Committee Chair

Rausch, David W.

Committee Member

Crawford, Elizabeth K.; Tucker, James; Wilferth, Joseph

Department

Dept. of Education

College

College of Health, Education, and Professional Studies

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

This study presents a mixed methods investigation of student attitudes toward blended and online courses. Specifically, the study compares two groups of university freshmen writing students. These groups respectively took writing classes in traditional classroom environments (without individual computers for each student in the classroom) and in blended classroom environments (with individual computers for each student in the classroom). The research questions were the following: RQ1: What are some of the general prevailing student attitudes toward blended classroom environments and online classroom environments? RQ2: If students take writing courses in a blended environment, will their attitudes toward blended and online education differ from the attitudes of students who only take traditional writing courses? RQ3: Will students who take blended writing courses have more favorable attitudes toward blended and online learning than students who do not take writing courses in blended environments? To answer the above research questions, a set of specific questions was presented as part of a survey to the students in both groups. Also, some qualitative data were generated in response to three open-ended questions about blended and online courses. The survey results were analyzed statistically and the qualitative data were subjected to corpus analysis and specific interpretation. Overall, the attitudes expressed by the students in this research suggest that there are some major differences between student groups in terms of their general attitudes to blended and online learning. The quantitative analysis showed statistically significant support for the idea that students with previous experience in blended classrooms have more favorable attitudes toward blended and online courses than students without previous experience in blended classrooms. The qualitative results showed a wide range of expressive and divergent opinions among all of the respondents, and the results also provided revealing answers to the research questions.

Degree

Ed. D.; A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Education.

Date

8-2013

Subject

Computer-assisted instruction -- Evaluation; Blended learning -- Evaluation

Discipline

Educational Leadership

Document Type

Doctoral dissertations

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

xiii, 120 leaves

Language

English

Rights

https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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