Abstract:

This paper examines the perspectives of a group of university students in relation to their blended learning experience compared to the traditional face-to-face education, in the context of a Postgraduate Master in Cosmetics Industry carried out in the Universitat de València. For this aim, a survey with open questions was delivered to a group of 72 students participating in the Master during the period 2017-2019. 43 students completed the questionnaire; for 27 of them it was their first experience in blended or fully online academic learning, whereas the other 16 had previous experience in blended or fully online learning.

From our literature review, we identified the common advantages, disadvantages and challenges of blended learning in front of face-to-face learning to elaborate our questionnaire and compare our results with previous findings for each group. We questioned students from different approaches about the pros and cons they found in both learning methods, and which one they would choose in future in case they had availability to attend both no matter the price, from the strict academic point of view.

Our results show that both groups still mostly prefer the traditional face-to-face method, mainly due to the closer interaction with their peers and teachers and the greater ability to assimilate certain concepts, while in particular they value the flexibility and self-paced feature offered by blended learning. Noticeably, students with previous experience in online academic learning tend to point out less cons and show a better predisposal towards the blended learning method than the newbies, which suggests that the factor of experience and adaption to the less familiar method and its tools could improve their perception and change preferences of students in future. Finally, the outcome is used to define a number of strategies to improve the achievement and satisfaction of the students in this learning context.

Keywords:

Blended learning, face-to-face learning, students’ perspectives, Postgraduate Master.