Abstract:

The Moodle Platform has been used at the University of Gdansk increasingly as a tool supporting the traditional way of teaching. Currently, there is a total of 1,787 courses that are taught in this manner. Most commonly, academic teachers use the blended-learning method in the educational process, which allows combination of modern and traditional teaching techniques. The Faculty of Philology and the Faculty of Management are among those offering the most courses that are taught using this method. Taking this into consideration, the article presents the second part of the results of a questionnaire study carried out among the undergraduate part-time and full-time students at the Faculty of Management at the University of Gdansk, as part of the project titled “Usefulness of the blended-learning method in the higher education process”.

They were aimed at answering the following questions:
1. Is the blended-learning method a good solution for supporting the educational process at the university?
2. What are, according to the students, the advantages and the disadvantages of applying the blended-learning method for supporting the university courses?
3. How do the students evaluate the usefulness of the blended-learning method?

The following research methods were used in the study:
1. Questionnaire surveys, which were carried out among the undergraduate part-time and full-time students studying at the ‘Accounting’ specialization. A total of 147 properly filled-out questionnaires were obtained, which constituted 96% of all study participants.
2. In order to evaluate the usefulness of the blended-learning method in the teaching process a model based on a logistic regression was used. The binary dependent variable and the explanatory variables adopted in the study were determined on the basis of the answers to the questionnaire.

The results of the research indicate that the blended-learning method is a good solution for supporting the traditional teaching process at the Faculty of Management at the university. It was recognized by 137 persons, i.e. 93.2% of all the surveyed. At the same time, 50% of the respondents indicated large or very large usefulness of this method. According to the students, the main advantage of the blended-learning method is easier access to the educational materials (confirmed by 126 persons, i.e. 85.7% of all the surveyed). However, 50 persons, i.e. 34% of the surveyed, stated that the amount of the materials presented by the academic teachers was too small. In addition, lack of solutions to the exercises published on the platform was considered as the main disadvantage of this method (confirmed by 62 persons, i.e. 42.2% of the surveyed).

The observation involved undergraduate students pursuing a program at the ‘Accounting’ specialization. Therefore, the results obtained only refer to this group of the surveyed. In the future, the research should be carried out also among the students at the Faculty of Philology, which currently offers 458 courses supported by the blended-learning method. This will allow a more complete picture of the effectiveness of the e-learning platform currently used at the University of Gdansk.

The conducted research provides information on the usefulness of the blended-learning method currently used by the academic teachers at the University of Gdansk. It also constitutes a basis for introduction of the changes allowing an increase of the functionality of the Moodle e-learning platform.

Keywords:

Students, blended-learning method, advantages, University of Gdansk, Poland.