Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

experimental class outperformed the control class (F(2, 116) = 4.002, p= .021).
This, of course, could be attributable to the power of the online materials but it
could also be a consequence of the extra learning time this class were given, their
extra exposure to English or of a match between the tasks in the tests and those in
the online materials.
The results of the student questionnaire revealed that nearly all of the students
considered that MEC helped them improve their English. However, most of them did not
want to have an online component in their conventional learning. The analysis of the
interviews revealed that the compulsory use of the online materials, the design of the
programme and lack of print materials were important reasons for students’ discontent.
Blending face-to-face teaching with an online programme as supplementary can
be used to improve the achievement of students studying English as a Foreign
Language (Al-Jarf, 2004; Al-Jarf, 2005; Bañados, 2006; Pazio, 2010). Teachers can
assign complementary resources to students to improve their learning and engage
them with English outside the class. Incorporating online tools such as an online
LMS and authentic materials like articles and podcasts in class can foster student
learning. However, the interview results indicated that students valued print materials
over purely online resources in their learning, which suggested that students might
prefer to have paper materials over purely online ones when studying. It seems
that as we mostly assume that students of our time are technology oriented, we
might mistakenly take it for granted that they will appreciate online materials readily.
Stracke (2007) suggests that there is a need to carefully plan a blended course,
providing students with comprehensive teacher and document guidance.
Therefore, when we are designing a blended course, we should fine-tune
the balance between the online materials and paper-based materials.
If students use an online programme for the first time, it will take some time for
them to get used to it. The way students are used to studying should be taken
into consideration. In a report on the Hybrid Course Project at the University of
Wisconsin, Aycock, Garnham, and Kaleta (2002) indicate that ‘students don’t grasp
the blend readily’. They also indicate that many of the students don’t perceive time
spent in lectures as ‘work’, but they see time spent online as ‘work’, even if it is time
they would have spent in class in a traditional course. In this study, the compulsory
use of the online programme was one of the reasons for student discontent. It seems
that although students today are very technology oriented in their daily lives, they
may not be as eager in their learning.
This study offers some insights into blended language learning by showing a group
of Turkish university upper-intermediate level EFL students’ engagement in a
particular online commercial LMS as part of their courses. The results indicate that
teaching English blending face-to-face teaching with an online LMS can be beneficial
over solely in-class teaching, by providing an extensive range of authentic materials
as well as a more learner-centred medium of instruction, which can complement
classroom-based activities.
210 | Students’ CALLing