Abstract:

Blended Learning (BL) offers various advantages for the different stakeholders involved in the educational process (students, teachers, management), and has a positive impact on the quality of learning and students’ acquisition of knowledge (Akyol, Harrison Azden 2009). It is an institutionalized methodology with its respective implementation policy and learning approach implications (Wallace, Young 2011).

Empirical evidence from experiments conducted in various Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) argues that BL offers key advantages such as: a) it reduces class-time as new concept learning is partially conducted in pre-class online modules; b) leaves in-class time to develop a constructive debate among students in class (or online) promoting a more participatory learning approach and discussion of concepts in a critical perspective (Vaughan 2007); c) leaves additional time to deepen further the discussion on the learning topics or to widen it by introducing new relevant aspects; d) puts students in control of their learning path (Hannafin 1984); f) allows for a paradigm shift of focus from lesson to students. Scholars consider that thanks to these characteristics, BL helps students to reach better results, which has developed the debate on how to assess the quality of BL and its positive impact (Singh 2013).

Nevertheless, a key question remains: how to assess the quality of BL? Which are those indicators that would allow us to identify the critical issues in BL and address them? The discussion, however, needs to start a step earlier with the definition of the quality of BL. Scholars agree that there is not a shared definition on the quality of BL (QBL). In a sociological approach, a way to define a complex concept is to split it into sub-concepts easier to define.

In this paper, we will offer a multi-dimensional definition of QBL and provide an overview of our approach to assess it. Our QBL framework is defined in four dimensions:
1) Efficiency: i.e. ability to better use teachers’ and interaction time with students.
2) Effectiveness: i.e. how much do students develop target skills and competences.
3) Impact: i.e. value to stakeholders, i.e. students, teachers and involved companies.
4) Scalability i.e. economy of resources when growing in number of students.

Developed in a network of 20 universities (EIT Digital Network), our activity is based on teaching where online content is used in combination with F2F pedagogical activities, using different blending models (flipped class, starter kits, independent learning, etc.). Same online contents are shared by all universities, with different BL models employed by teachers. This has allowed us to conduct a set of experiments to identify potential quantitative indicators for assessing the QBL of the implemented BL models and provide insights on how to improve them. Drawing upon these results we share in this paper the identified quantitative indicators, some challenges in the implemented BL models and an approach to define the QBL framework in a pan-European network of universities.

Keywords:

Quality of Blended Learning framework, pan-European network of universities, blended learning indicators and methodologies.