dc.description.abstract | As a pedagogical approach in practice, blended teaching is generating
unprecedented opportunities in higher education, but also poses new
challenges. Whether teachers’ application of blended education can achieve
steady and sustainable development is gaining increasing attention. This
research examines whether teachers’ application of blended education shows
sufficient motivation for sustainable development, by exploring the motives
influencing blended teaching practices; examining the effectiveness of a
blended course design that integrates automated essay scoring online; and
describing the specific blended teaching situation in the given context. This
can help develop knowledge of the motives affecting the implementation of a
hybrid approach, improve teaching performance and quality in the given
context, and add more value to the pedagogical practice by concentrating on
its implementation.
This dissertation includes a pilot study and three main experiments, as part
of the project leading to a doctorate in Education. It employs quantitative and
qualitative methods, and analyses the data collected from questionnaires,
interviews, and triangular cross-verification of observations and informal
conversations. The pilot study tested the feasibility of the intended qualitative
thematic approach and provided parameters for designing the questions for
the focus groups in the main study, through applying Creswell’s thematic
analysis approach.
Based on the pilot study results, the first experiment is a quantitative
intervention in the given context. To apply the blended approach to college
English writing as an intervention, a small-scale study involved 71 student
participants divided into two groups, to compare an automated essay-scoring
supported hybrid course design with traditional manual marking. This
experiment examined the effectiveness of the blended approach and
measured the attitudes of students with different scores. Statistical analysis
reveals that students are not disadvantaged by the hybrid course (p<0.01).
Both groups showed a significant improvement in performance (p<0.05).
Students hold differentiated attitudes towards human scoring and automated
essay scoring in a blended course design, correlating to their writing performances (p<0.05).
The second experiment conducted two online focus groups with 14
teachers; it used thematic analysis and pattern identification techniques to
identify the motives influencing the adoption and implementation of blended
teaching, based on the participants’ narratives and descriptions. Between the
two focus groups, the pandemic was found to affect the motive of technical
skills, obliging all potentially suitable participants to practise online teaching for
a whole semester. The two groups’ data were analysed separately before
being combined to extract the results. Thus, the eight identified motives were
inductively categorized into three dimensions (attitude, external environment,
and subjective controllability). The analysis further explores the themes of
conundrums and tentative countermeasures identified from the second focus
group, observations, and informal online conversations.
In the third experiment, a questionnaire survey, based on Neumeier’s
parameters, was distributed to 166 teacher participants. The results presented
the specific situation of implementing blended teaching, such as online
platforms, time spent online, and mixed course design. The influencing
motives were tested and measured by multiple linear regression methods in
SPSS, with data collected from 187 valid questionnaires. Finally, a regression
equation model identified the degrees and ranking order of influences, with the
motive of self-efficacy being dominant (0.464), followed by social pressure
(0.216), and perceived utility (0.183).
Based on the research findings, this research proposes suggestions
regarding blended teaching practices, such as resource construction and
teachers’ professional development. | en_US |