Constructivist blended learning approach in higher education

Abstract

Use of online platform (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Kahoot, Google Docs, Moodle, Mentimeter) together with traditional classroom activities have been more widely adopted in universities for teaching and student learning. Meanwhile, teaching approach has become more student-centered, meaning that the instructors feature less prominently in the course of teaching, but remain the planner, learning designer and facilitator. The effectiveness of such blended learning experience is arguable. We therefore conducted a pilot study on examining the impacts of the use of social media (YouTube and Facebook) for students to work on their assignments. Students, who were from the University of Hong Kong and the Education University of Hong Kong, were asked to reflect their blended learning experience through completing a self-administered questionnaire. It was found that with teacher’s facilitation and the use of such social media platforms, students could interact more and build up a stronger community to share their knowledge. On the other hand, privacy was a concern raised by the students (one-way ANOVA, p < 0.0001) which may hinder their knowledge exchange through the online platform. To explore the education value of blended learning, further studies on scrutinizing the effectiveness of the use of other online platforms should be conducted.