Blended teaching and learning in the School of Science and Technology of UniSIM

Andrew John Toon, Attallah Samir, Jennifer Huang Mui Kheng, Lim Kin Chew and Moorthy Vythilingam
SIM University
Singapore

It has often been suggested that blended learning -- the combination of various pedagogical approaches to produce an optimal learning outcome -- is more effective than pure e-learning. To assess whether this view is justified, this paper discusses the recent experiences of academics in SIM University’s School of Science and Technology when blended learning was used in courses on mathematics, project management, electronics and SAP (enterprise resource planning system).

The School of Science and Technology faces several challenges. For example, their students are working adults and attend classes only in the evening or at weekends; and all the courses are taught by associate faculty members who do not work full-time in the University. The frequent changes in the technology area can also be problematic, especially when there are updates and students encounter technical difficulties in accessing the learning website. However, perhaps the greatest challenge lies in evaluating the quality of blended learning.

Blended learning is implemented differently in the four courses mentioned above. A fully e-learning course without any face-to-face interaction was developed and administered to students taking the course ‘Further Mathematical Methods and Mechanics’. With the use of the Geometer’s Sketchpad, differential equations can be represented as Java applets; and students can then use them to help in visualizing and arriving at possible solutions. These Java applets and other information and instructions were delivered on the Blackboard learning management system. The feedback collected and reactions from the students are discussed in this paper.   

The project management course was conducted using the Centra virtual classroom software system, which comprises three modules: (1) ‘Project Management Basics’; (2) ‘Project Management Fundamentals for IT Professionals’ (PMIT); and (3) ‘Managing Multiple IT Projects’ (MMITP). The course was conducted together with an external vendor. Although the training was live, students who missed any session could review the recorded past sessions by accessing the archive. Again the feedback and students’ reactions are analysed in this presentation, along with possible reasons for their responses.

In the electronics course, virtual laboratory and wiki sessions were organized for the students. Although virtual laboratories are difficult to set up, they are valuable as they provide students with a simulated environment for learning electronics -- but the setting of assignments to assess students’ competence presents some difficulties.

In the case of the e-SAP course, students book the dedicated PC in our laboratory before they log in to the e-SAP course website and start learning. As in the mathematics course, the e-SAP course is completely e-learning-based. The teaching/ learning on these two courses is compared and some observations are made on how successful the adoption of such a completely e-learning approach was.

The authors believe that the quality of teaching and learning is a two-way process and any evaluation of it needs to consider the inputs from both the teacher and the students. Only in this way can we get a clear picture of the teaching/ learning environment and its quality.

Finally, some suggestions are given for further improvement of the blended approach, especially when more of the learning has to transfer to the workplace, and how it can be evaluated effectively.