Blended Learning in Practice: Tracking Students' Performance

Exploited as a tool supporting the face-to-face form of instruction, the blended learning started to be implemented in the process of instruction two decades ago. The information and communication technologies provide a wide rate of tools and strategies each student can choose from and learn efficiently. The result is the student is positively motivated and able to develop the possibly highest level of knowledge in the shortest time period spending least efforts. To reach such a level in the real process of instruction, the requirement for optimizing the teaching/learning process arose, particularly the call for improving the flexibility of the process, mainly by applying the individualized approach. Reflecting this situation, step-by-step the blended learning in practice has become the subject of research at Faculty of Informatics and Management. The process was monitored, feedback collected from both the students and teachers/tutors and data were analysed. Instead of others, the latest three-year-long research focused on students 'preferences in learning styles within the ICT-supported learning environment. Considering this requirement, following questions should be answered: Do students learn more, if the blended process of instruction is tailored to their learning preferences? Either the answer is yes, or no, how does the process run? What can help students show what they know? The main objective of this research was to answer the above mentioned question, i.e. whether students learn more if the blended process of instruction is tailored to their learning preferences. The pedagogical experiment following the pretest - blended instruction - posttest structure was applied. The blended process covered the face-to-face instruction in the subject 'Library services - Information competence in education', been taught 90 minutes per week and supported by time/place/pace-independent autonomous study in the online course to fix and practice the learning content, develop new knowledge and be able to apply it in practice. The sample group consisted of students of University of Hradec Kralove. Nearly 400 respondents started the pedagogical experiment but only 324 finished it, from various reasons.