Students’ experiences of blended mathematics education in upper secondary education

Abstract

A recent review identified four key challenges to the design of blended education: incorporating flexibility, facilitating interaction, facilitating students’ learning processes, and fostering an effective learning climate. How these challenges can be addressed on the secondary level remains understudied. This research aimed to fill that knowledge gap by studying a Dutch case of a blended course for high-performing students aged 15-18. We studied how the educational video clips, hand-in tasks, and face-to-face sessions contribute to the students’ experiences in a blended upper secondary mathematics course. We focused on experiences of flexibility, interaction, learning processes, and learning climate. We interviewed eight students, across four schools, in addition to four teachers and one designer of the course, and coded the interviews using a priori coding. We conclude that all three aspects, face-to-face sessions, hand-in exercises, and videos contribute to students experiencing flexibility in a blended course, leading to a good learning climate. However, flexibility causes poor time management among some students. Interaction with peers helps students to organize their learning process. Our research also suggests that enthusiastic presenters and elaborate feedback can improve students’ opinions on the course. Remarkably, some students found a blended course not much different from their regular non-blended courses. Our results underline that students that forego most aspects that distinguish a blended course from an online course often experience a worse learning climate than students that embrace both the online and the face-to-face aspects of a blended course.