Abstract:

University education is changing rapidly owing to the widespread availability of platforms to produce and distribute digital media. Our own experience corroborates this (Linna et al., 2015). The transition to blended learning is one manifestation of this digital revolution. By blended learning we mean methods whose goal is to simplify studying for students who are also employed. In this paper we describe the change from the traditional lecture / exercise classroom teaching to blended learning methods in engineering mathematics courses in the Pori unit of the Tampere University of Technology (TUT/Pori).

TUT/Pori offers graduate level studies in Information Technology and Industrial Engineering and Management. Practically all our students have a bachelor's engineering degree and many have been working several years in industry. Many of our students continue to work during their studies. For such students attending daily face-to-face classroom sessions is impossible. This is a challenge, both for them and for the teaching staff. In the fall of 2013 TUT/Pori started a gradual transition to blended learning methods.

We try to assess the impact of the change to blended learning on both teachers and students. With regard to teachers, we describe experiences with different tools/platforms. With regard to students, we use two different kinds of results to gauge the effectiveness of the blended learning: student feedback and pass/fail statistics.
We also consider what types of data might be used in future studies so that the effects of blended learning would be easier to monitor.

References:
[1] P. Linna, H. Keto, and T. Mäkinen (2015). Towards Blended learning: A Case Study. MIPRO, 2015 Proceedings of the 38th International Convention. IEEE, pp. 685-689

Keywords:

Blended learning, Flipped learning, mathematic.