Abstract:

At present, blended learning is used mainly in institutions of higher education in order to make lecture course effective, efficient and attractive. The author works on college education to nurture problem-solving abilities by incorporating manufacturing and evaluation in activities. It has been suggested that lectures should be supported with increasing the opportunities for various students to learn so that they can make preparations and do reviews “whenever and wherever” with individual support.

As a part of such support, the grammar in textbook and program examples are explained in a lecture course on JavaScript programming. It was then followed by explanation with materials describing program examples to practice the grammar and exercise problems. We conducted exercises to prepare programs in exercise problems with reference to the program examples. Instructions were given to complete the program during the lecture course as soon as possible, and the students were asked to submit the program and report files using the functions of e-learning. During the final weeks (14th week), students were asked to prepare a program of voluntary subject he or she came up with, execute it and evaluate one another. With reference to the results, they were asked to correct them by 15th week and to evaluate one another again. These activities of evaluation and correction become collaborative learning.

The degree of term recognition and awareness were surveyed in JavaScript programming to learn the degree of improvement. The results on the degree of term recognition and awareness have been already reported. The useful activities for improving awareness were investigated after the lecture course on the post survey of awareness. Cluster analysis, chi-square tests and residual analysis are conducted to know useful clusters of activities for improving clusters of awareness.

The following were found in this study:
(1) The activity “Activities related to asking questions, revising, and evaluating” was helpful in improving “Awareness relating to skills to collaborate on problems, to correct on one's own thoughts, to execute and to express thoughts” and “Awareness relating to skills to understand programs and reports by reading them.”
(2) The activity “Activities that involve studying with the textbook and practice problems, and creating programs” were helpful in improving “Awareness relating to skills to gather information, to set challenges and to learn according to the plan.”
(3) The activity “Activities related to listening to lectures” were helpful in improving “Awareness relating to skills to interest in programming and to understand knowledge.”

Keywords:

JavaScript, blended learning, practice, awareness, learning activities, cluster analysis.