Abstract
In recent years, blended learning (BL) has grown to occupy an important space in Chinese educational practice. Policymakers have developed many application strategies and platforms and are continuing to develop BL for future use. In order to apply BL in practice, key stakeholders have been using different learning management systems (LMSs), digital platforms, games, hybrid courses, and various forms of social media to create a framework for BL. This study asserts that many visible opportunities have emerged in Chinese higher education through the applications of BL. The advantages of BL are that it fosters stronger academic achievement, student engagement, and cognitive engagement and understanding as well as flexible and quick communication skills, faster interaction skills, technical skills, and adaptability to ever-changing educational practices. On the other hand, BL has brought about some pedagogical and technical difficulties for both learners and practitioners. This study found that most BL courses are not as effective as they could be because they do not have a strong pedagogical framework. Moreover, BL suffers from the technical incompetence of teachers and students, the inefficiency of LMSs, and the unavailability of required resources, such as certain devices and the Internet. Some higher education institutions have become pioneers in Chinese educational practice and been able to successfully adopt BL frameworks and integrate Moodle as well as other platforms and techniques. However, many other institutions’ attempts to adopt BL approaches have not been as effective. In order to better understand how and in what ways BL is being integrated into the educational system, this study overviews the current situation and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of BL in Chinese higher education.
Highlights
Blended learning (BL) is the practice of teaching and learning through both online and offline models in a way that is distributed; meaning half of the lesson is taught face-to-face (f2f) and the other half takes place virtually (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008; Yang et al, 2019)
This study found that most practitioners used various types of techniques, frameworks, platforms, and online resources while crafting blended learning (BL) courses to serve their teaching goals
Two articles (5.88%) showed no specific use of Moodle of learning management systems (LMSs) in the practical application of hybrid learning
Summary
Blended learning (BL) is the practice of teaching and learning through both online and offline models in a way that is distributed; meaning half of the lesson is taught face-to-face (f2f) and the other half takes place virtually (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008; Yang et al, 2019). This approach uses online and offline methods (synchronous and asynchronous) to run teaching–learning activities (Lee et al, 2016) and is meant to complement f2f learning activities (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008). BL combines f2f classroom interactions and computer-assisted systems and creates classes with a wellcrafted portion of physical presence and virtual performances (Graham et al, 2013). Garrison and Kanuka (2004) define BL as “a thoughtful integration of classroom f2f learning experiences with online experiences.” attempts to combine f2f and technology-assisted forms of instruction fall under the category of BL (Porter et al, 2014)
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