scholarly journals Blended learning effectiveness: the relationship between student characteristics, design features and outcomes

Author(s):  
Mugenyi Justice Kintu ◽  
Chang Zhu ◽  
Edmond Kagambe
2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-123
Author(s):  
Joo-Wan Seo ◽  
Hee-Dong Kim

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediated effect of the blended-learning strategy in the relationship between the interaction and learning effectiveness of new firefighters. The Baron and Kenny method of mediated effect analysis was applied to 259 collected samples, and SPSS 18.0 was used to perform linear regression analysis. It was found that the blended-learning group was more effective in learning than the non-blended-learning group. The interaction and learning effectiveness between the targets showed significant results, and the learning strategy of blended-learning exhibited partial mediated effects in the relationship between interaction and learning effectiveness. In particular, the learning attitude of the learning strategy was the combination of learners, learning content, and learning effectiveness during an interaction and partial mediated effects on learning persistence were identified. Based on these results, practical implications on envisioning teaching and learning design from the learner's perspective as a learning strategy to enhance learning effectiveness in a blended-learning situation are presented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Chun-Hsiung Huang

This research explores the influencing factors of learning satisfaction in blended learning. Three dimensions are proposed: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and learning motivation. It studied how these variables affect students’ learning satisfaction. The research hypotheses are: (1) Perceived ease of use positively affects perceived usefulness; (2) Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use will have a positive effect on learning motivation; (3) Learning motivation positively affects learning satisfaction; (4) Perceived usefulness has a positive intermediary effect on the relationship between perceived ease of use and learning motivation. Participants included 173 freshmen who took the first-year interactive game design course at Ling Tung University in Taichung, Taiwan. The questionnaire survey method is applied in this research to analyze the relationship between the variables and verify the hypothesis based on the collected 173 valid questionnaires. The partial least square method structural equation model (PLS-SEM) is used to carry out structural equation modeling to study the relationship between latent variables. It explains that the perceived ease of use affects the perceived usefulness. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a positive impact on learning motivation. Learning motivation has a positive impact on learning satisfaction. Perceived usefulness as an intermediary factor of perceived ease of use has an indirect impact on learning motivation. The contribution of this research is to provide empirical evidence and explain what factors may affect learning satisfaction. Some other related factors that may affect learning satisfaction should be taken as the factors that teachers should pay attention to when implementing blended learning.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsipi Heart ◽  
Elad Finklestein ◽  
Menashe Cohen

Purpose The purpose of this study is to assess students’ perceptions of four teaching and learning (T&L) methods used in a blended learning Contract Law course, namely, frontal, written assignments, simulations and online asynchronous T&L. Design/methodology/approach Law students (n = 417) filled in an anonymous questionnaire on their relative satisfaction with the four methods and their preferences. Participation was voluntary. The questionnaire was administered at the end of term, in class, prior to the Covid-19 restrictions. The results were calculated using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Findings The students preferred face-to-face T&L in class and ranked online T&L last. Notably, 84% preferred blended learning combining all four methods. These results suggest that the online T&L for this Contract Law course setting was unsuccessful and that teachers should experiment with blending various T&L methods to maximize learning effectiveness and students’ satisfaction. Research limitations/implications The results only reflect one course in one year among law students, thus affecting the generalizability of the findings. This is further exacerbated by the convenience sample and the fact that only one type of blending was evaluated. Overall, the findings indicated that the survey participants were not yet ready to embrace online T&L as a primary component of blended T&L. Practical implications This study Alternative online solutions should be sought to foster social learning when face-to-face learning is not feasible for reasons, such as geographic distance, students’ disabilities or the current pandemic that prohibits social gatherings. This conclusion is particularly pertinent with respect to the impact of Covid-19 on face-to-face learning. Designers of blended learning programs should listen more carefully to students’ voices, and bear in mind that minimizing face-to-face T&L for various reasons might jeopardize students’ satisfaction, which is likely to decrease learning effectiveness. Social implications It is important that students’ perceptions be considered when building future T&L programs, especially students’ need for collaborative and social learning. Originality/value This study assessed four T&L methods administered in one course during the pre-Covid-19 era. This setting, which is rare, enabled a real-life assessment of the effectiveness of these popular methods as perceived by students.


