Abstract:

Over the past decade, blended learning (BL) has represented the potential for revolutionizing educational processes and disrupting traditional approaches to provide teaching career with various methods and tools. However, the usage of Learning Management Systems (LMS) have changed the environment of blended learning deliverables. However, academic institutions, namely community colleges, adopt blended learning platform such as blackboard technology between instructors and students. The purpose of this paper is to examine students’ perceptions of blended vs traditional (face-to-face) course offerings at the Community College of Qatar (CCQ). The research compares perceptions of students who have been subjected to BL environment along with those who have not and examines likelihood to take BL courses. As community college had been asked to consider this method as a way to leverage instructional methods to cope with the flexible time model of study, this study fills the gap studies regarding BL insights among the students of these colleges.

The study emerged three key findings:
(a) students in the BL method course for which data were analyzed were found to achieve better grades than those in face-to-face,
(b) lower withdrawal rates were observed in BL mode, and
(c) a majority of the students prefer BL to face-to-face and are satisfied.

he study provides recommendations based on the findings for policy and practice of LMS-enabled blended learning in CCQ and pave the way to conduct in depth empirical studies on LMS-enabled BL by both students and instructors.

Keywords:

Face-to-face learning, Blended Learning, Implementation, Learning management system, Blackboard, technology adoption, Community College, Qatar.