THE USEFULNESS OF THE BLENDED-LEARNING METHOD IN THE OPINION OF FULL-TIME STUDENTS OF THE GDANSK UNIVERSITY

Nowadays, development of both new information technologies and informatics has impact not only on business entities but also on educational institutions. As a result, an increasing number of HEIs introduces and applies e-learning platforms to support traditional academic teaching. For several years, this has also been observed at the University of Gdansk, where the Moodle platform has been used as a supporting tool for the blended-learning method. This article presents the initial findings of a pioneering research titled "Usefulness of the blended-learning method in higher education" carried out at the Faculty of Management (FM) of the University of Gdansk (UG) in 2016. For the purposes of the research, full-time master's degree students were asked about the following aspects: the blended-learning method understood as a support of the traditional teaching delivered at the UG; the benefits and the drawbacks of the blended-learning method as observed by students in the process of their entire university education; the students' opinion on supporting traditional courses with the blended-learning method currently being used at the university. A direct questionnaire method was adopted as a research tool. A selected group of full-time master's degree students of the " Accounting", "Marketing" and " Small Business Management" specializations was questioned in the initial research. A total of 59 correct responses was obtained, reaching a response rate of 80%. The research is currently being conducted among the remaining students of various study curricula at the FM. We found that: 95 percent of the respondents perceive blended-learning as a good solution for supporting traditional teaching, 93 percent of the respondents think that it allows them to have easier access to the teaching resources, 63 percent of the questioned students admit that it enables them to better prepare for exams, 61 percent of the surveyed students admit that it fosters better attention on the issues being taught, 49 percent of the respondents criticize the lack of teachers' solutions to the published tasks, 41 percent of the students complain about an unfriendly interface of the applied software. Major limitation of this introductory research is a small number of the students who have been subject to the survey. The research should be extended to all students of the Management Faculty and ultimately to the entire university. Consequently, full assessment of the actual effectiveness of the e-learning platform currently applied to support traditional teaching across the university would be possible. The research provides information about the advantages and disadvantages of the blended-learning method currently applied by the academic teachers at the Gdansk University. It also allows the method to be fairly assessed in terms of its current effectiveness in the process of supporting traditional teaching at the faculty level. What is of highest value is the fact that it may provide precious information concerning prospective ways of improving and developing functionality of the e-learning Moodle platform.