Blended learning programs in hearing health care in developing countries during a pandemic: Opportunity or disaster?

Introduction: With COVID-19, tertiary education was mostly transferred to online instead of face-to-face learning, as this was the only way to go forward during the pandemic. Blended learning refers to teaching that combine face-to-face instruction with online learning. It has the advantages that students can learn at their own pace through the convenience of online learning and can interact with peers and tutors in face-to-face sessions. For blended learning, the challenges during COVID-19 were even more. The Eduplex Training Institute (ETI) in South Africa, presents blended learning programs in hearing health care for students. Completion of these programs during COVID-19 were specifically challenged since students completed an online theoretical component and had to travel to South Africa to attend face-to-face practical workshops. In Africa, travel restrictions were set in many countries and specific travel to South Africa was prohibited by many governments. This prohibited students from attending face-to-face practical sessions and additional plans had to be made for students to successfully complete programs. Methodology: The purpose of this study was to determine whether students and tutors from developing countries, found blended learning during COVID-19 as a possible way to continue studies. A survey research design was implemented to determine students’ and tutors’ perceptions regarding blended learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges faced and adaptations that had to be made to complete programs successfully. Results: Results indicated that students and tutors felt that it was possible to complete blended learning programs successful during the COVID-19 pandemic but there were several challenges that required adaptations to current programs. Students considered the lack of availability and affordability of internet connectivity as the biggest challenge, followed by the lack of access to personal equipment, unsuitable learning environments and insufficient time for learning as many of the students were working while studying. For tutors the main challenges were that they had to be adaptable – programs could not continue as initially planned. This had specific influence on the timeline of the program as it took students longer to complete programs than the initial time that was allocated. Other challenges included lack of appropriate learning material for the original planned face-to-face sessions that had to be presented in a different manner, lack of appropriate training to design and manage learning management programs, lack of personal equipment and software programs at their home environment and keeping students motivated. Changes that were required to the programs included: use of programs that required little data, ensuring Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and PDF files were downloadable, restricted use of images and graphics, use of pre-recorded lectures and allowing additional contact sessions. Conclusion: Although blended learning in general composes many challenges to students in developing countries, these challenges were even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Blended learning is however often the only way in which these students can acquire new knowledge and therefore strategies should be implemented to ensure the success thereof. With the combination of dedicated tutors and motivated students many challenges can be overcome, and new plans can be made to result in the successful completion of training programs.