Blended Learning in VET: How Does the Teacher Plan to Use it and How Appropriate is It?

Abstract

With the widespread application of blended learning in vocational education and training (VET), the teachers who designed and implemented blended learning held contradictory views. Some teachers believed in the positive effect of blended learning, while others had negative resistance to the extra workload and complexity of the changed teaching mode. The understanding of the above contradictory views may be answered by analyzing how the teachers plan to apply blended learning and exploring the suitability of these methods. Therefore, the current study analyzed 224 classroom problems proposed to be solved by blended learning submitted by 122 teachers and concluded that teachers' problems mainly focused on four aspects with instructional content, participants in teaching and learning, instructional management, and teaching resources and equipment. By analyzing the solutions of using blended learning proposed by the teachers respectively, it was found that VET teachers' conceptions of blended learning mainly tended to “the supplement or extension of traditional face-to-face instruction” or “realizing the visual transmission and convenient supervision of classroom information by information technology”. Further research and practice of VET need to focus on teachers' training and explore the diversified types of blended learning.