Mapping of Scientific Production on Blended Learning in Higher Education

Trends and patterns in blended learning research (1965-2022)

Blended learning (BL) applications, which are defined as a combination of online and face-to-face education processes and created with the strongest aspects of various teaching approaches, have attracted increasing attention particularly in recent years with the effect of the pandemic. Although blended learning studies, which have a wide range of content and variety of applications in the literature, have been examined by content analysis in many scientific studies, bibliometric studies that provide a comprehensive review of studies on BL and reveal a general map of scientific studies are extremely limited. The purpose of this research is to conduct a systematic analysis of BL studies around the world and to reveal general research trends by bibliometric method. In the scope of the research, 4,059 publications searched in the Scopus database between the years 1965-2022 were analyzed by VOSviewer and Leximancer software; the publications were examined from aspects such as year, subject, fund, citation, journal, country, common word, etc. An analysis of the research results reveals that studies on BL have increased in number in the literature since 2006; it has been found that the fields of social sciences, computer, medicine and engineering come to the forefront in the categorization of publications by subject, and the USA, UK, China and Australia are the most cited countries. As revealed by the findings of common word analysis, the studies mostly focus on the use of technology during the pandemic, current trends in education and technology, online learning environment and learner characteristics, teaching approaches, social media, motivation and medical education. Furthermore, it is understood that the most common terms in abstracts-keywords and titles of the studies reflect the learning process, the learner, the classroom environment, the model adopted, the system designed and medical education.

An Organizational Model of Online Learning in the Pandemic Period: Comparison with Traditional Face-to-Face Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a paradigm shift in educational systems. During the lockdown, higher education became digital. This caused a change in communication within the educational ecosystem. Relational coordination (RC) is a communication and relationship model associated with the improvement of organizational results. Therefore, the objective of this research is to build an organizational model of online learning applied during the pandemic period and compare it with the previous face-to-face learning. A sample of 2774 students from two Ecuadorian universities was selected. A two-stage methodology was applied: First, an organizational model of online learning was built using multivariate methods. The RC model was linked to student satisfaction using generalized linear models (GLM). In the second stage, the organizational differences between the 2018 face-to-face and the 2020 online learning were identified. Finally, the online learning model was validated with external data. The components associated with a higher level of RC were institutional cooperation, institutional problem-solving, and administrative communication. Administrative communication lost importance in the online model. Significant differences between the satisfaction of the two models were not found. Nevertheless, since online learning was not associated with an improvement in satisfaction, the creation of a third educational model that combines the best practices of online and face-to-face learning in a hybrid system could be an alternative that improves the satisfaction of students.

Future teachers facing the use of technology for inclusion: A view from the digital competence

Technologies provide a differential value to the training process, allowing for the generation of new environments, methodologies and resources that make it possible to attend to students in a more appropriate way. This potential is especially relevant in matters of inclusion, where technology is sometimes an indispensable element for learning. In this paper we explore the main advantages of the use of technology for the attention to diversity, taking into consideration the level of digital competence of future teachers and their perceptions regarding its use for the implementation of inclusive strategies. The results suggest that participants have an intermediate level of digital competence, with differences according to gender, age and degree. It is also remarkable that they perceive inclusion as one of the main challenges of the education system and that technology can contribute to making teaching practice more inclusive, allowing it to be adapted to specific needs and highlighting the importance of teacher training in both digital competence and inclusion as an educational principle.