisfaction with online unit. Some studies contacted with the viewpoints of students regarding blended learning. Akkoyunlu and Soylu (2006) is one of those who investigated the view of students regarding the Blended Learning environment.
The results of the study revealed that the more students participated in the online discussion forums, the more they achieved and the more positive views they developed towards Blended Learning. Moreover, the study came up with the conclusion that both the face-to- face lectures and the online tasks contributed to the learning process. Edwards and Fritz (1997) also take a similar position, aimed to identify the students’ viewpoints in the three teaching methods that rely on the technology, and the study was conducted on undergraduate students. The results of the study reported that e-learning is fun and interesting where students were able to learn educational concepts and apply them well, as reported by the students that the outcomes of e-learning materials (blended learning) were better than traditional materials.
Other studies cleayifed some factors and effectiveness of using blended learning. Al-Harbi’s (2010) is one of them who showed that e-learning acceptance is influenced by different factors. A student’s attitude toward e- learning and students’ decision to use e-learning are the most important factor in determining a student’s intention to use e-learning, i., the influence of the important people around them. Although, perceived e-learning accessibility plays a role in shaping the students’ behavioral intention regarding e-learning acceptance.
Artino (2010) also take a similar position, found out the relation between personal factors and students’ choice of instructional format. The results showed that students who preferred to enroll in online courses reported greater confidence and satisfaction in their ability to learn 6 online than other students. Badawi (2009) similarity, investigated that the blended learning model was more effective than the traditional model in developing prospective teachers’ pedagogical knowledge. Meanwhile, the rest of scholars in their studies showed that course system is more beneficial than traditional way and impact of teaching though blended learning or internet.
In the same vein, Sauers and Walker (2004) found that students in a blended course indicated that their course system is more beneficial than the traditional face-to-face lectures. As well as Teeter (1997) identified the impact of teaching with the Internet on the students’ motivation to learn and increase their ability to debate and resolve duties, the results indicated to increase students’ motivation, and inform them of a lot of sources, and improve their ability to debate and solve homework. Behjat, Yamini and Bagheri (2012) showed that the Iranian tertiary education contexts that blending traditional classroom instruction and technology can help learners excel in their reading comprehension.