A blended learning Approach to teaching foreign policy: Student experiences of learning through face-to-face and online discussion and their relationship to academic performance

This article presents research on students' experiences of learning through a blend of face-to-face and online discussion. The participants in our study were students enrolled in a foreign policy course at a major Australian university. Students' conceptions of learning through discussion, and their approaches to both face-to-face and online discussion, were elicited through open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Students' responses to both open-ended questionnaires and interviews were analysed using a phenomenographic framework. Qualitative variations in students' conceptions and approaches were categorised and were found to form a hierarchy. Subsequent quantitative analysis found associations between students' conceptions of learning through discussion, their approaches to both face-to-face and online discussion and their academic performance (as indicated by the final mark for the course). Implications for teaching and further research are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.