Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

changing, as learners’ engagement is enhanced by the creation of new learning
environments and as they take more decisions in the process.’ This change in role
was also questioned and the challenges the new roles presented recognised: ‘As
student participation increased and the wiki evolved as a result, I began to question
the nature and extent of my online involvement. The challenge was to balance my
presence on the site with the learner’s contributions and decide how much I was
going to correct or ignore mistakes and to advise on content.’ Ingham (Chapter 15).
Likening the teacher’s role to that of a facilitator was the most common comparison
(White et al., Chapter 8; Peachey, Chapter 5; Fleet, Chapter 18; Whittaker, Chapter 16).
However, references were also made to the teacher acting as an intermediary (Krake,
Chapter 20) and as a mediator in discussions (White et al., Chapter 8). Peachey
(Chapter 5) outlines three roles that differ according to the mode, that of a moderator
in the initial online element; facilitator as well as technical support in the face-to-face
element; and in the third, online element of the course, a more traditional role.
The change in the teacher/tutors role can mean that it becomes very timeconsuming
‘as many participants feel that an online tutor is available 24/7 and
they do not have the limitations of “class time” to restrict their access to their
tutor’ Peachey (Chapter 5). An increase in the teacher’s workload was also noted
by Aborisade (Chapter 2), Dudeney and Hockly (Chapter 6) and Hirst and Godfrey
(Chapter 9).
Changes to the learners’ role were also recognised in the case studies, although less
was written on this subject. What was acknowledged was that a blended course leads
to a shift towards a more learner-centred approach (Eydelman, Chapter 3; Pardo-
Gonzalez, Chapter 4) in which learners play a more active role as they have to take
more decisions (Aborisade, Chapter 2). This does not suit all the learners though and
can result in disappointment as Russell (Chapter 14) noted ‘In v5 we hoped that the
learners would lead and instigate conversations about the feedback given, and to talk
about issues more than they had previously in direct email contact with their tutors.
However, the communication between participants was not as voluminous as had
been hoped, and the tendency for quite static, trainer – participant – trainer moves
continued.’ Overall, as Ingham (Chapter 15) recognised, a blended learning course
and the type of activities it entails leads to a shift in the balance of power as ‘any user
can view and edit the contributions of others so peers as well as the teacher can
correct mistakes or give feedback.’
What level of autonomy will be expected from learners?
Level of autonomy is a particularly important aspect of blended courses because
their design means that students have to take on different degrees of responsibility in
the different modes. In line with this, they will ‘have to know when to take action and
when [to] hand over responsibility’ along with being ‘able to handle different degrees
of responsibility over the process and content of learning’ (Neumeier, 2005: 175).
There were different expectations from the blends regarding autonomy. Gilbert
(Chapter 1) expected her course ‘to help learners gain autonomous strategies
for evaluating the credibility of online information’; Bilgin (Chapter 19) believed
that ‘Student interaction and collaboration… would foster autonomy and learning’;
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