Organization of Individual Work of Students in Blended Learning of Foreign Languages at Higher Educational Institutions

Abstract

Blended learning is becoming an increasingly popular way of organizing individual work of students in blended learning of foreign languages at higher educational institutions. As a result, the need to study the problems and prospects of blended learning at higher educational institutions (HEI) keeps current. The purpose of the academic paper is as follows: to evaluate the effectiveness of individual work of students in blended learning of foreign languages at higher educational institutions in order to identify problems and prospects for autonomous learning. Methodology. The investigation is based on the theory of self-organization and structured interview as the basic research method. The academic paper uses the online form of the questionnaire to conduct a survey of 260 students of Ukrainian universities in September-October 2020. The results demonstrate several important conclusions. Social-demographic characteristics of students affect the effectiveness of self-organization of students in the study of foreign languages with application of technologies. The basic problems of individual work of students in blended learning of foreign languages at HEI are determined as follows: technical and the need for support from a technical specialist; inconvenience of a blended learning system; the need for additional technical skills; the complexity of blended learning. The effectiveness of the learning process based on the system and technologies of blended learning has been also assessed at the average level. The practical significance of the results lies in the possibility of using the improvement of the main directions of development of blended training courses. These directions include interaction, research, tasks and tools development, materials, integration, assessment, context, teachers’ training, students’ learning.