A mix of in-person and online learning may boost students’ performance and reduce anxiety. A blended course format where students learn from both face-to-face teaching and online classes appear to offer more benefits to students than learning from offline or online alone.
A "blended" course format where online content presentation is accompanied by weekly interactive class meetings may improve academic achievement in students at risk for failing, according to a recent research. In addition, the study finds that fewer students withdrew from the class when the content was presented in a blended format.
‘A teaching format called ‘blended course’ where students learn from both face-to-face teaching and online classes appear to offer more benefits to students than learning from offline or online classes alone.’
Traditional lecture and online learning course delivery formats tend to flow in one direction only: The instructor delivers content to students. "The blended course structure we utilized facilitated bidirectional information flow, fostering conversations not only between the instructor and students but among the students themselves (peer learning)," said Jennifer Rogers, PhD, first author of the study. "Greater than 95 percent of students enrolled in the blended course section earned course grades [of] C- or higher, compared with 82 percent in the large lecture sections and 81 percent in the online sections," Rogers added. Furthermore, students who chose the blended format reported less end-of-semester anxiety than those who studied solely online, suggesting that there might be additional value in face-to-face engagement with faculty.
Source-Eurekalert