Blended Learning in English Language Teaching: Course Design and Implementation

Generally speaking though, very tech-savvy participants will complete tasks and find
the course easier than those with no ICT experience whatsoever. What this means in
practice is that unskilled participants take longer to complete tasks, and need more
hands-on support from the tutor and the rest of the group. Less technically proficient
participants are often aware of the skills gap if they take a course with more proficient
colleagues. However, the face-to-face component enables supportive group work
from the beginning of the course, and can help these participants feel more secure.
Here is one (less skilled) participant’s take on this in her course feedback:
I was often amazed at how those who knew more never seemed to mind helping
out people like me and often wondered if they felt that they regretted signing up
for this course. One day, I asked two of them and they immediately said, ‘No way!’
and went on to say that they felt that they had learned/were learning A LOT!
The tutors
All of our courses, whether offered fully online, or in blended versions, have a
minimum of six participants and a maximum of 15 participants. This is partly because
of the nature of our courses that are all hands-on, and task-based. In other words,
participants work individually, in pairs and in small groups and prepare a significant
number of outputs during a course. The hands-on nature of our courses means that
the tutor workload is high. Typically, for one hour of online work, we calculate 1.5
hours of tutor support for a group. For one hour of face-to-face work, the ratio may
be two hours of tutor work (at least) if we include preparation time.
In addition, we assign one tutor for a single group of six to ten participants. If the
group has 11 to 15 participants, there are two tutors, with one taking the lead role
(about 60 –70 per cent of the workload), and the other playing a support role (30 – 40
per cent of the workload). Again, this is due to the increased workload for tutors with
larger groups, due to the additional one-to-one support that online courses need
to provide to participants, especially in the area of technology, where teachers may
have little or no experience.
Course design and delivery
With the blended Cert ICT, the tutor can deal with larger groups in the face-to-face
component, with up to 20 participants in one face-to-face group. However, for the
online component a large group of 20 is split into two separate online groups of ten,
each with its own tutor. The fundamental design issue here is that online tutoring
(at least for hands-on, task-based courses that require a great deal of interaction/
communication) can significantly increase a tutor’s workload. The online version of
a face-to-face course may mean more work for a teacher – if the job is going to be
done well. This is a fundamental issue when considering blended learning, and one
that we find many institutions do not seem to be aware of. Clearly it has important
implications for staff hours and costing.
Because all our courses are offered online, typically we have teachers from all
over the world, working closely together online in groups, for the duration of their
course. The blended version of the Cert ICT, however, tends to attract participants
who live locally to where the face-to-face component of the course is being run.
Reversing the blend: From online to blended | 77