Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

as being optional, which allows the student a degree of flexibility and autonomy.
A number of the authors considered this in the design of their blends, for example,
Ingham (Chapter 15) states, ‘The face-to-face aspects of the course were compulsory
…. In contrast, contributing to wiki was optional as it was experimental.’ Hirst and
Godfrey (Chapter 9) also incorporated optional tasks into their blend to ‘[promote]
participant interaction and self-responsibility’.
However, difficulties were encountered in a couple of designs from either making
the modes compulsory or optional. Bilgin (Chapter 19) found that ‘the compulsory
use of the online program was one of the reasons for student discontent’. Whilst the
optional component of using web-based resources in Fleet’s (Chapter 18) blend failed
because ‘… students regarded the online material as a course extension rather than
an integral part. This expectation may be a fundamental reason why collective online
interaction was not extensive. Although there had been logical reasons for making
participation voluntary, had online interaction been compulsory, greater participation
would have undoubtedly occurred’.
How will the modes complement each other?
One of the reasons that students leave blended learning courses according
to Stracke (2007a: 57) is due to ‘a perceived lack of support and connection/
complementarity between the f2f and computer-assisted components of the
“blend”….’ This is also one of Sharma and Barrett’s guiding principles for blended
learning course design: ‘use technology to complement and enhance F2F teaching’
(2007: 13–14). In the blend I redesigned this was one of my guiding principles and to
achieve it we linked the content of the three modes to a relatively high degree either
by grammar, vocabulary or topic. For example, the REWARD (Greenall, 2002) software
that was used in the computer mode was grammatically linked to the General English
coursebooks Headway (Soars and Soars, 2006) and Going for Gold (Acklam and
Crace, 2003) that were used in the face-to-face mode. This complementarity aspect
was also widely referred to in the case studies, with Fleet (Chapter 18) stating ‘There
should therefore be a definite topic and skills link between class-based and online
work, which learners need to be made aware of.’
What methodology will the blend employ?
According to Levy, cited in Neumeier (2005: 172), CALL methodology is
‘predominantly expressed through the design of the computer programme’ and
this can result in it being somewhat limited and repetitive. In the face-to-face mode,
however, it is the teacher who determines the methodology and the choices open
to them are far greater. The methodology of each of the modes should therefore be
considered, with variety being the aim when designing a blended learning course so
as to appeal to as many learning styles as possible. Reference is made in the case
studies to a wide range of learning theories (such as behaviourism, connectivism and
constructivism), and language teaching approaches and methods (see Table 7).
Conclusion | 233