Online Learning and Blended Learning: Experience from a First-Year Undergraduate Property Valuation Course

Abstract

With the growth of the world-wide web and e-learning some programs are now fully online but blended learning has also become popular, offering various combinations of internal classes and online content. This paper reports the results of delivering an introductory first-year property course using both online and blended learning. The paper investigates the effectiveness of blended and online learning based on the thesis that blended learning is more effective as students have the advantages of both face-to-face learning and the online environment. A case study approach was adopted that involved two recent cohorts of students. Course statistics from the newly introduced Moodle software were used to analyse how these two groups of students used the online material and how these activities were correlated with their learning outcomes. This paper contributes to higher education pedagogy in online learning by providing insights into the use of a project-based learning approach in engaging students.