Effects of blended learning on students’ self-direction: The case of the Master school module in innovation and entrepreneurship of the EIT Digital Academy

Résumé En

The first distance learning program was set up in 1840 to answer the need of the society related to geographical and temporal challenges, but the Australian universities were the first ones in 1911 that adopted the mixed-learning or blended learning model which combines the teaching and learning activities on campus and by post (Macdonald, 2008). Indeed, although blended learning is known as a model or learning combining the use of digital technology in traditional lectures, its concept and practice were born long before the digital era. As a model of learning, it represented first a combination of instructions from two different teaching models: 1°) traditional lectures with face-to-face meetings, in which learning activities were performed synchronously with the presence of teachers, and 2°) the distributed learning which was focused on autonomous learning in a textual environment in which learning activities were managed asynchronously (Graham, 2006). In traditional lectures, students are exposed to verbal lectures given by their teachers (Wilson and Sipe, 2014) in which their focus is to introduce and explain course materials to students (Zachry and Nash, 2017). In principle, in this model of lecture, students are passive listeners or note takers. At the beginning of blended learning practices, synchronous interaction in distributed learning was not possible, and it seemed that this method was only an enhanced form of a traditional classroom. Further, the term ‘hybrid learning’ has also been used to describe a learning model which combines two different teaching models. According to scientific literature, on the one hand, hybrid learning defines a learning model in which students work in a company and have at the same period some courses at the university to complete their degree (Cremers et al., 2016). In the French higher education institutions, this model is called “alternance”. On the other hand, hybrid learning is also defined as a learning model which combines online and classroom learning activities (Reynard, 2007; Zuo et al., 2012; Lam, 2014). This latter definition is relevant to blended learning stated by Garrison and Vaughan (2008), and Horn and Stakers (2015). Indeed, scientific literature still defines blended learning as a model of learning with a combination of distance or distributed learning and face-to-face learning. However, since the use of technology becomes more and more relevant to the updated knowledge and competencies required by the globalized economy, blended learning is more used nowadays to describe a model of learning in which technology is mobilized to enhance the distance part of learning. Sharing the same perspective as Garrison and Vaughan (2008), and Horn and Stakers (2015), some French-speaking researchers stated that if learning activities are managed remotely with the help of an online pedagogical platform, and if they are combined to face-to-face learning activities with the presence of teacher in the classroom, both activities create a "formation hybride”, that can be translated as ‘hybrid training’ (Charlier et al., 2006). However, another expression is also used, ‘mixed learning’, for example, which represents a model of learning alternating distance learning managed in an online educational platform and face-to-face learning activities (Gibassier, 2016; Pierre and François, 2015). Nevertheless, “formation hybride” is still the most used term to represent this concept in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Regarding the three aspects which are related to “formation hybride": 1°) the history of blended learning concept which highlights a combination of distance and face-to-face learning to facilitate students' learning and to enhance their autonomy (Graham, 2006), 2°) the most recent and currently used definition of blended learning (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008; Horn and Stakers, 2015), and 3°) to avoid misunderstanding with the term hybrid learning in English which is actually also used to represent a different concept, it seems more relevant to use blended learning as an English translation of “formation hybride”. Blended learning is currently growing in higher education (Macdonald, 2008), in France as well as in other countries. This research investigates the effects of project-based learning, adopted in a blended learning model, on students’ self-direction. It also investigates students’ most enhanced competence, among the dimensions of self-direction, in this precise learning context.