Author(s):  
Tingting (Rachel) Chung ◽  
Ting-Peng Liang ◽  
Chih-Hung Peng ◽  
Deng-Neng Chen

This chapter examines the roles of organizational creativity and organizational learning effectiveness in explaining the processes through which knowledge creation capabilities help firms to obtain and sustain competitive advantage. The proposed model specifies that organizational learning effectiveness plays a pivotal role in the relationship between knowledge creation and creativity. New knowledge develops better routines that make operations more efficient and effective. As organizations learn from newly generated knowledge, not only do they improve existing processes, but dynamic capabilities also develop to integrate knowledge into creative ideas, novel solutions, and new products and services. This theoretical examination leads to the proposition that organizational learning effectiveness mediates the relationship between knowledge creation capabilities and organizational creativity. This chapter also examines whether the effect of knowledge creation processes on organizational creativity exists in all organizations or is contingent on the nature of the organization’s knowledge. Based on the common understanding that tacit and explicit knowledge differ substantially in their codifiability and transferability, the authors specify the moderating role of knowledge characteristics in the process of using knowledge management to foster organizational creativity. The theoretical examination leads to the proposition that the degree of tacitness of the organization’s critical knowledge moderates the effect of knowledge creation capabilities on organizational creativity mediated by organizational learning effectiveness. Finally, the authors argue that the degree of institutionalization of the organization’s critical knowledge moderates the effect of knowledge creation capabilities on organizational creativity, which is in turn mediated by organizational learning effectiveness. Implications for research and managerial practices are discussed.


Author(s):  
Ellen Swift

The relationship between design, function, and behaviour is explored in this chapter by assessing design features and their affordances against firstly, evidence of use drawn from wear studies of the artefacts that indicate the way they have been used; secondly, both experimental recreations, and the end-products the tools were used to create; and thirdly, archaeological context. In this way, we can examine both the potential of an approach focusing on design features, and also any limitations. I hope to show that affordances are an important source of evidence and provide insights that cannot be gained fromother sources, but that it is important not to take potential affordances at face value, and to interrogate their relationship to likely uses by comparison with other types of evidence. The first method through which possible affordances can be evaluated is through comparison with use-wear. In this way, it is possible to see how ‘proper function’ uses, suggested by practical affordances, compare to evidence of actual use as represented by use-wear. In a previous study, I investigated use-wear in relation to the functional features of Roman spoons (principally cochlear spoons with pointed handles), which I will briefly summarize here. Two principal affordances were evaluated: firstly, the shape of the spoon bowl, and secondly, the capacity of the bowl to hold varying amounts of liquid. I also investigated some other features such as the handle shape. The data, studied through personal inspection of museum objects, were drawn mainly from south-east Britain with some comparative material from the Roman site at Augst in Switzerland which has a very large collection of Roman spoons. Roman cochlear spoons occur in a wide range of well-dated forms, with different bowl shapes broadly succeeding one another chronologically (with some inevitable overlap). Round-bowled spoons are the earliest, found in the first and second centuries AD. Forms with a pear-shaped bowl are found from towards the end of the first century AD to the end of the second century, and forms with a fig-shaped bowl from the mid-second into the third century AD.


Author(s):  
Jean-Bernard Bluntzer ◽  
Egon Ostrosi

AbstractIn the modern automotive industry, a car's style clearly defines its brand. In the context of globalization, a question has recently emerged concerning the relationship between a country's culture and the car style of a particular brand. The style is one way to place car morphologies into a meaningful structure, called the “telling structure.” This research hypothesizes that a stylist tries to compress a car's form and make it a refined unicum that is streamlined with some inherent features, which express a brand's cultural aesthetics. Using the cognitive paradigm that an end user transforms explicit references into implic-it references and that the telling structure of a car's design features influences the recognition of the brand, this research demonstrates a novel method to ad-dress this hypothesis. Results from this study show that there is a relationship between the brand's country of origin and the perceived recognition of a car. However, a country's brand culture is not always represented by the style of the cars. In particular, the results indicate that some cars can actually lose their cultural identity, especially in the context of a worldwide market.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document