The Designing and Re-Designing of a Blended University Course Based on the Trialogical Learning Approach

Abstract

To have a positive impact on students’ development of crucial skills, blended university courses need careful planning to fruitfully integrate learning settings as well as methodologies. The authors adopted Design-Based Research to design a blended university course based on the Trialogical Learning Approach, and then to redesign it according to the learning outputs and the overall learner’s experience. The first iteration of the course (a.y. 2015) was followed by an observational study that aimed to identify student perceptions of (1) the impact of the course on the acquisition of the targeted knowledge–work skills and (2) strengths and areas for improvement to be considered when re-designing the subsequent edition. A total of 109 students participated in the two editions of the course under scrutiny in this research. The data corpus included students’ self-report questionnaires investigating the development of specific knowledge–work skills and focus group interviews that explored students’ perceptions. The data showed this blended course had a generally positive impact on students’ perception of acquisition of skills and knowledge, which increased between one edition and the next. This positive impact seemed to correspond with course refinements made by the teacher and with the activities that received greater attention in the second edition of the course.