Can Blended Learning Enhance attainment of Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)!

The pandemic COVID-19 has taught many lessons to the whole world and hardly any sector is left to have been affected by its adverse impact. The healthcare and education could see several transformational changes in delivering the services. This article focuses on educational aspect of post-COVID scenario. Due to mass-spread of virus, the whole world went into lock down state and even after some normalcy, the spread or virus or the infection is not stopped. This is the reason why the educational institutes had to opt for online education and online teaching-learning practices (TLP) only. The computer-mediated learning started taking place with the help of mobile phones, computers connecting them to anywhere across the world. The online teaching learning became very popular as there was no other option during the pandemic, despite the fact that lot of school going students especially from rural areas had to face difficulties due to lack of good internet connectivity, computers and mobile phone. Nevertheless, it worked well and the government and other organizations also helped the rural or needy learners for accessing the resources for learning. As the spread of infection started reaching to low level then many schools and academic organizations opened; that allowed students to benefit of physical academic ambience and active discussions with their peers and teachers. Blended learning is now evolved as an attractive term which combines face-to-face teaching learning with online TLP. This is why blended learning is also called as hybrid learning, though blended learning is sometimes considered as slightly different from hybrid learning with the justification of online and face-to-face need not happen concurrently in the hybrid mode of learning. The salient features of blended learning are:

§ Redefining the education and TLP

§ Flexibility in TLP and global accessibility

§ Easier academic collaboration with reputed academic universities

§ Learning anywhere and anytime

Now, the question is if blended learning can enhance the student learning outcomes (SLOs)! The practicing OBE (outcome-based education) framework and true assessment of SLOs is still far in most of the institutions except reputed academic-research based universities. Still, blended learning especially its online component can help the learners as well as teachers to better demonstrate SLOs. The employability skill is a buzzword which is a set of skills or competence that a graduate is supposed to have while performing his/her tasks in his/her workplace. The skill set has to be demonstrated by the candidates as reflection of positive changes brought in students by the interactive, research based and collaborative academic activities. This would be better achieved if an online component is involved in TLP. This certainly helps in improving SLOs in the students if used for learning beyond prescribed curriculum and also for enrichment of knowledge of what is being imparted to them in physical mode.

§ The learning outcomes and impact shall be better if a student gets adequate guidance for using the online learning opportunities in addition to online TLP offered at the institute.

§ The power of ICT tools in transformation of education sector would provide a different and global experience to the learners.

§ For teachers, the assessment of online deliveries becomes flexible and better as compared to conventional mode, especially in terms of response and performance of students indicated by a number of parameters that depend on type of course offered.

§ If assessment become improved then there would be direct impact on attainment of SLOs.