An Examination of Students' Attitudes toward Group learning in a Blended e-Learning Environment

Group learning is a fundamental method to organise learners participating in a learning process, traditionally in the classroom-based environments, and recently in the web-based environments or the blended e-learning environments. The purpose of this study is to examine students' understandings and attitudes toward group learning in the blended e-learning environments in Chinese Higher Education Institutions (CHEIs). 20 students were involved in a course - "Computer in Education (I)" - and group learning was used to organise the relevant learning and teaching process in a blended 'e-learning environment. The methodology of this study is action research and the data were-collected through questionnaire survey, group interview, and personal blogs. Students' understandings of group learning were examined and the results reveal big change from absence to familiarity between the beginning and the end of the course. This result also demonstrated that students' attitudes toward group learning were positive.