Blending the traditional face-to-face learning with instructional technology.
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Date
June, 2011.
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Abstract
Emerging technologies offer alternative ways to conceptualize and deliver education in pursuit of promoting learning. One of the many ways is Blended Learning (BL). This blend of conventional Face-to-Face (F2F) instruction and Web-based distance learning has a potential to create an improved learning experience for the student. In this thesis work, BL models were studied and the pertinent ones were adopted and modified for application in a case study involving the handling of two courses—Computer Literacy at Sunyani Polytechnic and Computer Networking at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) all in Ghana. In the models, students’ performance in terms of their end-of-semester examination results, were used as the output. The experimental results revealed that employing instructional technology promises great successes when adequate preparation is made. This was evident in the outcome of the application of the BLM at KNUST which showed an average improvement of 61% in the performance of students. The outcome of the case study at Sunyani Polytechnic showed that, the introduction technology in the learning process notwithstanding, if preparations are woefully inadequate, results can be worse than that of the traditional F2F approach. Here, the first semester results showed an average decline of 15% in the performance of students.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Computer Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy on Blending The Traditional Face-To-Face Learning with Instructional Technology.