An Evaluation Model for Quality Assurance of Blended Learning: Exploring the Lecturers’ Perspectives

Abstract

This paper will discuss the process of evaluation in blended learning courses, offering an evaluation model for those particular courses and also showing the lecturers’ views about how they think evaluation of bLearning courses should be done, taking into account the curricular proposals of the three cycles of Higher Education (HE). Questions like “what is evaluation for?”, “who should evaluate?”, “how and when to evaluate?”, and “what should be evaluated?” are combined together integrating a model with all those variables, whose guidelines provide a practical tool to help designers and decision makers to assure an effective, efficient and flexible teaching and learning environment. In addition, the same questions were asked in a survey conducted with 100 bLearning lecturers (79 valid responses) of the 11 Portuguese HE institutions that offer this kind of courses. The study highlights the need for those institutions to reassess their approach to the quality assurance of bLearning courses, and brings some contributions to those who are in charge of bLearning courses, providing a useful framework for the evaluation of bLearning courses in order to assure and enhance their teaching and learning quality.