Students’ Perceptions in Blended Learning in CET

【Abstract】The rapid growth in the use of learning technologies has provided instructors with opportunities to study the most suitable approach in CET. The purpose of this study was to examine the students perception in blended learning for helping teachers modulate instructional design. The study was conducted with 117 students at NUAA. The questionnaire was design to identify students views in blended learning. Results revealed that students views on blended learning process differed according to their self-management and perception on the teachers arrangements.

【Key words】Blended Learning； Students views； CET

【作者簡介】李萌（1992-），男，漢族，河北邢臺人，南京航空航天大學研究生，研究方向：大學英語。

1. Introduction

National Medium- and long-term plan for reform and development （2010-2020） has particularly pointed out that it is important to stress educational informatization. Therefore， based on retrospection of former achievements about e-learning， discussions about blended learning， which integrates online and classroom teaching， have become hot topic in educational reform in CET. Simultaneously， learning community provides the theoretical basis， meaning a group of people sharing common academic goals and attitude and meeting semi-regularly to collaborate on classwork. This thesis aims to find out the students perception in blended learning.

2. Results & Discussions

2.1 Its better to have exercises online before learning new unit

Q1 studies the transition from last classroom learning to the next online learning. What students acquired in classroom learning may impact the learning of next online learning， named reversed transition. Students were all favorable to having exercises online before learning new unit， score of mean 3.7976 and 4.0303 respectively. As to standard deviation of 0.7882 and 0.6366， it means the majority of scores are close to mean score. Regardless of their specialty， score of mean 3.8632 and standard deviation 0.7532 equally present a clear picture of their consent to exercises. Descriptive statistics show that 81.8% of liberal arts students are in line with Q1， whereas 55.6% of science and engineering students are with reviewing exercises， though a little lower than that of liberal arts.

2.2 I will redo online wrong questions on the textbook after online learning

Q2 studies the transition from online learning to after-online period about redoing faulty questions， one that perhaps has beneficial impact on attention on teachers “messages”. Regardless of gender and specialty， it reveals almost half of students （45.3%） were not inclined to redo faulty questions， 21.4% of them uncertain about their responses， 33.4% admitting their agreement. Besides， both score of mean 2.89 and standard deviation 0.946 reveal how sterilely students volunteered to redo online wrong questions. What they chose to do was “overlooking” their mistakes and “bewildering” in classroom learning.

3. Suggestions

3.1 Weekly Pre-tests

Pretests exclusively aim to know how much students have learnt in online learning after “time break” and press intangible force on them The design of effective pretest can be developed using a process of backwards design.

The pretest marks a students level of understanding before instruction and offers concrete preview of what will be expected during the unit to students themselves. Besides， this pretest is often a students first exposure to key terms and concepts. And the most important aspect of pretests is to measure the effectiveness of online course， which decides whether transition from online to classroom is seamless or not.

3.2 Live Classroom

“Time break” from online to classroom learning varies. The virtual classroom perfectly tackles the problem of time gap and delivers formal and evaluated learning. It allows to come together in a formal space with specifically designed goals.

Virtual classroom serves as the way of providing a coaching environment， utterly distinct from the process of “managing”. Activities can also be carried out in virtual classroom， including presentation of materials， brainstorming， questioning and polling. With the presence of students in virtual classroom， the teacher is able to use application to randomly do the roll call of his/her followers who seems to be enforced to share his/her thoughts. Rotation of that could accustom students to the first period of classroom activities.

4. Conclusion

From the analysis， students views in blended learning is unsatisfactory， for lack of interaction， collaboration， or face-to-face experience. Weekly pre-tests and live classroom act as the catalyst for triggering students interest and incentive in blended learning. In this way， blended learning could perform better in CET.

References：

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[2]甘曄.基于在線直播課的混合式大學英語教學研究[J].教育學術月刊，2017（11）：79-87.