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Blended learning at the University of Twente

Wijnia, Sybren (2010) Blended learning at the University of Twente.

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Abstract:Our society is subject to continuous change due to the ubiquitous presence of information and communication technologies (ICT) and ongoing globalization. Students must be educated to work and live in such a society. They need to be able to deal with complex and unclearly formulated problems in various ways and they need to refresh their knowledge and skills constantly. Nowadays, the main goal of education is predominantly to give meaning to content rather than to gather it. Because of its complexity the signification of content takes place very often in consultation with others. Hence, collaboration with others is necessary. Education needs to make use of the possibilities offered by ICT to facilitate this collaboration. Face-to-face-education and ICT can reinforce strengthen each other. This combination of "face-to-face instruction with computer-mediated instruction" [Gra06] is known as blended learning. Blended learning has the ability to bring the best of face-to-face and online together to improve the learning experience. Literature shows that the design of a course is of great importance to the success of blended learning. A blended design should motivate the students and yield other benefits. Given the appreciation of blended learning in the literature, it is useful and interesting to examine how UT students and teachers appreciate a particular blend (i.e. blended course) and whether a number of benefits are achieved as compared to the previous situation in which the virtual learning environment was used more as a data repository. It is very also useful and interesting to examine when these benefits do occur and what disadvantages a blend can bring about. Hence we evaluated the course Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). A blended design closely matched the learning objectives of this course and the teacher’s wishes to increase the flexibility within the course and to stimulate student collaboration and (more) autonomous labor. The support for multiple educational design paradigms is a major challenge at the University of Twente (UT) with respect to the ICT facilities concerning education. A UT course should be situated somewhere on the blended learning continuum from face-to-face to completely online. Partly to support this decision, the UT has decided to implement Blackboard (Bb) as the virtual learning environment (VLE) so that it could be put into service in the educational year 2009-2010. However, the support for group and project work was, and still is, too limited with the current eighth version of Bb. Therefore during CSCW the students had to use the tools available.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Information Technology MSc (60025)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/60062
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